It was a ballad written in a curious, old-fashioned hand. It was about a little falcon which a lady had given to her lover; he killed her in a fit of passion, and he killed the little falcon, or "the little hawke," as the ballad sometimes called it, and then he killed himself. As I read it grew sadder and sadder, it seemed to moan to me like a living thing, and my eyes became blind with tears so that I could scarcely read it in the twilight. It was all about the little falcon, but I knew that the pity was meant for the cavalier. Perhaps the writer dared not express it openly, for was not the cavalier an assassin and a suicide?
This is the last verse, as well as I remember—
"With the little falcon prest
To his cold and lifeless breast,
They laid him to his rest.
And the ballade humbly prays
The tribute of your sighs
For the hawke's blinde little eyes,
—And the cavalier who lies
By the four cross ways."