He had not slept very long when he was waked up by a sparrow coming into the bush and beginning to chatter loudly. The next minute there came another, then a third, a fourth, half-a-dozen together, all chattering and quarrelling so noisily that for the moment they did not notice the stranger. But more and more came bustling in, and the din and the hubbub were so overwhelming that Lintie felt he must go at all risks. He moved, was detected, and instantly pounced upon. “Who are you? What’s your name? What are you doing in our roosting-bush? What do you want here? No vulgar vagrants here! Take that, and that, and that!” So they all shouted in chorus, pecking at him the while, and the noise was so unusual that two young men of the law, looking out of a first-floor window in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, took their pipes out of their mouths and listened. “It’s all over with me at last,” thought Lintie; but he made one brave effort to escape, found his way out of the bush, and flew into the open roadway, pursued by half a hundred sparrows. “What in the world is up?” said one of the men up in the window. “By George, it’s murder they’re at,” he cried, as he saw a whirling, screaming cloud of sparrows on the ground below him, and their victim resigning himself to inevitable death. In a moment his pipe was on the floor, and he himself was in the street. The sparrows flew away swearing; Lintie crouched on the ground, a heap of dishevelled feathers. The student took him gently in his hand and carried him into the house. “They’d all but done for him, the beggars,” he said to his friend. “I fancy he might come round if we only knew what to do with him. I say, I wish you’d see whether M—— has gone home; it’s only just round in New Square,—you know the staircase. He’ll like to see the bird anyhow, and he can doctor it if he thinks it worth while.” The friend went out, grumbling but compliant, and in five minutes returned with the Ornithologist, keen-faced and serious. He took the bird in his hand. “It’s only a damaged cock linnet,” he said at once and decisively: “an escaped one, of course, for his crimson has turned a dirty yellow, you see, as it always does in confinement. I think he may live if he’s cared for. If he does, I’ll take him on my cycle into Sussex on Saturday, and I’ll let him go there. Can you find a cage?” An old cage was found somewhere, and Lintie was a prisoner once more; but he was past caring about that, and simply sat huddled up at the bottom of it with his head under his wing. The Ornithologist called a cab,—a very unusual step for him,—put his great-coat over the cage, and drove off to the West End.