ng green shores of the little lake. Come to me once
more, my child-love, in the innocent beauty of your first ten years of
life. Let us live again, my angel, as we lived in our first paradise,
before sin and sorrow lifted their flaming swords and drove us out into
the world.

The month was March. The last wild fowl of the season were floating
on the waters of the lake which, in our Suffolk tongue, we called
Greenwater Broad.

Wind where it might, the grassy banks and the overhanging trees tinged
the lake with the soft green reflections from which it took its name.
In a creek at the south end, the boats were kept--my own pretty sailing
boat having a tiny natural harbor all to itself. In a creek at the north
end stood the great trap (called a "decoy"), used for snaring the
wild fowl which flocked every winter, by thousands and thousands, to
Greenwater Broad.

My little Mary and I went out together, hand in hand, to see the last
birds of the season lured into the decoy.

The outer part of the strange bird-trap rose from the waters of the lake
in a series of circular arches, formed of elastic branches bent to the
needed shape, and covered with folds of fine network, making the roof.
Little by little diminishing in size, the arches and their net-work
followed the secret windings of the creek inland to its end. Built back
round the arches, on their landward side, ran a wooden paling, high
enough to hide a man kneeling behind it from the view of the birds on
the lake. At certain intervals a hole was broken in the paling just
large enough to allow of the passage through it of a dog of the
terrier or the spaniel breed. And there began and ended the simple yet
sufficient mechanism of the decoy.

In those days I was thirteen, and Mary was ten years old. Walking on our
way to the lake we had Mary's father with us for guide and companion.
The good man served as bailiff on my father's estate. He was, besides, a
skilled master in the art of decoying ducks. The dog that helped him (we
used no tame ducks as decoys in Suffolk) was a little black terrier;
a skilled master also, in his way; a creature who possessed, in equal
proportions, the enviable advantages of perfect good-humor and perfect
common sense.

The dog followed the bailiff, and we followed the dog.

Arrived at the paling which surrounded the decoy, the dog sat down to
wait until he was wanted. The bailiff and the children crouched behind
the paling, and peeped thr