But oftener we and our shadows glided along the gloom at the foot of the cliffs, ear-led by the incessant cry of the young hawks in their nest, ever hungry except when asleep. Left to themselves, when the old birds are hunting, an hour's want of food is felt to be famine, and you hear the cry of the callow creatures, angry with one another, and it may be, fighting with soft beak and pointless claws, till a living lump of down tumbles over the rock-ledge, soon to be picked to the bone by insects, who likewise all live upon prey; for example. Ants of Carrion. Get you behind that briery bield, that wild-rose hanging rock, far and wide scenting the wilderness with a faint perfume; or into that cell, almost a parlour, with a Gothic roof formed by large stones leaning one against the other and so arrested, as they tumbled from the frost-riven breast of the precipice. Wait there, though it should be for hours--but it will not be for hours; for both the old hawks are circling the sky, one over the marsh and one over the wood. She comes--she comes--the female Sparrowhawk, twice the size of her mate; and while he is plain in his dress, as a cunning and cruel Quaker, she is gay and gaudy as a Demirep dressed for the pit of the Opera--deep and broad her bosom, with an air of luxury in her eyes that glitter like a serpent's. But now she is a mother, and plays a mother's part--greedier, even than for herself, for her greedy young. The lightning flashes from the cave-mouth, and she comes tumbling, and dashing, and rattling through the dwarf bushes on the cliff-face, perpendicular and plum-down, within three yards of her murderer. Her husband will not visit his nest this day--no--nor all night long: for a father's is not as a mother's love. Your only chance of killing him, too, is to take a lynx-eyed circuit round about all the moors within half a league; and possibly you may see him sitting on some cairn, or stone, or tree-stump, afraid to fly either hither or thither, perplexed by the sudden death he saw appearing among the unaccountable smoke, scenting it yet with his fine nostrils, so as to be unwary of your approach. Hazard a long shot--for you are right behind him--and a slug may hit him on the head, and, following the feathers, split his skull-cap and scatter his brains. 'Tis done--and the eyry is orphan'd. Let the small brown moorland birds twitter Io Pæan, as they hang balanced on the bulrushes--let the stone-chat glance less fearfully within shelter of the old grey cairn--let the cushat coo his joyous gratitude in the wood--and the lark soar up to heaven, afraid no more of a demon descending from the cloud. As for the imps in the eyry, let them die of rage and hunger--for there must always be pain in the world; and 'tis well when its endurance by the savage is the cause of pleasure to the sweet--when the gore-yearning cry of the cruel is drowned in the song of the kind at feed or play--and the tribes of the peace-loving