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The whole garden was clothed in its first green leaves; the loud buzz of summer insects was not yet heard; the leaves rustled gently, chaffinches twittered everywhere; two doves sat cooing on a tree; the note of a solitary cuckoo was heard first in one place, then in another; the friendly cawing of rooks was carried from the distance beyond the mill pond, sounding like the creaking of innumerable cart wheels.
How the memory of the place came back to her this chill March morning! the tall elms rocking in the wind, the rooks' nests tossing in the topmost branches, and the hoarse cawing of discontented birds bewailing the tardiness of spring. "It will be my darling's home in the days to come," she said to herself; but even this thought brought no consolation. She dared not face her son's future.
A rook had dropped out of the elm and was lying helpless at the foot of the tree it is a favourite tree with rooks; they build in it, and at that moment there were twenty or more perched aloft, cawing and conversing comfortably, without the least thought of their dying comrade. Not one of all the number descended to see what was the matter, nor even fluttered half-way down.
But cawing rooks, and kites that swim sublime In still repeated circles, screaming loud; The jay, the pie, and e'en the boding owl, That hails the rising moon, have charms for me. In a grove of tall oaks and beeches, that crowns a terrace-walk just on the skirts of the garden, is an ancient rookery, which is one of the most important provinces in the Squire's rural domains.
I remember how I used to interpret their cawing into mocking laughter because I had no wings to follow them into those shady fastnessess, which were filled by my hunter's fancy with all kinds of temptations to manly sport.
The windows glitter on the distant hill; Beyond the hedge the sheep-bells in the fold Stumble on sudden music and are still; The forlorn pinewoods droop above the wold. An endless quiet valley reaches out Past the blue hills into the evening sky; Over the stubble, cawing, goes a rout Of rooks from harvest, flagging as they fly.
The cawing and dawing rises to a pitch, and then declines; the wood is silent, and it is suddenly night. The whortleberry bushes are almost as thick as the heather in places on the steep, rocky hills that overlook the Exe. Deep in the hollow the Exe winds and bends, finding a crooked way among the ruddy rocks.
But at night the drawbridges rose and the portcullises descended each with its own peculiar creak, and jar, and scrape, setting the young rooks cawing in reply from every pinnacle and tree-top never later than the last moment when the warder could see anything larger than a cat on the brow of the road this side the village.
It might have been the same crow that in other days called to me, now cawing his welcome. It did seem but yesterday. How fast the weeds and briers had grown, defying the Professor's languid hoe! How suddenly had the timbers snapped which held the roof! And doubtless Nathan's home went down in a gust of wind.
The gurgling of its miniature falls, like the sound of water coming from the neck of a jug, the occasional cawing of a crow, and the snapping of twigs beneath his feet were the only interruptions to the silence. Here was a sudden hushed restfulness, as grateful as the draught of water he had drunk at the spring.
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