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 CHAPTER XXI

"NOT ALWAYS TO THE STRONG"

N the little black sentry-box where I pass the night there are two or three books belonging to its more permanent occupant. One of them is a British Bird book, and so last night when I got to bed I turned up the peregrine falcon. The author finds it the most infallible of all the hawk and eagle tribe; the one that least often misses its prey, and never attempts more than it is capable of performing. Never in his experience, I think he says, has he seen it strike in vain. I have not had his experience—I wish I had—but from the little I have seen and what I hear now from an eye-witness, I cannot help thinking that, in this respect, the peregrine does not differ greatly from others of his kind. It is there and thereabouts with him, I suspect, for under my very nose, down in Suffolk, he was foiled by a partridge in the most discreditable way, and here in the Shetlands he is quite capable of not succeeding with ordinary dovecote pigeons, as I will show, not upon my own evidence, unfortunately, for I wish I had seen it, but upon that of a lady, well known here, who saw it and told me of it herself. I got to Balta Sound last Sunday, and on the following Monday I called upon Mrs. Saxby at her pretty little white comfy cottage, who took me to look at a dovery which, since my last coming, she had had put up in 156