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In the centre of the yard there was an ancient oak and a draw well whose water never failed. The eastern face was bare of ivy, except at the north corner, where stood the jackdaws' tower; but the rough grey stone was relieved by the tendrils and red blossoms of the hardy tropaeolum which despises the rich soil of the south and the softer air, and grows luxuriantly on our homely northern houses.
In spite of her determination she avoided the town main street, and struck off by the narrow turning which led through the old churchyard, with its grand lime-tree avenue and venerable church, whose crocketed spire was a landmark for all the southern part of the county. "Look, look!" cried Dexter. "See those jackdaws fly out? There's one sitting on that old stone face. See me fetch him down."
The chancel is still roofed, and here in these solemn ruins, watched over by the crows and the jackdaws, the few inhabitants still left assemble for mass. There is a rude wooden altar and a few pine benches; the ivy waves from the walls; the jackdaws caw querulously or derisively; the dead of the old race for centuries sleep underneath, and now in a chancel the remnant gather on a Sabbath.
He is as great a pest as ever he was, and as an example of how bad jackdaws can be, he related the following incident told him by a friend of his, a head keeper on an estate adjoining a shooting his master took one year on the northwest coast of England.
In these woods there are not many birds; I saw, however, some large flocks of the white cockatoo feeding in a corn-field, and a few most beautiful parrots; crows like our jackdaws were not uncommon, and another bird something like the magpie.
The jackdaws have taken up their abodes in the crevices and crannies of the upper half of the steeple. We left Grantham at nearly seven, and reached just before eight. The castle, situated on a high and precipitous rock, directly over the edge of which look the walls, was visible, as we drove from the station to our hotel.
This boy arrived the other day with another poultry claim, when the following dialogue occurred: "I see you have got down sixteen young ducklings on the list?" "Yaas, the jackdars fetched they." "How do you know the jackdaws took them?" "'Cos maister said so." "Do you shut up your fowls at night?" "Yaas, we shuts the daar, but the farxes gets in. It be all weared out.
May had been cheered enough to satisfy even Hector; George Rivers had made a very fair speech, and hurrahs had covered all deficiencies; Hector had shouted till he was as hoarse as the jackdaws; the opposite candidate had never come forward at all; Tomkins was hiding his diminished head; and the gentlemen had nothing to report but success, and were in the highest spirits.
They feasted for six days and the last day was better than the first, and the laugh they laughed when Witless, the Saxon fool, told how Split-the-Shield's story should have ended, shook the young jackdaws out of every chimney in the Castle and brought them down fluttering on the floors.
To the steeple the jackdaws have returned and fly round and round; now one holds his wings rigid and slides down at an angle of sixty degrees at a breakneck pace, as if about to dash himself in fragments on the garden beneath. Sometimes there come a few days which are like summer. There is an almost cloudless sky, a gentle warm breeze, and a bright sun filling the fields with a glow of light.
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