brood seem to laugh as
another low cluck brings them scurrying back from their hiding places.

Once, perhaps, comes a real fright, when all their summer's practice
is put to the test. An unusual noise is heard; and round the bend
glides a bark canoe with sound of human voices. Away go the brood
together, the river behind them foaming like the wake of a tiny
steamer as the swift-moving feet lift them almost out of water.
Visions of ocean, the guns, falling birds, and the hard winter
distract the poor mother. She flutters wildly about the brood, now
leading, now bravely facing the monster; now pushing along some weak
little loiterer, now floundering near the canoe as if wounded, to
attract attention from the young. But they double the point at last,
and hide away under the alders. The canoe glides by and makes no
effort to find them. Silence is again over the forest. The little
brood come back to the shallows, with mother bird fluttering round
them to count again and again lest any be missing. The kingfisher
comes out of his hole in the bank. The river flows on as before, and
peace returns; and over all is the mystic charm of the wilderness and
the quiet of a summer day.

This is the way it all looks and seems to me, sitting over under the
big hemlock, out of sight, and watching the birds through my
field-glass.

Day after day I have attended such little schools unseen and
unsuspected by the mother bird. Sometimes it was the a-b-c class, wee
little downy fellows, learning to hide on a lily pad, and never
getting a reward of merit in the shape of a young trout till they hid
so well that the teacher (somewhat over-critical, I thought) was
satisfied. Sometimes it was the baccalaureates that displayed their
talents to the unbidden visitor, flashing out of sight, cutting
through the water like a ray of light, striking a young trout on the
bottom with the rapidity and certainty almost of the teacher. It was
marvelous, the diving and swimming; and mother bird looked on and
quacked her approval of the young graduates.--That is another
peculiarity: the birds are dumb in winter; they find their voice only
for the young.

While all this careful training is going on at home, the drake is off
on the lakes somewhere with his boon companions, having a good time,
and utterly neglectful of parental responsibility. Sometimes I have
found clubs of five or six, gay fellows all, living by themselves at
one end of a big lake where the fi