Two days later the Ornithologist was wheeling swiftly southwards, with a little cage fixed to the saddle in front of him. The motion was not unpleasant to Lintie when once they were free of streets and crowds, and out of suburbs, even to the last new house of dreary Croydon. He was in a cage still; but birds, even more than other animals, have a subtle inward sense of sympathy that tells them surely in whose hands they are. Lintie was in the strong hands of one who loves all birds, and whose happiness is bound up in theirs. When they came to the North Downs between Croydon and Reigate, he stopped and looked about him. The fringe of London still seemed there; he saw villas building, men playing golf, advertisements in the fields. “Better go on,” he said to himself; “this is too near London for a damaged linnet.” And they slipped rapidly down into a verdant vale of wood and pasture. At last they began to mount again. The Ornithologist had avoided the main route, and was ascending the South Downs at a point little known to Londoners. Near the top the hollow road began to be fringed by the burning yellow of the gorse-bloom; the air grew lighter, and the scent of clean, sweet herbage put new life into man and bird. The Linnet fluttered in his cage with wild uncertain hopes; but that determined Ornithologist went on wheeling his machine up the hill. In a few minutes they came out of the hollow road on to the bare summit of the Down. It was an April day; the drizzle had given way to bright sunshine and a bracing east wind. Far off to the south they could see the glitter of the sea fretted into a million little dancing waves. Nearer at hand were the long sweeping curves of chalk down, the most beautiful of all British hills, for those who know and love them; with here and there a red-tiled farmhouse lurking in a cool recess, or a little watercourse springing from the point where down and cultivation meet, and marking its onward course by the bushes and withy-beds beside it. A Wheatear, newly arrived in the glory of slaty-blue plumage, stood bowing at them on a big stone hard by. A Stonechat, on the top twig of a gorse-bush, bade a sturdy defiance to all bird-catchers. The Cuckoo could be faintly heard from the vale behind them; still the Ornithologist held his hand. Suddenly there came dancing overhead, here, there, and everywhere, gone in a moment and back again, half a dozen little twittering fairies; and then one of them, alighting no one knows how or when, sat bolt upright on a gorse-bush, and turned a crimson breast and forehead towards the Ornithologist. His hand was already on the cage-door; in a moment it was open, and Lintie was gone.