“as if let down from the heaven there
By viewless silken thread,”
it hangs suspended in the air over a given spot, until it either
sees a mouse below it, upon which it then drops with lightning speed, or else decides that there is nothing there, when it moves on a little further and hovers again, thus beating a field or moor thoroughly over before it leaves it. And while it is thus engaged the gamekeeper steals upon it and shoots it, and, taking it home, the mutton-headed ignoramus that he is, nails it up on his “tree,” in the company of that other good friend of man, the owl.