-coat, and his head ignominiously bagged in one
of the sleeves. In this fashion, his heart bursting with fear and
wrath, his broken wing one hot throb of anguish, he was carried under
the hunter's arm for what seemed to him a whole night long. Then he
was set free in a little open pen in a garden, beside a
green-shuttered, wide-eaved, white cottage on the uplands.

The hunter was so kind to his captive, so assiduous in his care, that
the wild bird presently grew almost indifferent to his approach, and
ceased to strike at him savagely with his free wing whenever he
entered the pen. The other wing, well cleaned and salved, and bound in
cunning splints, healed rapidly, and caused no pain save when its
owner strove to flap it,--which he did, with long, desolate, appealing
cries, whenever a wild-goose flock went honking musically across the
evening or morning sky.

At length, while the injured wing was still in bandage, the hunter
took the bird in spite of all protest, tucked the long neck and
troublesome head under his arm, and attached to one leg a little
leather wrapping and a long, strong cord. Then he opened the pen. The
big gander strode forth with more haste than quite comported with his
dignity. Straight down the slope he started, seeking the wide marshes
where he expected to find his flock. Then suddenly he came to the end
of his cord with a jerk, and fell forward on his breast and bill with
a _honk_ of surprise. He was not free, after all, and two or three
violent struggles convinced him of the fact. As soon as he realized
himself still a prisoner, his keen, dark eyes turned a look of
reproach upon his jailer, who was holding the other end of the cord
and watching him intently. Then he slackened on the tether, and fell
to cropping the short grass of the lawn as if being tied by the leg
was an ancient experience. It was a great thing, after all, to be out
of the pen.

"He'll do!" said the man to himself with satisfaction, as he fixed the
tether to a young apple-tree. When he had gone into the house the bird
stopped feeding, turned first one eye and then the other toward the
empty sky, stretched his long, black neck and clean white throat, and
sent out across the green spaces his appealing and lonely
cry,--_honka, honka, honka, ho-onka_!

Very early the following morning, before the stars had begun to pale
at the approach of dawn, the captive was once more wrapped up
securely and taken on a blind journey. When h