, does it not, that when the
spring of 1920 had gone no further than to melt the ice in the northern
lakes, Gavia and her mate left the sea and took strong flight inland.

What made them go, I cannot explain. I do not understand it well enough.
I do not really know what urges the salmon to leave the Atlantic Ocean
in the spring and travel up the Penobscot or the St. John River. I never
felt quite sure why Peter Piper left Brazil for the shore where the
blue-bells nod. All I can tell you about it is that a feeling came over
the loons that is called a migration instinct; and, almost before Gavia
and her mate knew what was happening to them, they had flown far and far
from the Ocean, and were laughing weirdly over the cold waters of Immer
Lake.

The shore was dark with the deep green of fir trees, whose straight
trunks had blisters on them where drops of fragrant balsam lay hidden in
the bark. And here and there trees with white slender trunks leaned out
over the water, and the bark on these peeled up like pieces of thin and
pretty paper. Three wonderful vines trailed through the woodland, and
each in its season blossomed into pink and fragrant bells. But what
these were, and how they looked, is not a part of this story, for Gavia
never wandered among them. Her summer paths lay upon and under the water
of the lake, as her winter trails had been upon and under the water of
the sea.

Ah, if she loved the water so, why did she suddenly begin to stay out of
it? If she delighted so in swimming and diving and chasing wild
wing-races over the surface, why did she spend the day quietly in one
place?

Of course you have guessed it! Gavia was on her nest. She had hidden her
two babies among the bulrushes for safety, and must stay there herself
to keep them warm. They were not yet out of their eggshells, so the only
care they needed for many a long day and night was constant warmth
enough for growth. They lay near each other, the two big eggs, of a
color that some might call brown and some might call green, with
dark-brown spots splashed over them.

[Illustration: _Two babies, not yet out of their eggshells, hidden among
the rushes._]

The nest Gavia and her mate had prepared for them was a heap of old wet
reeds and other dead water-plants, which they had piled up among the
stems of the rushes until it reached six inches or more out of the
water. They were really in the centre of a nest island, with water all
about them. So,