his footsteps down the browned hillside to the soggy bottom of a
slough.

A covey of teals--very young, or they would not be so bold--flackers up,
wings about with a clatter, then settles again a space farther ahead
when the ducks see that the intruder remains so still. The man parts the
flags, sits down on a log motionless as the log itself--and watches!
Something else had taken alarm from the crunch of the hunter's moccasins
through the dry reeds; for a wriggling trail is there, showing where a
creature has dived below and is running among the wet under-tangle. Not
far off on another log deep in the shade of the highest flags solemnly
perches a small prairie-owl. It is almost the russet shade of the dead
log. It hunches up and blinks stupidly at all this noise in the swamp.

"Oho," thinks the trapper, "so I've disturbed a still hunt," and he sits
if anything stiller than ever, only stooping to lay his gun down and
pick up a stone.

At first there is nothing but the quacking of the ducks at the far end
of the swamp. A lapping of the water against the brittle flags and a
water-snake has splashed away to some dark haunt. The whisky-jack calls
out officious note from a topmost bough, as much as to say: "It's all
right! Me--me!--I'm always there!--I've investigated!--it's all
right!--he's quite harmless!" And away goes the jay on business of state
among the gopher mounds.

Then the interrupted activity of the swamp is resumed, scolding mother
ducks reading the riot act to young teals, old geese coming craning and
craning their long necks to drink at the water's edge, lizards and
water-snakes splashing down the banks, midgets and gnats sunning
themselves in clouds during the warmth of the short autumn days, with a
feel in the air as of crisp ripeness, drying fruit, the harvest-home of
the year. In all the prairie region north and west of Minnesota--the
Indian land of "sky-coloured water"--the sloughs lie on the prairie
under a crystal sky that turns pools to silver. On this almost
motionless surface are mirrored as if by an etcher's needle the sky
above, feathered wind clouds, flag stems, surrounding cliffs, even the
flight of birds on wing. As the mountains stand for majesty, the
prairies for infinity, so the marsh lands are types of repose.

But it is not a lifeless repose. Barely has the trapper settled himself
when a little sharp black nose pokes up through the water at the fore
end of the wriggling trail. A round