The sharp eyes of a small muddy boy in the gutter instantly caught sight of him, and with a shrill yell he seized an old tin sardine-box with which he had been scraping up the mud for a pie, and aimed it at the bird. But that yell saved Lintie; the donkey shook his ears as it pierced their hairy recesses, and the bird at the same instance relaxed his hold of the hair and flew up above the house-roofs. The air up there was even worse than down in the street. It was still drizzling, and the fine rain, clogged with the smoke from countless crooked chimney-pots, seemed to thicken and congeal upon every object that it met. It clung to the Linnet’s feathers, it made his eyes smart, and his heart palpitate fiercely; he must rest again somewhere, and then try his wings once more. Fluttering over those horrible chimney-pots, he spied at last a roof where there was an attempt at a little garden: a box of sallow-looking mignonette, and two or three pots of old scarlet geraniums. Lintie dropped upon the mignonette, which refreshed him even with its sickly sweetness, and for a moment was almost happy. But only for a moment; suddenly, from behind one of the geranium-pots there came a swift soft rush of grey fur, a lightning-stroke of a velvet paw, a struggle in the mignonette, and Lintie emerged with the loss of three white-edged tail-feathers, while a pair of angry yellow eyes followed his scared flight into the grimy air. The very fright seemed to give his wings a sudden convulsive power. Where they were carrying him he could not tell, and the loss of three of his steering feathers mattered little. Over the crooked chimneys, over dismal streets and foul back-yards he flew, till the air seemed to clear a little as a large open space came in sight. There were tall fine houses round this space, but all the middle part of it was full of trees and shrubs, and even flower-beds. The stems of the trees were dead-black with smoke, and the shrubs looked heavy and sodden; but yet this was the best thing that Lintie had seen for many long and weary days. Even the sounds as well as sights revived him, for surely, heard through the roar of the great street hard by, there came the cooing of Woodpigeons,—the very same soothing sound that used to come up to the Downs from the beech-woods, that hung on their steep sides. He flew down into one of the thick shrubs, found a way in, and hid himself. He seemed as secure as in his native gorse-bush; and as it was dark in there and he was tired, and evening was not far distant, he put his head under his wing and went to sleep.