wound in my side was long healing, for it was more easily disturbed
as I turned in my sleep, while I could ease my arm at all times,
and it came on slowly. My sufferings drew on my flesh, my blood,
and my spirits, and to this was added that disease inaction, the
corrosion of solitude, and the fever of suspense and uncertainty as
to Alixe and Juste Duvarney. Every hour, every moment that I had
ever passed in Alixe's presence, with many little incidents and
scenes in which we shared, passed before me--vivid and cherished
pictures of the mind. One of those incidents I will set down here.

A year or so before, soon after Juste Duvarney came from Montreal,
he brought in one day from hunting a young live hawk, and put it
in a cage. When I came the next morning, Alixe met me, and asked
me to see what he had brought. There, beside the kitchen door,
overhung with morning-glories and flanked by hollyhocks, was a
large green cage, and in it the gray-brown hawk. "Poor thing,
poor prisoned thing!" she said. "Look how strange and hunted it
seems! See how its feathers stir! And those flashing, watchful
eyes, they seem to read through you, and to say, 'Who are you? What
do you want with me? Your world is not my world; your air is not my
air; your homes are holes, and mine hangs high up between you and
God. Who are you? Why do you pen me? You have shut me in that I may
not travel, not even die out in the open world. All the world is
mine; yours is only a stolen field. Who are you? What do you want
with me? There is a fire within my head, it eats to my eyes, and I
burn away. What do you want with me?'"

She did not speak these words all at once as I have written them
here, but little by little, as we stood there beside the cage. Yet,
as she talked with me, her mind was on the bird, her fingers running