It was a well-deserved retirement, Colonel Walker-Smythe thought to himself, and he had gotten out just at the right time -- the business just wasn't what it used to be. Paper in hand, coffee by his elbow, the day ahead of him -- it was exactly what he had wanted, and yet, exactly what he did not want: Colonel Walker-Smythe was bored. It was boredom, certainly, that led him to investigate the frantic cawing from outside the house (he did not consider himself, in the usual order of things, much of a bird watcher), and boredom that led him to put on shoes and coat and venture outside, where it seemed as if the corvids were almost talking to him. At least, he felt certain that the largest one, with its bright beady eye, was looking directly at him, and that it had croaked, "At last! Sallowpad!"