“There is yet another grievance against us; we disturb, so they allege, our neighbours’ rest by our uproar. Surely the word is rather strong to apply to us who are lovers of silence, shunning noise in others as much as we avoid it in our own homes. If we make ourselves heard, it is not for the pleasure of listening to our own voices! We well know we are no sweet-voiced choristers, and when the nightingale sings, we have never dreamt of posing as his rivals. There are, so the migrants have told us, in the far-off cities of other lands, men who proclaim the hour from the tall minarets in the silence of the night. We do not announce the time—the cuckoo alone has this office to perform during daylight—but we instruct the swallows on the point of winging away, we inform the cricket, the bee, the ant, the ploughman, all to whom rain and sunshine are not matters of indifference, if they may count or not on a favourable morrow. So the kindly mother of man and beast has put two notes in our throats, deeming we needed no more, not to make us singing birds, but only birds of good help. “I have no more to say, for indeed we are no great talkers, and oratory is an art unknown to us. I will say no more, therefore, save only this—that if you are not satisfied with my pleas, I offer myself—and my companion here present will do the like—I offer myself a willing victim to your resentment, if so be the common good, which could not heretofore exist without our aid, is now only to be secured by the sacrifice of our lives.” Not a little surprised at his own eloquence, the bird of night stepped back to his place with tottering limbs. Thereupon the jays and yellowhammers began a hoot of derision, which was quickly drowned by the protests of the mother birds trembling for their young; and then the old raven, rising slowly to his feet, folded up his glasses, coughed, croaked, and, inspired apparently by the general sense of justice, summed up as follows— “You, Sir Owl, you have done wrong in crying out over loud; but you, young Turtle-dove, you have done a far graver wrong by haling an innocent prisoner to the bar. You therefore will pay the fine to which you would have had your neighbours condemned, and the costs of the trial to boot. Moreover, I will take this opportunity to do an act of justice, and extend a hand of brotherly affection to our honoured friend the owl, who is henceforth to be treated with proper consideration and respect, or I will know the reason why.” Little by little the audience dispersed, the swarm of birds scattered into space, and the raven’s rock was left to its former solitude. Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. Edinburgh & London Transcriber’s Notes --Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook is public-domain in the country of publication. --Corrected a few palpable typos.