Molly looked at him with her usual admiring gaze. Harold and she had been playmates since they were small children and lived as next door neighbours, and though they did not see quite so much of each other now that Harold’s father was dead, and his mother had come to live in a smaller cottage further up the street, they were still as fond of each other as ever. Molly had long ago given up her whole soul to Harold: she had no secret from him. He had been a brother to her all her life, and even more than a brother. Perhaps if she had had any brothers they would have either despised her and kept her down, or they would have spoilt her, but Harold did neither. He was her sun, cheering and warming her; as to being obliged to do without him, that was a thing she had never thought of. But some little time before the appearance of the falcon Harold had suddenly taken it into his head that he must go into the royal navy. A coast-guard friend of his had for some time been trying to persuade him to join a training-ship, but Harold had steadily refused, thinking that a fisherman’s free life was the happiest in the world. But as he grew older he began to discover that the fisherman’s freedom was bought at a high price. They had to sell their fish for very little, and other people made the money they ought to have had. And for a great part of the year very little was done in the way of fishing, except lobster-and crab-catching, and lobsters and crabs were getting scarcer than they used to be. There were in fact too many fishermen, and they were gradually catching all the crabs and lobsters on the coast. And so Harold at last came to the conclusion that if he was to support his mother in her old age he should set himself to some work which would make him sure of a fixed income, and if possible a rising one. When Molly learnt that her Harold was actually going to leave her, and that in a few days she would see the last of him for a long time to come, her whole life seemed to be going to change. It was as if her boat had suddenly sprung a leak, and was sinking away from beneath her. The village, the bay, the beach, the lanes, could never be the same without Harold. She had been used to lean on him, to rest her whole being against his; and she did not know that even boys and girls, like men and women, must lose the props they make for themselves, and yet contrive somehow to stand without their help. Seeing her sorrowful eyes, and wishing to see them bright again, rather than feeling with her in her pain, he had given her the pigeon; and now the cruel falcon’s talons had torn her sensitive little heart almost as ruthlessly as the bird’s tender breast. Harold came out of the cottage door and looked at the weather. It was a still spring morning with a silky mist lying about the hills, which would clear away if the slightest breeze got up.