he mused,
watching the great bird curiously and with a certain sympathy. "We'll
see what happens when another flock comes by!"

Meanwhile the new arrivals, over in the unseen pond behind the rushes,
were feeding and bathing with a happy clamour. They little dreamed
that a pot-hunting rustic from the village on the hills, flat on his
belly in the oozy grass, was noiselessly worming his way toward them.
Armed with an old, single-barrel duck gun, the height of his ambition
was to get a safe and easy shot at the feeding birds. No delicate
wing-shooting for him. What he wanted was the most he could get for
his powder and lead. Big and clumsy though he was, his progress
through the grass was as stealthy as that of a mink.

[Illustration: "HE LIFTED UP HIS VOICE IN A SUDDEN ABRUPT 'HONK,
HONK!'"]

It chanced that the path of the pot-hunter took him close past the
further shore of the pond where the captive was straining at his
tether and eating his heart out in determined silence. The homesick,
desolate bird would swim around and around for a few minutes, as a
caged panther circles his bounds, then stop and listen longingly to
the happy noise from over beyond the reed-fringes. At last, goaded
into a moment of forgetfulness by the urge of his desire, he lifted up
his voice in a sudden abrupt _honk, honk_!

The pot-hunter stopped his crawling and peered delightedly through the
sedgy stems. Here was a prize ready to his hand. The flock was still
far off, and might easily take alarm before he could get within range.
But this stray bird, a beauty too, was so near that he could not miss.
Stealthily he brought his heavy weapon to the shoulder; and slowly,
carefully, he took aim.

The report of the big duck gun was like thunder, and roused the
marshes. In a fury the hunter sprang from his ambush across the mere,
and ran down to the water's edge, threatening vengeance on the lout
who would fire on a decoy. The brown retriever, wild with excitement,
dashed barking up and down the shore, not knowing just what he ought
to do. Sandpipers went whistling in every direction. And the foraging
flock, startled from their security, screamed wildly and flapped off
unhurt to remoter regions of the marsh. But the lonely captive, the
wise old gander who had piloted his clan through so many hundred
leagues of trackless air, lay limp and mangled on the stained water,
torn by the heavy charge of the duck gun. The whimsical fate that
seems to pla