Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/312

 cast from them augury of the future, did she watch in awe and ecstasy that miracle—perhaps of all the greatest miracle—of nature, the migration of the winged nations of the air.

She did not know what these flights meant, but she observed and pondered on them with intense curiosity and interest as the winged tribes changed their feeding grounds, and came, and went; the northern birds arriving as the songsters of the south fled.

A triangle of silvery grey would float slowly down the yellow light of closing day; it was the phalanx of the storks passing over the country without resting there; wisely distrusting the land beyond all others fatal to all birds. Less wise, though usually so cautious in his ways, there flew here in large bands the bright and gracious lapwing from the frozen canals of the Low Countries and the German forests covered deep in snow.

In a waving line, graceful against the sky as the sway of a reed against the water, a band of the glossy ibis would go by on their aërial voyage to Egypt or to India. The crows sailed over her head from Switzerland or Sweden, not pausing, or, if pausing at