“I’ve no time to explain, Tom; it’s getting dark, and there’s not a moment to be lost. You do as I tell you, and put ’em straight back, all of them, as they were. We’ve got the rent.” At these last words, Tom seized the rope again, and in a minute was once more on the ledge below. His father watched him from the top, pretty confident in his son’s powers of climbing. There was no need for anxiety: the good deed was done even quicker than the bad one; and Tom, puzzled but obedient, stood safe and sound once more by his father’s side. As they went back to the little inn down the valley in the drizzling rain, the story of the cheque was told; and nothing remained but to make sure that the Kites returned to their nest. Armed with a field-glass they climbed next day another hill, and lying there on the top, they watched the fortress long and anxiously. When they left the inn that afternoon on their homeward journey, the old dealer’s heart was light. The Baron and the Baroness had not forsaken their treasures; and it may be that after all they will not be the last of their race. Late that evening there arrived in London this telegram for the expectant collector from Stephen Lee: “Your great kindness has saved two broods, mine and the Kites’.” DOWNS AND DUNGEONS Two small cages hung side by side just above the open door of a dingy house in a dingy London street. It was a street in the region of Soho, gloomy and forlorn; dirty bits of paper, fragments of old apples, treacherous pieces of orange-peel, lay sticking in its grimy mud, and a smutty drizzle was falling which could do no honest washing away of grime, but only make it stickier. It was not a cheerful place to live in, nor did the creatures living in it seem to rejoice in their life,—all except the Canary in one of the two cages, who sang a rattling, trilling, piercing song incessantly, with all the vigour of a London street-boy whistling in the dark mist of a November evening. Cats slunk about disconsolate; carmen sat on their vans and smoked resignedly, with old sacks on their shoulders; women slipped sadly with draggled feet into the public-house and out again for such comfort as they could get there; but that Canary sang away as if it were living in a Paradise. The street rang with the shrill voice, and a cobbler in the shop opposite shook his fist at the bird and used bad language. [Illustration: Downs and Dungeons.] At last the Canary suddenly stopped singing, dropped to the floor of its cage, pecked up a few seeds, and drank water; then flew up again to its perch, and addressed the occupant of the other cage, a little insignificant-looking brown Linnet. “What ever is the matter with you? Here you’ve been two nights and a day, and you don’t say a word, nor sing a note! You don’t even eat,—and of course you can’t sing if you can’t eat.” The Linnet opened its bill as if to speak, and shut it again with a gasp as of a dying bird.