th end of the swamp, yelling "We got
it!" like young Comanches, and never gave a thought to what they might
do until a big blue-gray bird, with long neck and trailing legs, arose
on flapping wings and sailed over the Limberlost.

The Angel became white to the lips and gripped Freckles with both hands.
He gulped with mortification and turned his back.

To frighten her subject away carelessly! It was the head crime in the
Bird Woman's category. She extended her hands as she arose, baked,
blistered, and dripping, and exclaimed: "Bless you, my children! Bless
you!" And it truly sounded as if she meant it.

"Why, why----" stammered the bewildered Angel.

Freckles hurried into the breach.

"You must be for blaming it every bit on me. I was thinking we got
Little Chicken's picture real good. I was so drunk with the joy of it I
lost all me senses and, 'Let's run tell the Bird Woman,' says I. Like a
fool I was for running, and I sort of dragged the Angel along."

"Oh Freckles!" expostulated the Angel. "Are you loony? Of course, it
was all my fault! I've been with her hundreds of times. I knew perfectly
well that I wasn't to let anything--NOT ANYTHING--scare her bird away!
I was so crazy I forgot. The blame is all mine, and she'll never forgive
me."

"She will, too!" cried Freckles. "Wasn't you for telling me that very
first day that when people scared her birds away she just killed them!
It's all me foolishness, and I'll never forgive meself!"

The Bird Woman plunged into the swale at the mouth of Sleepy Snake
Creek, and came wading toward them, with a couple of cameras and
dripping tripods.

"If you will permit me a word, my infants," she said, "I will explain to
you that I have had three shots at that fellow."

The Angel heaved a deep sigh of relief, and Freckles' face cleared a
little.

"Two of them," continued the Bird Woman, "in the rushes--one facing,
crest lowered; one light on back, crest flared; and the last on wing,
when you came up. I simply had been praying for something to make him
arise from that side, so that he would fly toward the camera, for he had
waded around until in my position I couldn't do it myself. See? Behold
in yourselves the answer to the prayers of the long-suffering!"

Freckles took a step toward her.

"Are you really meaning that?" he asked wonderingly. "Only think,
Angel, we did the right thing! She won't lose her picture through the
carelessness of us, when she's waited and soake