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vagrant sheet of newspaper. She met the force with panic and wild wing-beats, and her beating wings took her up almost vertically across the face of the barn wall.
    Just under the roof of the barn, and protected by a little gable roof of its own, was the loft doorway. Projecting from the top of the doorway was a stout wooden rafter with a pulley wheel attached to its end. Unused now, this projecting pulley beam had formerly served for hauling sacks of corn from carts below for storage in the loft.
    As she beat frantically upwards Fria saw the overhang of the small gable roof and the long length of the pulley beam. From instinct rather than design she flew into the shelter of the little roof, raised her wings and settled with a desperate, scrambling movement of legs and talons on the beam. Once there she squared around slowly to face the force of the blustery wind.
    Down below Smiler and Bob stared up at her.
    Bob said, ‘How did she get free?’
    Angrily Smiler said, ‘Some stupid devil got in the barn last night and opened some of the cages.’
    Bob considered this, and then said, ‘That don’t surprise me. There’s one or two around here don’t altogether take to us. Circus folk, gypsies, didikys they know we are – and because they don’t understand our ways they take a delight in being awkward.’
    â€˜But what are we going to do about Fria, Mr Bob?’
    â€˜Go up and open that loft door and just leave her. Come food time, put some out for her in the loft. When she’s hungry enough she’ll go in and then we can put the ladder up from here and close the doors on her. No trouble then.’
    â€˜But say she flies off or gets blown off? She doesn’t know how to look after herself. She’ll just die.’
    â€˜Ay, she might, Sammy. But then again, she might not. Animals may not think like humans, but they’ve got their own kind of common-sense. She’ll settle for herself what she wants to do – and my guess is that she’ll come into the loft for food when she’s hungry.’
    But Fria did not come into the loft, though Smiler did everything he could to get her back. That first day he opened the loft doors and put food and water on the broad sill of the hatch opening. When Fria saw him at the opening she shuffled along the pulley beam well out of reach, took a firm grip on the weather-worn wood and sleeked down her feathers to ease the wind resistance against her. Time and again, as Smiler worked, he came back to see her, but she scarcely moved her position on the beam all day.
    That night the food and drink were left on the ledge and the loft doors open. A new and more secure hiding-place was found for the barn key. When Smiler made his night visit the food was untouched and the dark shape of Fria on her beam was silhouetted against the night sky.
    For two days Fria did not move from her beam except to shuffle back under the protection of the small pent roof when it rained hard. She sat and watched the strangeness of the new world before her, like a medieval carving. There was nothing wrong with her physically except that her body, her flight muscles and her talents were unused and untrained. Her eyes, which could take in the whole horizon without moving, except the little segment of the loft in her rear, were the wonder eyes of a falcon, nature’s great gift to her kind. Her wide-ranging eyes had eight times the power of man’s and a depth of focus that could show her the quick beat of a rook’s wing miles away, the fall of a late leaf half-a-mile up the far valley side, and the movement of a foraging, long-tailed field-mouse through the winter grasses down by the brook.
    Fria sat on her beam and watched this new world. She watched the movement of the cattle in the pasture, the quick flight of pigeons coming high over the valley woods, the movement of people and traffic now and then at the brook bridge, the rolling, changing