enormous flocks of birds, most of them pigeons with white cowls. Not
only were their wings whirring, but their cooing was plainly audible.
From such a multitude of birds the mass of sound, individually small,
assumed the volume of a storm. Surprised at the influx of birds, to
which they had been strangers so long, they all looked towards Castra
Regis, from whose high tower the great kite had been flying as usual. But
even as they looked, the cord broke, and the great kite fell headlong in
a series of sweeping dives. Its own weight, and the aerial force opposed
to it, which caused it to rise, combined with the strong easterly breeze,
had been too much for the great length of cord holding it.

Somehow, the mishap to the kite gave new hope to Mimi. It was as though
the side issues had been shorn away, so that the main struggle was
thenceforth on simpler lines. She had a feeling in her heart, as though
some religious chord had been newly touched. It may, of course, have
been that with the renewal of the bird voices a fresh courage, a fresh
belief in the good issue of the struggle came too. In the misery of
silence, from which they had all suffered for so long, any new train of
thought was almost bound to be a boon. As the inrush of birds continued,
their wings beating against the crackling rushes, Lady Arabella grew
pale, and almost fainted.

"What is that?" she asked suddenly.

To Mimi, born and bred in Siam, the sound was strangely like an
exaggeration of the sound produced by a snake-charmer.

Edgar Caswall was the first to recover from the interruption of the
falling kite. After a few minutes he seemed to have quite recovered his
_sang froid_, and was able to use his brains to the end which he had in