a moment another thread gave way, and then another, and another. A
second more and he was free. Quick, now, before the last spark goes out!
With beating wings and churning paddles he fairly flew up through the
green water toward the light, and on a sudden he shot out into the air,
panting and gasping, and staring wildly around at the blue sky, and the
quiet woods, and the smiling Glimmerglass. And how royally beautiful
was the sunshine, and how sweet was the breath of life!

But his mate was not with him, and a few hours later the fisherman found
in his net the lifeless body of a drowned loon.

Mahng went north. He had thought that his spring flight was over and
that he would go no farther, but now the Glimmerglass was no longer
home, and he spread his wings once more and took his way toward the
Arctic Circle. Over the hills, crowded with maple and beech and birch;
over the Great Tahquamenon Swamp, with its cranberry marshes, its
tangles of spruce and cedar, and its thin, scattered ranks of tamarack;
over the sandy ridges where the pine-trees stand tall and stately, and
out on Lake Superior. The water was blue, and the sunshine was bright;
the wind was fresh and cool, and the billows rolled and tumbled as if
they were alive and were having a good time together. Together--that's
the word. They were together, but Mahng was alone; and he wasn't having
a good time at all. He wanted a home, and a nest, and some young ones,
but he didn't find them that year, though he went clear to Hudson Bay,
and looked everywhere for a mate. There were loons, plenty of them, but
they had already paired and set up housekeeping, and he found no one who
was in a position to halve his sorrows and double his joys.

Something attracted his attention one afternoon when he was swimming on
a little lake far up in the Canadian wilderness--a small red object that
kept appearing and disappearing in a very mysterious fashion among the
bushes that lined the beach. Mahng's bump of curiosity was large and
well developed, and he gave one of his best laughs and paddled slowly in
toward the shore. I think he had a faint and utterly unreasonable hope
that it might prove to be what he was looking and longing for, though he
knew very well that no female loon of his species ever had red
feathers--nor a male, either, for that matter. It was a most absurd
idea, and his dreams, if he really had them, were cut short by the
report of a shotgun. A little cloud of smok