farms
sped past below the rushing voyagers,--then a black head-land, and
then a wide, shallow arm of the sea. For a few minutes the glimmer of
pale, crawling tides was everywhere beneath them,--then league on
league of gray-green, sedgy marsh, interlaced with little pools and
lanes of bright water, and crisscrossed with ranks of bulrush. The
leader of the flock now stretched his dark head downward, slowing the
beat of his wings, and the disciplined array started on a long decline
toward earth. From its great height the flock covered nearly a mile of
advance before coming within a hundred yards of the pale green levels;
and all through the gradual descent the confusion of marsh, and pool,
and winding creek, seemed to float up gently to meet the long-absent
wanderers. At length, just over a shallow, spacious, grassy mere, and
some thirty feet above its surface, the leader decided to alight. It
was an old and favoured feeding-ground, where the mud was full of
tender shoots and tiny creatures of the ooze. The wings of the flock,
as if on signal, turned out and upward, showing a flash of paler
colour as they checked the still considerable speed of the flight.

In that pause, just before the splash of alighting, from a thick cover
of sedge across the pool came two sharp spurts of flame, one after the
other, followed by two thunderous reports, so close together as to
seem almost like one. Turning straight over, the leader fell upon the
water with a heavy splash; and immediately after him dropped his
second in leadership, the strong young gander who flew next him on the
longer limb of the V. The flock, altogether demoralized, huddled
together for a few seconds with loud cries; then rose and flapped off
seaward. Before the hunter in the sedge could get fresh cartridges
into his gun, the diminished flock was out of range, making desperate
haste to safer feeding-grounds.

Of the two birds thus suddenly smitten by fate, the younger, shot
through the heart, lay motionless where he had dropped, a sprawl of
black and white, and ashen feathers tumbled by the little ripples of
the pool. But the older bird was merely winged. Recovering himself
almost instantly from the shock of the wound and the fall, he made one
pathetically futile effort to rise again, then started swimming down
the pond, trailing his shattered wing behind him and straining his
gaze toward the departing flock.

Immediately after the two shots, out from the shelter o