SCENE VII.


April was a busy month in the Dovecot. Young birds were chipping the
egg, parent birds were feeding their young or relieving each other on
the nest, and Jack and his master were constantly occupied and excited.

One night Daddy Darwin went to bed; but, though he was tired, he did not
sleep long. He had sold a couple of handsome but quarrelsome pigeons, to
advantage, and had added their price to the hoard in the bed-head. This
had renewed his old fears, for the store was becoming very valuable; and
he wondered if it had really escaped Jack's quick observation, or
whether the boy knew about it, and, perhaps, talked about it. As he lay
and worried himself he fancied he heard sounds without--the sound of
footsteps and of voices. Then his heart beat till he could hear nothing
else; then he could undoubtedly hear nothing at all; then he certainly
heard something which probably was rats. And so he lay in a cold sweat,
and pulled the rug over his face, and made up his mind to give the money
to the parson, for the poor, if he was spared till daylight.

He _was_ spared till daylight, and had recovered himself, and
settled to leave the money where it was, when Jack rushed in from the
pigeon-house with a face of dire dismay. He made one or two futile
efforts to speak, and then unconsciously used the words Shakespeare has
put into the mouth of Macduff, "All my pretty 'uns!" and so burst into
tears.

And when the old man made his way to the pigeon-house, followed by poor
Jack, he found that the eggs were cold and the callow young shivering in
deserted nests, and that every bird was gone. And then he remembered the