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Updated: July 17, 2025
At the bottom of the ravine the dark, turbulent brook rushed gurgling between the sharp outlines of its snow-laden banks. It was cool. The male-bird sat roosting with his eyes closed, his head sunk deep into his shoulders. Outwardly he bore a look of great humility, of languishing expectation, and a droll look of guiltiness wholly unbecoming to his natural severity. At dusk he grew restless.
Then, calmly, unperceivingly, he died. He fell down from the steep and lay with his legs crooked and turned upward. This was during the night. The stars were brilliant. Birds were crying in the woods and over the river. Somewhere owls hooted. The male-bird lay at the bottom of the ravine for five days. His body was already decaying, and emitted a bitter, offensive odour.
Then at last, when the male came to her one night-time, she said: "No! Enough!" She spoke instinctively, for another time had come the time for the birth of her children. The male-bird, abashed, as though conscience-stricken at not having divined the bidding of his mate earlier, went away from her only to return at the end of a year.
The male-bird brought all his kill to his mate he ate little himself: only what she left him, usually the entrails, the flesh of the thoracic muscles, the skin and the head, although she usually pecked out the eyes as the most savoury portion. The sun was bright. There was a soft, gentle breeze.
Thus, in the subdivision of the poultry-run that we call England, the proportion of the others to the complete male-bird spirit, who, of course, is not infrequently a woman, is ninety-nine to one; and with every Island Pharisee, when he or she starts out in life, the interesting question ought to be, "Am I that one?"
But, because It knew that if all the male-bird spirits were complete, the proportion of male to female one to ten would be too great, and cause upheavals, It so arranged that only one in ten male-bird spirits should have all three kinds of courage; so that the other nine, having spiritual courage, but lacking either in moral or in physical, should fail in their extensions of the poultry-run.
The old couple sat together in their nest, trying to cover themselves and sleep. They froze and tossed about in discomfort. Their eyes gleamed with greenish-yellow lights. Thus passed the thirteen years of their life together. Then the male-bird died. His wing had been injured in youth, at the time he fought for his mate.
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