But the piperlings could not fly,
having no feathers; and they crept under a crooked log. I rolled the log
over very gently and took one of the cowering creatures into my hand--a
tiny, palpitating scrap of life, covered with soft gray down, and
peeping shrilly, like a Liliputian chicken. And now the mother was
transformed. Her fear was changed into fury. She was a bully, a fighter,
an Amazon in feathers. She flew at me with loud cries, dashing herself
almost into my face. I was a tyrant, a robber, a kidnapper, and she
called heaven to witness that she would never give up her offspring
without a struggle. Then she changed her tactics and appealed to my
baser passions. She fell to the ground and fluttered around me as if her
wing were broken. "Look!" she seemed to say, "I am bigger than that poor
little baby. If you must eat something, eat me! My wing is lame. I can't
fly. You can easily catch me. Let that little bird go!" And so I
did; and the whole family disappeared in the bushes as if by magic. I
wondered whether the mother was saying to herself, after the manner of
her sex, that men are stupid things, after all, and no match for the
cleverness of a female who stoops to deception in a righteous cause.

Now, that trivial experience was what I call a piece of good luck--for
me, and, in the event, for the sandpiper. But it is doubtful whether it
would be quite so fresh and pleasant in the remembrance, if it had not
also fallen to my lot to take two uncommonly good salmon on that same
evening, in a dry season.

Never believe a fisherman when he tells you that he does not care about
the fish he catches. He may say that he angles only for the pleasure of
being out-of-doors, and that he is just as well contented when he takes
nothing as when he makes a good catch. He may think so, but it is not
true. He is not telling a deliberate falsehood. He is only assuming an
unconscious pose, and indulging in a delicate bit of self-flattery. Even
if it were true, it would not be at all to his credit.

Watch him on that lucky day when he comes home with a full basket of
trout on his shoulder, or a quartette of silver salmon covered with
green branches in the bottom of the canoe. His face is broader than it
was when he went out, and there is a sparkle of triumph in his eye.
"It is naught, it is naught," he says, in modest depreciation of his
triumph. But you shall see that he lingers fondly about the place
where the fish are displayed