l boy. He smoked cubeb cigarettes with an almost
unprecedented precocity. He nearly learned to chew tobacco. He could
snap a sparrow off a telegraph-wire with a nigger-shooter almost
infallibly. He had the first air-gun in town and a shot-gun at fifteen.
He thought that he was manlier than Drury because he was wiser and
stronger. It never occurred to him that Drury might suffer more because
he was more finely built, that his nerves were harp-strings while
Crosson's were fence-wire.

So Crosson called Drury a milksop because he would not go hunting. He
called himself one of the sons of Nimrod.

For a time he gained prestige with Irene Straley, especially as he gave
her bright feathers now and then, an oriole's gilded mourning, or a
tanager's scarlet vesture.

One day Drury Boldin was at her porch when Ed came in from across the
river with a brace of duck.

"You can have these for your dinner to-morrow, Reny," he said, as he
laid the limp, silky bodies on the porch floor.

Their bills and feet were grotesque, but there was something about their
throats, stretched out in waning iridescence, that asked for regret.

"Oh, much obliged!" Irene cried. "That's awful nice of you, Eddie. Duck
cook awful good."

And then her enthusiasm ebbed, for she caught the look of Drury Boldin
as he bent down and stroked the glossy mantle of the birds, not with
zest for their flavor, nor envy of the skill that had fetched them from
the sky, but with sorrow for their ended careers, for the miracle gone
out of their wings, and the strange fact that they had once quawked and
chirruped in the high air and on hidden waters--and would never fly or
swim again. "I wonder if they had souls," he mumbled.

Eddie Crosson winked at Irene. There was no use getting mad at Drury.
Eddie only laughed:

"'Course not, you darn galoot!"

"How do you know?" Drury asked.

"Anybody knows that much," was Crosson's sufficient answer, and Drury
changed to another topic. He asked:

"Did it hurt 'em much to die?"

"'Course not," Eddie answered, promptly. "Not the way I got 'em. They
just stopped sailin' and dropped. I lost one, though. He was goin' like
sixty when I drew bead on him. Light wasn't any too good and I just
nipped one wing. You ought to seen him turning somersets, Reny. He lit
in a swampy spot, though, and I couldn't find him. I hunted for an hour
or more, but I couldn't find him and it was growin' dark, so I come
home."

Drury spoke up qui