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Updated: May 20, 2025
"Had the peewit short legs like the pigeon," he continued, "and did he but want what they call the crest on the back of his head, and could you see only the back of the bird, he might be thought a pigeon, since he shineth on the back like a peacock in all colors blue and green can make when mixed together.
Suddenly, in a tussock of marram, his nose and he stopped dead. Nothing moved. Then he bit, and a second buff-and-black-mottled soft body stretched slowly out into the open as death took it a second baby peewit.
Before him and around him spread the brown bosom of Kinder Scout; the cultivated land was left behind; here on all sides, as far as the eye could see, was the wild home of heather and plashing water, of grouse and peewit, of cloud and breeze. The little wheel, shaped from a block of firwood, was turning merrily under a jet of water carefully conducted to it from a neighbouring fall.
"Nay, it is my man Dick, calling like a peewit. That is his sign when trouble is afoot. Ah, here he comes." As he spoke a tall, gaunt man appeared, advancing towards them. His gait was a shambling trot that seemed slow, although, in truth, he was covering the ground with extraordinary swiftness.
Presently the clouds parted and the moon sent a brilliant spear shaft through the rent, making it almost like day. A startled peewit cried out, from his nest under the planking, that he had overslept, but was calmed into drowsiness by his wife's assuring tones; and a noisy beetle of some kind boomed and buzzed around, as if intoxicated by the very thought of daylight.
He could imagine it uttering the vibrant, plaintive cry of a peewit. And then it struck him with a great sense of pity that the night was cold. In the kitchen they were having tea. The rattle of the crockery sounded very distinctly. He could distinguish the sharp, staccato ring when a cup was laid in a saucer, and the nervous rattle when cup and saucer were passed from one hand to the other.
The sun shone with agreeable warmth. There were frequent whirrs of wings in the air as small flocks of game birds rose from the water and sedge near by. "This is not the wood nor is it Brockadale; but here one may breathe a little without having his eyes looking on all sides for an enemy," said Humphrey, with satisfaction. "It is the turn of the peewits to look out. Knowest thou the peewit?"
By and by I caught sight of three magpies, rising one by one at long intervals from the furze and flying laboriously towards a distant hill-top grove of pines. Then I heard the wailing cry of a peewit, and caught sight of the bird at a distance, and soon afterwards a sound of another character the harsh angry cry of a carrion crow, almost as deep as the raven's angry voice.
When he came to, he wondered what was near his eyes, curving and strong with life in the dark, and what voice it was speaking. Then he realised it was the grass, and the peewit was calling. The warmth was Clara's breathing heaving. He lifted his head, and looked into her eyes.
The peacock screamed, "With what measure thou judgest others, thou shalt thyself be judged." Sang the nightingale, "Contentment is the greatest happiness." The turtle-dove called, "It were better for some created things that they had never been created." The peewit chirped, "He that hath no mercy for others, shall find none for himself."
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