Meanwhile, the people in the cottage were fearful that the policeman would come their way and discover everything. The old birds kept banging away at the thatch, tearing out great mouthfuls of it in an endeavour to get at the fledgelings. Tiger did not dare to use his gun; the situation frightened him; so he opened the door. Immediately the cat pounced at a young bird, but one of the old birds swooped down and gave the cat a tap on the head that sent it spinning away, to drop dead with a hole in its skull that Tiger could put two fingers in. The youngsters, with nobody to stop them, got right away, half flying and half hopping. “And since that day, zur,” Muggy said solemnly, “no raven has been known to touch a lamb. That’s as true as I’m sitting here.” The ravens have nested on the headland again this year, using their old breeding ledge; and I am glad that at least one pair of these rare birds haunts the solitudes by the sea. No one interferes with them, except the peregrines, but the raven is too much for that fierce swift raider, turning on his back in mid-air and holding his beak upwards like a javelin as the falcon is about to strike. A quick eye the raven needs, for the hawk plunges at about two hundred miles an hour. But they never harm one another, and I know for a fact, having seen it myself, that the ravens practise their turning movement. They love to float in an uprushing wind just below the cliff-edge, and roll over like a twirled distaff, sideways, and then back again. And I think that if any stranger tried to shoot one, the Nightcrow Inn would rise in anger against him. The ravens have earned their sanctuary. THE OUTLAW: _Being the indisputable (journalese) truth about the peregrine falcon that came to St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1920._ The beechwood was ten miles from London. One morning in late September a strange visitor came to it, and perched upon a low branch. A blackbird, feeding below among the dried moss and brown leaves, shrilled a sudden alarm. The blackbird had never seen such an apparition before, but he recognised the family. The newcomer remained still. He was tired and exhausted after a long journey. Since dawn he had flown high up, his pinions urged on and on by a fierce despair. For his mate had been shot upon Lundy Island, and he had flown straight into the sun’s face as though to find her spirit taken back into its flame that gave all the wild ones life. Swift had he flown, never pausing till he came to the beechwood; seeing it below, and wrapping his wings around him, he had fallen like a great iron arrowhead into its solitude. The pigeons who roosted were in the stubble: the starlings haunted the water-meadows: the jackdaws flocked with the rocks about the furrows. The beechwood was still, for the blackbird had slipped away. The stranger flapped his long thin wings, and looked around him.