And they cawed and cawed , and boasted of all the clever things they had done ; how many lambs ' eyes they had picked out , and how many dead bullocks they had eaten , and how many young grouse they had swallowed whole , and how many grouse-eggs they had flown away with , stuck on the point of their bills , which is the hoodie-crow 's particularly clever feat , of which he is as proud as a gipsy is of doing the hokany-baro ; and what that is , I wo n't tell you . And at last they brought out the prettiest , neatest young lady-crow that ever was seen , and set her in the middle , and all began abusing and vilifying , and rating , and bullyragging at her , because she had stolen no grouse-eggs , and had actually dared to say that she would not steal any . So she was to be tried publicly by their laws -LRB- for the hoodies always try some offenders in their great yearly parliament -RRB- . And there she stood in the middle , in her black gown and gray hood , looking as meek and as neat as a Quakeress , and they all bawled at her at once - And it was in vain that she pleaded - That she did not like grouse-eggs ; That she could get her living very well without them ; That she was afraid to eat them , for fear of the gamekeepers ; That she had not the heart to eat them , because the grouse were such pretty , kind , jolly birds ; And a dozen reasons more . For all the other scaul-crows set upon her , and pecked her to death there and then , before Tom could come to help her ; and then flew away , very proud of what they had done . Now , was not this a scandalous transaction ? But they are true republicans , these hoodies , who do every one just what he likes , and make other people do so too ; so that , for any freedom of speech , thought , or action , which is allowed among them , they might as well be American citizens of the new school . But the fairies took the good crow , and gave her nine new sets of feathers running , and turned her at last into the most beautiful bird of paradise with a green velvet suit and a long tail , and sent her to eat fruit in the Spice Islands , where cloves and nutmegs grow . And Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid settled her account with the wicked hoodies . For , as they flew away , what should they find but a nasty dead dog ? -- on which they all set to work , peeking and gobbling and cawing and quarrelling to their hearts ' content . But the moment afterwards , they all threw up their bills into the air , and gave one screech ; and then turned head over heels backward , and fell down dead , one hundred and twenty-three of them at once . For why ? The fairy had told the gamekeeper in a dream , to fill the dead dog full of strychnine ; and so he did . And after a while the birds began to gather at Allfowlsness , in thousands and tens of thousands , blackening all the air ; swans and brant geese , harlequins and eiders , harolds and garganeys , smews and goosanders , divers and loons , grebes and dovekies , auks and razor-bills , gannets and petrels , skuas and terns , with gulls beyond all naming or numbering ; and they paddled and washed and splashed and combed and brushed themselves on the sand , till the shore was white with feathers ; and they quacked and clucked and gabbled and chattered and screamed and whooped as they talked over matters with their friends , and settled where they were to go and breed that summer , till you might have heard them ten miles off ; and lucky it was for them that there was no one to hear them but the old keeper , who lived all alone upon the Ness , in a turf hut thatched with heather and fringed round with great stones slung across the roof by bent-ropes , lest the winter gales should blow the hut right away . But he never minded the birds nor hurt them , because they were not in season ; indeed , he minded but two things in the whole world , and those were , his Bible and his grouse ; for he was as good an old Scotchman as ever knit stockings on a winter 's night : only , when all the birds were going , he toddled out , and took off his cap to them , and wished them a merry journey and a safe return ; and then gathered up all the feathers which they had left , and cleaned them to sell down south , and make feather - beds for stuffy people to lie on . Then the petrels asked this bird and that whether they would take Tom to Shiny Wall : but one set was going to Sutherland , and one to the Shetlands , and one to Norway , and one to Spitzbergen , and one to Iceland , and one to Greenland : but none would go to Shiny Wall . So the good-natured petrels said that they would show him part of the way themselves , but they were only going as far as Jan Mayen 's Land ; and after that he must shift for himself . And then all the birds rose up , and streamed away in long black lines , north , and north-east , and north-west , across the bright blue summer sky ; and their cry was like ten thousand packs of hounds , and ten thousand peals of bells . Only the puffins stayed behind , and killed the young rabbits , and laid their eggs in the rabbit-burrows ; which was rough practice , certainly ; but a man must see to his own family .
And , as Tom and the petrels went north-eastward , it began to blow right hard ; for the old gentleman in the gray great-coat , who looks after the big copper boiler , in the gulf of Mexico , had got behindhand with his work ; so Mother Carey had sent an electric message to him XXXXX more steam ; and now the steam was coming , as much in an hour as ought to have come in a week , puffing and roaring and swishing and swirling , till you could not see where the sky ended and the sea began .
So as because by for like of that while with