added:

'A missus at Undern! Never will I!'

He quailed under her mocking amber eyes, her impish laughter. Then,
looking from side to side with suppressed fury, he said: 'Them birds is
after the cherries! I'll get a gun. I'll shoot 'em dead!'

'If you shoot a blackbird, the milk'll turn bloody,' said Hazel; but
Vessons paid no heed.

All morning, at any spare moment, and after dinner (which he brought in
in complete silence, and which was exceedingly unpalatable), he lurked
behind trees and crept along hedges, shooting birds. Even Reddin felt
awed and could not gather courage to expostulate with him. In and out
of the stealthy afternoon shadows, black and solemn, went the shambling
old figure with his relentless face and outraged heart. He shot
thrushes as they fluted after a meal of wild raspberries; he shot tiny
silky willow-wrens, robins, and swallows--their sacredness did not awe
him--a pigeon on its nest, blackbirds, a dipper, a goldfinch, and a
great many sparrows. The garden and fields were struck into silence
because of him; only a flutter of terrified wings showed his
whereabouts. He piled his trophies--all the delicate ruffled plumage of
summer's prime--on the kitchen table, draggled and bloody.

Hazel and Reddin crept from window to window, silent, watching his
movements. Undern grew ghostlier than ever, seeming, as the shots rang
out startlingly loud in the quiet, like a moribund creature electrified
by blows.