Cool clean air he must breathe, or die; with
that, the partial confinement to which he was subjected was not
unendurable; besides, the welcome rain would then visit him sometimes,
alighting from the slant wing of the flying blast; while the sun
would pour in his rays full and mighty and generous, unsifted by
the presumptuous glass--green and gray and crowded with distorting
lines; and the sharp flap of pigeon's wing would be mimic thunder
to the flash which leapt from its whiteness as it shot by.
He not only loved but understood all the creatures, divining by an
operation in which neither the sympathy nor the watchfulness was
the less perfect that both were but half conscious, the emotions
and desires informing their inarticulate language. Many of them
seemed to know him in return--either recognizing his person,
and from experience deducing safety, or reading his countenance
sufficiently to perceive that his interest prognosticated no
injury. The maternal bird would keep her seat in her nursery, and
give back his gaze; the rabbit peeping from his burrow would not
even draw in his head at his approach; the rooks about Scaurnose
never took to their wings until he was within a yard or two of
them: the laird, in his half acted utterance, indicated that they
took him for a scarecrow and therefore were not afraid of him.
Even Mrs Catanach's cur had never offered him a bite in return for
a caress. He could make a bird's nest, of any sort common in the
neighbourhood, so as deceive the most cunning of the nest harrying
youths of the parish.
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