One day Hira was seen preening his wings and talking nonsense in the presence of _Mrs._ Jahore, a beautiful jet black creature with eyes red as bloodstone. Matters had hardly gone any distance when from nowhere came Jahore and fell up on Hira. The latter was so infuriated that he fought like a fiend. Beak against beak, feet against feet, and wings pitted against wings. All the other pigeons fled from the ring where the two males were engaged in trouncing each other. Gay-Neck stood over them, calm as an umpire over a tennis match. At last, after half a dozen set-tos, Hira won. Puffing himself to the uttermost limits of his conceit, he went over to _Mrs._ Jahore as much as to say: "Madame, your husband is a coward. Behold what a fine fellow I am, Buk, bukoom, kumkum." She gave him one crushing look of contempt, and flapping her wings withdrew to her husband in their home. Hira looked crestfallen and sulky in turn, then in a sudden paroxysm of anger he fell upon Gay-Neck tooth and nail. The latter, taken unaware, was very nearly knocked out at the first fury of the attack. Hira pecked and slapped him till he felt too dizzy to stand up, so Gay-Neck ran away pursued by the mad fellow. They ran in a circle, spinning like two tops, I could hardly see which was pursuer, and which pursued. They went at such high speed that I could not see when they stopped and started to peck and slap each other. The explosive sound of wing hitting wing filled the air with an ominous clamour. Now feathers began to fly in every direction. Suddenly, beak to beak and claw in claw they wrestled and spun on the floor--two birds become one single incarnation of fury. Seeing that they could not reach any decision that way, Gay-Neck extricated himself from his rival's grip and flew up in the air. Hira followed flapping his wings tremendously fast. About three feet above the ground Gay-Neck put his claws like talons around Hira's windpipe, and set to squeezing it more and more tightly, and at the same time kept up a terrific cannonade of wing-beats, that like flails of steel threshed out a shower of snowy feathers from his opponent's body. Now, hid in that falling blizzard of feathers, the two rolled on the ground, pecking one another with the virulence of two maddened serpents. At last Hira let go and wilted like a torn white flower on the floor. One of his legs had been dislocated. As for Gay-Neck his throat and neck had hardly any feathers left. But he was glad that the struggle had been settled one way or another. And he knew full well that had Hira not first expended half his strength fighting Jahore he, Gay-Neck, might not have won the battle. However, all is well that ends well. I bandaged and did all that was necessary to Hira's leg. In another thirty minutes all the pigeons were eating their last meal of the day utterly oblivious of what had happened so recently. No sulking and bearing of grudges in their blood--no doubt they all came from a fine