settle down here," he said. "There'll be more coming in soon.
Wait a minute--hold my gun." He disappeared in the fog, and came back
with an armful of hay, taken from the heart of a haystack of whose
existence he seemed, by some sixth or seventh sense, to be aware.
"There! That'll keep you off the real marsh. Now settle down, and don't
move, and listen with all your ears, and be ready. I'll go off a little
way."

I sank down on the hay, and watched him melt into the grayness. I was
alone in the dim marsh. There was no wind, no sound but the far-off
whistle and rush of a train. I lay there and thought of nothing. I let
myself be absorbed into the twilight. I did not even feel that I had a
soul. I was nothing but a point of consciousness in the midst of a gray
infinity.

Suddenly I was aware of a sound--a rapid pulsing of soft, high tone--too
soft for a whistle, too high for a song,--pervasive, elusive; it was
overhead, it was beside me, behind me, where? Ah--it was wings! The
winnowing of wings! I half rose, grasping my gun, with a sense of
responsibility to Jonathan. But my vision was caught in the grayness as
in a web. The sound grew clearer, then fainter, then it passed away. The
twilight gathered, and the fog partly dissolved. A fine rain began to
fall, and in the intense silence I could hear the faint pricking of the
drops on the stiff marsh stubble. I had thought the patter of rain on a
roof was the stillest sound I knew, but this was stiller. Again came the
winnowing of wings--again and again; and sometimes I was able to see the
dark shapes passing overhead and vanishing almost before they appeared.
Now and then I heard the muffled, flat sound of Jonathan's gun--he was
evidently living up to his opportunities better than I was.
Occasionally, in a spasm of activity, I shot too.

Until night closed in about us that sound of wings filled the air, and I
knelt, listening and watching. It is strange how one can be physically
alert while yet one's soul is withdrawn, quiet and receptive. Out of
this state, as out of a trance, I was roused by the sense of Jonathan's
dim bulk, seeming "larger than mortal," as he emerged from the night.

"Cold?" he said.

"I don't know--no, of course I'm not." I found it hard to lay hold on
clear ideas again.

"I heard you shoot. Get any?"

"I think I hurried them a little."

We started back. At least I suppose it was back, because after a while
we came to the road we had left. I w