Some years ago, "the ount catcher," as he is called here, old Peter Purslowe, appeared in a moleskin waistcoat. Since then, however, he has never worn another. "The missus," I was told, "found it too weedy a job ever to make a second, although it furnishes well, but it had more stitches than ever there be stones at the Abbey." [Sidenote: THE RETURN OF THE ROOKS] I approached the rookery; what a babel greeted my ears, yet if you have ever listened carefully you will perceive that each rook has a different note of voice, and I suspect, if you knew rooks individually, you would notice, like in the songs of canaries, that no two rooks ever caw precisely alike. What a wonderful thing it is, the return of the rooks to any given place. For months they had been absent from this spot, gone nobody knows where. Not a sign of them. And then, almost to a day, they reappeared, and claimed their own tree and branch; and each pair, I fancy, went back to the site of its former nest. Curious stories are told of the sagacity of rooks, of their self-government, and of how offenders who have disobeyed some common law have been executed before large numbers, evidently as a judgment, and as a warning to others. As I watched them, a story bearing out the truth of this statement came back to me. In the rookery of a friend there was hatched, I was told, a rook with white wings. The community did not make any objection to the youngster being reared there; but when, the following year, the white-winged bird returned to an old avenue of elms, where he had been hatched, exception was taken to his desire to nest there. It seemed, said my friend, as if a congress was called, and as if the strangely marked rook and his mate were given the option to fly elsewhere, or receive some dire punishment; for at intervals they were chased away, but kept on returning to the same spot. All day, rooks seemed, said my informant, to flock to the avenue, till the air seemed almost black with them. They flew, cawed wildly, and seemed in a highly excited state. This went on hour after hour, without any apparent change; until at last one old bird descended from the branch on which he had been perched, and standing on the grass, flapped his wings slowly, uttering a strange, low, mysterious cry, more like the husky croaking of a carrion crow than the cawing of a rook. In a moment the whole grove, said my informant, resounded with the cries of the rooks, and one and all simultaneously fell upon the unfortunate bird with the white wings, screaming and cawing, and never rested until they had pecked him to death, and torn almost every feather out of his helpless body. I recalled this curious story, and then watched the birds as they flew round, finding sticks for their nests. Ash sticks seemed to be their favourite material, or twigs from the great wych-elm a field away.