But
it had ventured out in the air and had reached a birch, on which it
alighted. There had been a rush downstairs and out of the house, but
the hawk was no longer in the birch, and was never seen by him
again, yet it persisted in his memory.
The sport of hawking is not quite extinct in England, and at various
times he had caused inquiries to be made, and had arranged once to
go to the New Forest and on another occasion to Wiltshire. But
something had happened to prevent him going, and he had continued to
dream of hawking, of the mystery whereby the hawk could be called
out of the sky by the lure--some rags and worsted-work in the shape
of a bird whirled in the air at the end of a string. Why should the
hawk leave its prey for such a mock? Yet it did; and he had always
read everything that came under his hand about hawking with a
peculiar interest, and in exhibitions of pictures had always stood a
long time before pictures of hawking, however bad they might be.
But Evelyn had turned his thoughts from sport to music, and gradually
he had become reconciled to the idea that his destiny was never to
see a hawk strike down a bird. But the occasion long looked for had
come at last, to-morrow morning the mystery of hawking would cease
to be a mystery for him any longer; and as he lay in his tent,
trying to get a few hours' sleep before dawn, he asked himself if
the realisation of his dream would profit him much, only the certain
knowledge that hawks stooped at their prey and returned to the lure;
another mystery would have been unravelled, and there were few left;
he doubted if there was another; all the sights and shows with which
life entices us were known to him, all but one, and the last would
go the way the others had gone.
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