nd, which he
always avoided as far as he could, he generally shoved himself along on
his breast, and often used his wings and his bill to help himself
forward. All his descendants are just like him, so you can see that the
widow's chances were pretty small, with the hunter bursting out of the
bushes, and a broad strip of beach between her and the friendly pond.

But she was a person of resource and energy, and in this great emergency
she literally rose to the occasion, and did something that she had
never done before in all her life, and probably will never do again. The
astonished hunter saw her lift herself until she stood nearly upright,
and then actually _run_ across the beach toward the water. She was
leaning forward a trifle, her long neck was stretched out, her two short
legs were trotting as fast as they could go, and her one good wing was
wildly waving in a frantic endeavor to get on. It was a sight that very
few people have ever seen, and it would have been comical if it hadn't
been a matter of life and death. The hunter was hard after her, and his
legs were a yard long, while hers were only a few inches, so it was not
surprising that he caught her just as she reached the margin. She
wriggled out of his grasp and dashed on through the shallow water, and
he followed close behind. In a moment he stooped and made another grab
at her, and this time he got his arms around her body and pinned her
wings down against her sides. But he had waded out a little too far, and
had reached the place where the bottom suddenly shelves off from fifteen
inches to seventy-two. His foot slipped, and in another moment he was
splashing wildly about in the water, and the loon was free.

A broken wing is not necessarily as serious a matter as you might
suppose. The cold water kept the inflammation down, and it seemed as if
all the vital forces of her strong, healthy body set to work at once to
repair the damage. If any comparative anatomist ever gets hold of the
widow and dissects her, he will find a curious swelling in the principal
bone of her left wing, like a plumber's join in a lead pipe, and he will
know what it means. It is the place where Nature soldered the broken
pieces together. And it was while Nature was engaged in this soldering
operation that Mahng arrived and began to cultivate the widow's
acquaintance.

"_In the spring a fuller crimson
comes upon the robin's breast,_"

and in the spr