What was this? Human voices, laughter, coming round the corner of the barn! Feltie had never been so near a human being before. He tried to fly, but it was impossible; no strength was left. His heart beat, and he crouched closer to the ground. Then two small ploughboys, shouting and snowballing each other, burst round the barn; the foremost, seeing Feltie, at once ran up and seized him, thus offering a splendid aim to his pursuer, who sent a snowball at him which took deadly effect on him. But the first boy popped Feltie into his pocket, and ran off, crying out as he ran: “I’se got a bird: thee sha’n’t have none of un!” Down the village street he ran, making for his father’s cottage, but had got no farther than the vicarage gate, which was half way down the street, when another well-compacted snowball, delivered from behind the gate, knocked his hat off into the road, and filled one ear with snow which at once began to trickle gently down his neck. He looked up with a red face, and saw the vicar’s son, a boy of fourteen, swinging on the gate and laughing with all his might. “Oh, that was a beauty!” he said: “Oh, that was a tickler for you, Bill!” “Thou beest a beast,” was Bill’s reply. He didn’t mean a pun, but perhaps there was a pleasant emphasis in the doubled syllable. “Thou beest a beast, thou beest.” “What’s that?” said the swinger on the gate suddenly jumping down. “What am I? I’ll teach you--” But Bill did not stop to hear what he was to be taught. He took to his heels again and ran like a deer. But the vicar’s son was more than a match for awkward Bill at running, and in less than a hundred yards he collared him and had him down in a twinkling on the snow in the deserted street. “I’ll teach you to call me names, you young cad.” And he began his lesson by scientifically “bagging” Bill’s wind. “Doan’t thee pummel I, doan’t thee now,” said panting Bill. “I’ll gi’ thee a bird I’se got in my pocket, if thee woan’t pummel I no more.” “Where’s the bird? Get up and show it me directly, you young lubber,” said his conqueror, keeping a fast hold of his prisoner’s collar, the better to secure the execution of the bargain. Bill sulkily obeyed, and produced Feltie from his pocket. But the jolting and banging produced by Bill’s headlong flight in his heavy hob-nailed boots had been too much for Feltie; he still breathed, but his eyes were shut and he was in fact quite unconscious of what was going on. The vicar’s boy let go Bill’s collar, and taking Feltie in both hands, began to walk back to the vicarage gate. In two minutes he and Feltie were in the snug warm drawing-room of the vicarage, where his mother and three sisters were sitting by the fire at work. “My _dear_ George,” said the mother from her armchair as the boy came in, “how can you go out a day like this without a greatcoat? And what in the world have you got there?” “Don’t be frightened, mother,” said George, as he sat down on the hearthrug to thaw; “it’s only a fieldfare.”