“Well, why don’t you try?” said Fred; for he had lost much of the nervous feeling which used to affect him when anything of this kind was in progress.
“He can’t get it,” said Philip. “He couldn’t get the sparrow’s nest.”
But Harry stripped off his jacket, and, by means of a lift from Fred, got upon one of the great horizontal boughs, and soon contrived to reach the one to which the kite tail was fluttering. But Harry was at the thick end, by the tree trunk, and the tail was twenty feet further off, at the thin end; and, as those who have tested the wood in their lead pencils well know, cedar is very brittle. Now, Harry was no coward, but he knew that he would be laughed at if he did not succeed, so, in spite of the danger, he prepared to creep along the branch, a very awkward thing to do from the numbers of small projecting twigs, and the prickly nature of the spiny leaves. Still he persevered, and crept along a foot at a time, and nearer and nearer to the kite tail, till at last the branch began to bend terribly, bringing his feet almost in contact with the bough below him. Still he went on, and stretching forth his hand snapped off the twig which held the kite tail, and threw it down.
“Snip—snap—crish—crash—hurry—rustle—bump—bump—Bump!” went a noise; and, in less time than it takes to tell it, down came Harry, fully twenty feet, on to the grass at his brother’s and cousin’s feet, where he remained, looking very white, frightened, and confused; when all at once he got up, and making a wry face, said—
“There, I told you I could get it.”
Poor Harry! He was much quicker in his descent than ascent, for the branch upon which he sat had snapped in two and let him down from bough to bough of the thickly-limbed tree till he bumped on the last, which was not above five feet from the ground, and at its extremities almost touched. It was a most fortunate thing that he was not injured seriously; but a few bruises and scratches were the full extent of the damages done to his skin, though his trousers and shirt told a very different tale.
“There,” said Harry again, rubbing the green off his trousers, “I told you I could get the tail, didn’t I?”
His companions both acquiesced in the ability, but did not seem to admire the plan of execution any more than Harry, who walked with a kind of limp, and contented himself with holding the kite up when the repairs were completed, and letting Philip run with the string, which he did so successfully that the kite shot up into the air and seemed to be most evenly balanced, for it rose and rose as the string was slowly let out, till it attained a great height, and then seemed to be quite stationary in that soft and gentle breeze; but all the while pulling hardly at the string as though alive, and desirous to fly away and escape to some far-off region—though its destination would most probably have been the first tree, or, escaping that, the ground some quarter of a mile further on.
The boys sat down in the long grass, and took it in turns to hold the stick, amusing themselves by sending disks of paper up to the kite as messengers,—watching the paper circles as they skimmed lightly along the string. But they were very untrustworthy messengers as a rule, for some of them stopped half, quarter, or three-quarters of the distance up the string, sometimes for a long time, until an extra puff of wind started them again, and, what was worst of all, they none of them brought back any person.
They were sitting down, dreamily watching the kite and the great white silvery clouds floating across the blue sky, looking like mountains in some far-off land; some with snowy peaks, some with deep valleys; but all with a background of that deep clear blue so little noticed by us because so frequently to be seen. All at once came from the field on the right, rising and falling, now apparently close at hand, then as though far-off, a peculiar cry—