Passage of the Day.

"It must have been about half an hour later that I myself walked into the Greggs' farmyard. I had come to see how things were going, and I must admit I was expecting the worst. At the gate I stopped and stared. It was a queer sight.

In one corner, Mr. Gregg was smashing all three guns into tiny pieces with a huge hammer.

In another corner, Mrs. Gregg was placing beautiful flowers upon sixteen tiny mounds of soil which I learned later were the graves of the ducks that had been shot the day before.

And in the middle of the yard stood Philip and William, with a sack of their father's very best barley beside them. They were surrounded by birds -- ducks, doves, pigeons, sparrows, robins, larks, and many other kinds that I did not know, and the birds were eating the barley that the boys were scattering by the handful."

~From Roald Dahl's The Magic Finger