e doctors, limber, long insects with bronze
bodies and filmy wings, went back and forth like small living shuttles.
Other buzzards passed and repassed, but the squire waited, forgetting
the cramps in his elderly limbs and the discomfort of the water in his
shoes.

At length he heard the bell. It came nearer and nearer, and the Belled
Buzzard swung overhead not sixty feet up, its black bulk a fair target
against the blue. He aimed and fired, both barrels bellowing at once and
a fog of thick powder smoke enveloping him. Through the smoke he saw the
bird careen and its bell jangled furiously; then the buzzard righted
itself and was gone, fleeing so fast that the sound of its bell was
hushed almost instantly. Two long wing feathers drifted slowly down;
torn disks of gunwadding and shredded green scraps of leaves descended
about the squire in a little shower.

He cast his empty gun from him so that it fell in the water and
disappeared; and he hurried out of the swamp as fast as his shaky legs
would take him, splashing himself with mire and water to his eyebrows.
Mucked with mud, breathing in great gulps, trembling, a suspicious
figure to any eye, he burst through the weed curtain and staggered into
the open, his caution all gone and a vast desperation fairly choking
him--but the gray road was empty and the field beyond the road was
empty; and, except for him, the whole world seemed empty and silent.

As he crossed the field Squire Gathers composed himself. With plucked
handfuls of grass he cleansed himself of much of the swamp mire that
coated him over; but the little white worm that gnawed at his nerves had
become a cold snake that was coiled about his heart, squeezing it
tighter and tighter!

* * * * *

[Illustration: "TWO LONG WING FEATHERS DRIFTED SLOWLY DOWN."--_Page 70._]

This episode of the attempt to kill the Belled Buzzard occurred in the
afternoon of the third day. In the forenoon of the fourth, the weather
being still hot, with cloudless skies and no air stirring, there was a
rattle of warped wheels in the squire's lane and a hail at his yard
fence. Coming out upon his gallery from the innermost darkened room of his
house, where he had been stretched upon a bed, the squire shaded his
eyes from the glare and saw the constable of his own magisterial
district sitting in a buggy at the gate waiting.

The old man went down the dirtpath slowly, almost reluctantly, with his
head tw