The next morning broke fresh and fine, and the Poet threw open his window long before any one in the house was stirring. His mind was filled with comfortable thoughts of home after the discomforts of foreign travel; how delicious was a garden in August—one’s own garden, with one’s own birds and flowers and trees!
Ah, hapless Poet! Do not look at your beloved rowans; there is a sight there that will not please you!
Three blackbirds, a missel-thrush, and half-a-dozen starlings, were hard at work snipping off the berries, and gaps in the golden bunches already told the tale of what was to happen; the ground below was strewn with the relics of the feast, which these careless epicures were leaving to rot unheeded. The Poet’s face grew dark.
“Confound it all,” he broke out, with quite unusual vehemence, “they can’t have everything!” And he looked about the room—the truth must out—for something to throw at his darlings. But if he threw his boots or his soap, he might have to go and pick them up again, with Joseph Bates looking on sardonically; and then another thought, a wicked thought, came into his head and prevailed over him. He crepe softly downstairs, found the air-gun and the box of little bullets lying on the hall table, and carried them guiltily upstairs. The gun was loaded the indignant Poet leant out of the window and took a trembling aim at one black robber. His finger was on the trigger, and in another moment he might have been a conscience-stricken man for life, when a bright metallic sound suddenly broke upon his ear and held his hand.
Tac-tac-tac! Tac! Ta-tac!
What was it that seemed so familiar to his Yorkshire ears, bringing up mental visions of long rambles over bracing moors? Softly as a cat the Poet stole downstairs again, replaced the gun on the table, and returned swiftly with a field-glass, which now showed him, as he expected, the grey-black plumage and white crescent of a Ring-ousel. Little did that wandering stranger, so happy in the discovery, here in the far south, of its beloved northern berries, imagine that its voice had saved the Poet’s hands from bloodshed, and his mind from a lifelong remorse!
He knelt long at the window, watching the berries disappear without demur, dreaming of rushing streams and purple heather, and welcoming in his heart the stranger to the feast. Then rousing himself he fetched his wife to share his pleasure, and told her of his boyhood among the moors, and of the Ring-ousel’s nest found in the gorsebush as he was fishing in the tumbling beck. And then he told her of the air-gun—and she told him of the conspiracy.
From that moment peace returned to the garden and to the Poet’s mind. All day long they heard and saw the Ring-ousel, who could not find it in his heart to leave the berries, and delayed his journey southward for a whole day to enjoy them. Joseph Bates looked at him with indifference when the Poet pointed him out. “The thieves are welcome to anything they can get there,” he said, pointing to the tree: “that fruit’s no mortal use to no one. But they’ve had a lot more than their share this year of what’s good for us poor men and women,” he added; “and if I may make so bold, Sir, I would throw it out as that kind of thing should not happen next year.”
The Parson came up the garden walk and joined the group: the news of the Ring-ousel had reached him.
“There he is,” said the Poet “and there they all are, taking my berries as they’ve taken my fruit. And as far as I’m concerned they may have it every bit; but for my wife’s sake I must consent to a compromise, if there is one.”