The air grew full of silence, the birds twittered sleepily, and from afar came, faint and clear, the musical song of the milkmaid calling the kine home to the milking.
Then Stutely arose from where he was lying.

"A plague of such ill luck!" quoth he.

"Here have we abided all day, and no bird worth the shooting, so to speak, hath come within reach of our bolt.

Had I gone forth on an innocent errand, I had met a dozen stout priests or a score of pursy money-lenders.

But it is ever thus: the dun deer are never so scarce as when one has a gray goose feather nipped betwixt the fingers.