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Lord Pabham never advertised the loss of his hyaena; when a strictly fruit-eating animal strayed from his park a year or two previously he was called upon to give compensation in eleven cases of sheep-worrying and practically to re-stock his neighbours' poultry-yards, and an escaped hyaena would have mounted up to something on the scale of a Government grant.
Deep down in the valleys and in the villages perched perilously on projecting ledges of the mountain, faint twinkling lights began to appear, and the lowing of the cattle and the answering and re-echoed crowing of rival poultry-yards sent the thoughts back to Homeland scenes some 10,000 miles away.
His kitchens, his smoke-houses, his stables, his stewards, his tobacco-sheds, his fields of wheat and corn, his hundred cows, his vast poultry-yards, his barges, all indicated great wealth, and that generous hospitality which is now a tradition.
Now and then they halted for a few hours if they came to any village or small town where it seemed likely that they could do a little business, either in selling their crockery or cheap cutlery, baskets, and suchlike, or perhaps in fortune-telling, and no doubt wherever they stopped the farm-yards and poultry-yards in the neighbourhood were none the better for it.
Behind the mansion, overlooking poultry-yards and stables which were well hidden from view, rose a high colombiere, or pigeon-house, of stone, the possession of which was one of the rights which feudal law reserved to the lord of the manor.
The stone walls bordering the farms were hung with wild frost-grapes, while the nut-trees offered their abundance to whomsoever would accept. Beneath these same trees there was game to be ensnared even by one who carried no gun, and as for poultry-yards, nearly every householder had one.
The poultry-yards, rabbit-warrens, and the haunts of game, tell of his skilful depredations; but he is not at all difficult in his appetite. To be sure, when he can get ripe grapes, he has a feast. If young turkeys and hares are not to be had, he puts up with a young fawn, a wild duck, or even weasels, mice, frogs, or insects.
"Ah, me!" said the captain, rising and folding his arms as he leaned his broad back against a pillar of the summer-house, "these great volcanoes of wealth, always in eruption, always squirting out town houses, country houses, butlers, chefs, under-chefs, diamonds, lady's-maids, horses, carriages, seaside gardens, thousand-acre poultry-yards, private sidewalks, and clouds of money which obscure the sun, daze my eyes and amaze my soul!
The climate was superior to that of California, and, with abundant water, trees and plants and gardens flourished and bloomed in a way wonderful to behold. It was with ever-increasing pleasure that Madeline walked through acres of ground once bare, now green and bright and fragrant. There were poultry-yards and pig-pens and marshy quarters for ducks and geese.
Since the meeting with the gipsies, which I have related in a former paper, I have observed several of them haunting the purlieus of the Hall, in spite of a positive interdiction of the squire. They are part of a gang that has long kept about this neighbourhood, to the great annoyance of the farmers, whose poultry-yards often suffer from their nocturnal invasions.
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