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and the sacred bird
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The Twins, as a rule, were wont to shun Mr. Carrington. They had a great respect for his at-
tainments, but a much greater for his humor. In Erebus, this respect often took the form of wrig-
gling in his presence. She did not know what he might say about her next. He was, therefore, somewhat surprised when they slipped off their bicycles and joined him. He wondered what they wanted.

Apparently, they were merely in a gregarious mood, yearning for the society of their fellow creatures; but in about three minutes the talk was running on pheasants. Mr. Carrington did not like pheasants, except from the point of view of eating; and he dwelt at length on the devastation the sacred bird was working in the English countryside: vil-
lages were being emptied and let fall to ruin that it might live undisturbed; the song-birds were being killed off to give it the woods to itself.

It seemed but a natural step from the pheasant to the poacher; he was not aware that he took it at the prompting of the Terror; and he bewailed the degeneracy of the British rustic, his slow reversion to the type of neolithic man, owing to the fact

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