. Here lazy, big, black water
snakes, for which the creek was named, sunned on the bushes, wild ducks
and grebe chattered, cranes and herons fished, and muskrats plowed the
bank in queer, rolling furrows. It was always a place full of interest,
so Freckles loved to linger on the bridge, watching the marsh and water
people. He also transacted affairs of importance with the wild flowers
and sweet marsh-grass. He enjoyed splashing through the shallow pools on
either side of the bridge.

Then, too, where the creek entered the swamp was a place of unusual
beauty. The water spread in darksome, mossy, green pools. Water-plants
and lilies grew luxuriantly, throwing up large, rank, green leaves.
Nowhere else in the Limberlost could be found frog-music to equal
that of the mouth of the creek. The drumming and piping rolled in
never-ending orchestral effect, while the full chorus rang to its
accompaniment throughout the season.

Freckles slowly followed the path leading from the bridge to the line.
It was the one spot at which he might relax his vigilance. The boldest
timber thief the swamp ever had known would not have attempted to enter
it by the mouth of the creek, on account of the water and because there
was no protection from surrounding trees. He was bending the rank grass
with his cudgel, and thinking of the shade the denser swamp afforded,
when he suddenly dodged sidewise; the cudgel whistled sharply through
the air and Freckles sprang back.

From the clear sky above him, first level with his face, then skimming,
dipping, tilting, whirling until it struck, quill down, in the path
in front of him, came a glossy, iridescent, big black feather. As it
touched the ground, Freckles snatched it up with almost a continuous
movement facing the sky. There was not a tree of any size in a large
open space. There was no wind to carry it. From the clear sky it had
fallen, and Freckles, gazing eagerly into the arch of June blue with a
few lazy clouds floating high in the sea of ether, had neither mind nor
knowledge to dream of a bird hanging as if frozen there. He turned the
big quill questioningly, and again his awed eyes swept the sky.

"A feather dropped from Heaven!" he breathed reverently. "Are the holy
angels moulting? But no; if they were, it would be white. Maybe all the
angels are not for being white. What if the angels of God are white and
those of the devil are black? But a black one has no business up there.
Maybe some p