Two days before it had harboured in its native forest by the Baltic, awaiting the fall of night to begin its journey to the unfrozen West. When the moon showed above the ghostly steppe, the bird had risen over the snow-laden pine-tops and, mounting to a great height in company with a score others, set out for the hospitable land beyond the seas. The wind was favourable; bight, lagoon, and island marked the way, till the glimmer given out by a lighthouse—a glimmer that grew brighter and brighter—told that their mid-journey resting-place had been reached. They hid till night; then they rose again and resumed their flight beneath the starry vault. No sound of earth reached the high region where they moved; their own faint wing-beats alone broke the silence through which hour after hour the wedge-shaped line pressed on till the vast silvery ocean that had lain outspread beneath them gave place to a sombre plain relieved only by the glow-worm light emitted by town and city far below. Soon as remembered haunts were reached the little flock began to break up: now one, now two, and after a long interval, four birds forsook the line; others followed, so that when a second ocean showed on either side the narrowing land, only three remained. But the little remnant still sped on, nearer and nearer to their destination at the end of the promontory. Two dropped into Golden Valley, and the remaining woodcock reached Carn Brea alone. Little wonder, then, that he was very tired; yet so soon did he recover from his fatigue that when dusk fell he rose without an effort, and, skimming the slope, passed over Brea Farm and the now empty turnip-field to the boggy feeding-ground beyond. Daybreak found hare and woodcock back in their places on the hill; and for three days they kept company there, or rather till the afternoon of the third day, when the wind veered back to the old quarter, beating with such violence on the face of Carn Brea that the hare could not endure it, and stole to sheltered quarters on the southern flank of the hill. There, with his back to a furze-bush, he sat watching the withered grasses of the foothills swept by the hurricane and the low wrack driven past close overhead. The wind fell at sundown, but rose again later and blew with such vehemence that the hare, who was foraging at Boscawen-Un, could scarcely make headway against it. Once he was actually brought to a standstill, and when crossing Brahan Moor on his way back it was all he could do to keep his feet. By the time he got to the form he was so wearied out by the incessant buffeting that whilst listening to the shriek and sob of the wind he fell asleep, and—a thing he rarely did—dreamt.