only, as it might be, upon the hem of its green robe; the adventurous
place opened slowly to him like some great epic whose majesty and
force dawns upon you by degrees not to be marked. It was still
twilight in the place where he was when he heard the battling of
birds' wings, the screaming of one bird's grief, and the angry purr of
another, or of others. He peered through the bush as the sound
swelled. Presently he saw a white bird come fluttering with a dropt
wing, two hen-harriers in close pursuit. They were over her, upon her,
there was a wrangle of wings--brown and white--even while he watched;
then the white got clear again, and he could see that she bled in the
breast. The sound of her screaming, which was to him like a girl
crying, moved him strangely. He jumped from his saddle, ran to the
entangled birds and cuffed the two hawks off; but seeing that they
came on again, hunger-bold no doubt, he strangled them and freed the
white pigeon. He took her up in his hands to look at her; she was too
far gone for fear; she bled freely, but he judged she would recover.
So she did, after he had washed out the wound; sufficiently at least
to hop and flutter into covert. Prosper took to his horse and journey
with her voice still ringing in his head.

In another hour's travel he reached a clearing in the wood, hedged all
about with yew-trees and holm oaks very old; and in the midst of it
saw a little stone altar with the figure of a woman upon it. He was
not too hungry to be curious, so he dismounted and went to examine.
The saint was Saint Lucy the Martyr, he saw; the altar, hoary as it
was with lichen and green moss, had a slab upon it well-polished, with
crosses let into the four corners and into the middle of the stone;
there were sockets for tapers, and marks of grease new and thick.
Before he approached it a hind and her calf had been cropping the
grass between the cracks of the altar-steps; all else was very still,