After we had all peered over it, the egg was put back solemnly by Thady. A little further on, and Thady again halted. "Here it be, yer leddyship," he cried, in a high treble; and there, sure enough, looking upward, we discerned a nest of twigs and roots. It was quite low down, and I was able easily to lift up the children to get a peep themselves. The little nest was lined with hair and wool stolen from the neighbouring fields, but as yet there were no eggs. "A nope's (bullfinch's) sure enough," said Thady, dogmatically. Then on we wandered until we paused below a fir tree. Below the bole of the tree there was no herbage, for the fir leaves had fallen like needles and had pierced and stabbed the grass to death--so it was quite bare now, not a leaf, or even a patch of moss; as bare, in fact, as a village playground. Suddenly we heard overhead a loud, ringing clap of wings, and as we looked up, we saw an ill-made nest of sticks, and two eggs, which last we could see glistening inside, like two button mushrooms. For a minute I had a vision of a big departing bird of a soft lavender grey, and as I looked, Thady called out, "Quice," which is the Shropshire name for the wood-pigeon. Thady was anxious to mount the tree and bring me down an egg for closer inspection; but I begged him not to do so, for the Cushat-Doos, as he tells me he has heard them called in the North Country, are very shy birds in a wild state, and I have been told will never return to a nest where the hand of man has trifled with eggs or nest. I lingered, looking up at the shining round pink eggs with the light glimmering through the twigs; and then I mounted up the hill, which was very hard work, for both children were a little weary and hot, and I went up the incline, pulling both up as best I could. Mouse kept close to my heels. She had had dark suspicions ever since we entered the wood, and was convinced of the existence, I felt sure, of robbers, footpads, wolves, and also of innumerable vague dangers, and alarms. We passed a blackbird's nest, but Thady waved his hand in lofty disdain, and refused to pull back the bough so that we might look at the eggs. "'Tisn't for dirt like that that I'll trouble yer leddyship and the young squire to spier round," he exclaimed. "The black ouzel is just a conny among feathered folk, or what blackberries be 'mongst the fruit." Thady seemed to know every inch of the ground. "It isn't in woods or field that I forget myself," he remarked to me, when I commended him for his knowledge of the Edge. "Devil a bit," he said, "if I have ever lost my way along, or missed a mark or forgotten the bend of a stick; but," he added, in a tone of contrition, "'tis in the book larning and figures that Thady Malone cannot always discern rightly." At last, after much puffing and panting, we reached the top of the hill. [Sidenote: THE SCOBBY'S NEST]