APTER XV

Wherein Freckles and the Angel Try Taking a Picture, and Little Chicken
Furnishes the Subject

A week later everything at the Limberlost was precisely as it had been
before the tragedy, except the case in Freckles' room now rested on the
stump of the newly felled tree. Enough of the vines were left to cover
it prettily, and every vestige of the havoc of a few days before was
gone. New guards were patrolling the trail. Freckles was roughly laying
off the swamp in sections and searching for marked trees. In that time
he had found one deeply chipped and the chip cunningly replaced and
tacked in. It promised to be quite rare, so he was jubilant. He also
found so many subjects for the Bird Woman that her coming was of almost
daily occurrence, and the hours he spent with her and the Angel were
nothing less than golden.

The Limberlost was now arrayed as the Queen of Sheba in all her glory.
The first frosts of autumn had bejewelled her crown in flashing topaz,
ruby, and emerald. Around her feet trailed the purple of her garments,
while in her hand was her golden scepter. Everything was at full tide.
It seemed as if nothing could grow lovelier, and it was all standing
still a few weeks, waiting coming destruction.

The swamp was palpitant with life. Every pair of birds that had flocked
to it in the spring was now multiplied by from two to ten. The young
were tame from Freckles' tri-parenthood, and so plump and sleek that
they were quite as beautiful as their elders, even if in many cases
they lacked their brilliant plumage. It was the same story of increase
everywhere. There were chubby little ground-hogs scudding on the trail.
There were cunning baby coons and opossums peeping from hollow logs and
trees. Young muskrats followed their parents across the lagoons.

If you could come upon a family of foxes that had not yet disbanded, and
see the young playing with a wild duck's carcass that their mother had
brought, and note the pride and satisfaction in her eyes as she lay
at one side guarding them, it would be a picture not to be forgotten.
Freckles never tired of studying the devotion of a fox mother to her
babies. To him, whose early life had been so embittered by continual
proof of neglect and cruelty in human parents toward their children, the
love of these furred and feathered folk of the Limberlost was even more
of a miracle than to the Bird Woman and the Angel.

The Angel liked the baby rabbits and squirre