ate an errand. Ordinarily I call myself a
simple bird-gazer, an amateur, a field naturalist, if you will; but on
occasions like the present I assume--with myself, that is--all the
rights and titles of an ornithologist proper, a man of science strictly
so called. In the interest of science, then, I climbed the fence and
picked my way across the field. True enough, about the edges of the
water were two or three solitary sandpipers, and at least half a dozen
of the smaller yellowlegs,--two additions to my Florida list,--not to
speak of a little blue heron and a green heron, the latter in most
uncommonly green plumage. It was well I had interpreted the placard a
little generously. "The letter killeth" is a pretty good text in
emergencies of this kind. So I said to myself. The herons, meanwhile,
had taken French leave, but the smaller birds were less suspicious; I
watched them at my leisure, and left them still feeding.

Two days later I was there again, but it must be acknowledged that this
time I tarried in the road till a man on horseback had disappeared round
the next turn. It would have been manlier, without doubt, to pay no
attention to him; but something told me that he was the cotton-planter
himself, and, for better or worse, prudence carried the day with me.
Finding nothing new, though the sandpipers and yellowlegs were still
present, with a very handsome little blue heron and plenty of
blackbirds, I took the road again and went further, and an hour or two
afterward, on getting back to the same place, was overtaken again by the
horseman. He pulled up his horse and bade me good-afternoon. Would I
lend him my opera-glass, which happened to be in my hand at the moment?
"I should like to see how my house looks from here," he said; and he
pointed across the field to a house on the hill some distance beyond.
"Ah," said I, glad to set myself right by a piece of frankness that
under the circumstances could hardly work to my disadvantage; "then it
is your land on which I have been trespassing." "How so?" he asked, with
a smile; and I explained that I had been across his cotton-field a
little while before. "That is no trespass," he answered (so the reader
will perceive that I had been quite correct in my understanding of the
law); and when I went on to explain my object in visiting his cane-swamp
(for such it was, he said, but an unexpected freshet had ruined the crop
when it was barely out of the ground), he assured me that I