e be hungry himself, and the clamor from
his nest, where his little ones are crying, be too keen for his heart's
content.

What is there in going a-fishing, I wonder, that seems to change even
the leopard's spots, and that puts a new heart into the man who hies him
away to the brook when buds are swelling? There is Keeonekh the otter.
Before he turned fisherman he was probably fierce, cruel, bloodthirsty,
with a vile smell about him, like all the other weasels. Now he lives at
peace with all the world and is clean, gentle, playful as a kitten and
faithful as a dog when you make a pet of him. And there is Ismaques the
fishhawk. Before he turned fisherman he was probably hated, like every
other hawk, for his fierceness and his bandit ways. The shadow of his
wings was the signal for hiding to all the timid ones. Jay and crow
cried _Thief! thief!_ and kingbird sounded his war cry and rushed out to
battle. Now the little birds build their nests among the sticks of his
great house, and the shadow of his wings is a sure protection. For owl
and hawk and wild-cat have learned long since the wisdom of keeping well
away from Ismaques' dwelling.

Not only the birds, but men also, feel the change in Ismaques'
disposition. I hardly know a hunter who will not go out of his way for a
shot at a hawk; but they send a hearty good-luck after this winged
fisherman of the same fierce family, even though they see him rising
heavily out of the very pool where the big trout live, and where they
expect to cast their flies at sundown. Along the southern New England
shores his coming--regular as the calendar itself--is hailed with
delight by the fishermen. One state, at least, where he is most
abundant, protects him by law; and even our Puritan forefathers, who
seem to have neither made nor obeyed any game laws, looked upon him with
a kindly eye, and made him an exception to the general license for
killing. To their credit, be it known, they once "publikly reeprimanded"
one Master Eliphalet Bodman, a son of Belial evidently, for violently,
with powder and shot, doing away with one fishhawk, and wickedly
destroying the nest and eggs of another.

Whether this last were also done violently, with powder and shot, by
blowing the nest to pieces with an old gun, or in simple boy-fashion by
shinning up the tree, the quaint old town record does not tell. But all
this goes to show that our ancestors of the coast were kindly people at
heart; that they loo