he
couldn't have done as well as they. But it doesn't seem to be the custom
among the Great Northern Divers. Mahng was only following the usual
practice of his kind, and if his first wife had not been shot it is
likely that they would have separated before they had gone very far
south. And yet it does not follow that the marriage was not a
love-match. If you had seen them at their housekeeping I think you would
have pronounced him a very good husband and father. Perhaps the conjugal
happiness of the spring and early summer was all the better for a taste
of solitude during the rest of the year.

As I said, the time was near when the chick would strike out for
himself. He soon left his mother, and a little later she too started for
the Gulf of Mexico. Summer was over, and the Glimmerglass was lonelier
than ever.

Mahng came back next spring, and of course he brought a wife with him.
But was she the same wife who had helped him make the Glimmerglass ring
with his shouting twelve months before? Well, I--I don't quite know. She
looked very much like her, and I certainly hope she was the same bird. I
should like to believe that they had been reunited somewhere down in
Texas or Mississippi or Louisiana, and that they had come back together
for another season of parental cares and joys. But when I consider the
difficulties in the way I cannot help feeling doubtful about it. The two
birds had gone south at different times and perhaps by different routes.
Before they reached the lower Mississippi Valley they may have been
hundreds of miles apart. Was it to be reasonably expected that Mahng,
when he was ready to return, would search every pond and stream from
the Cumberland to the Gulf? And is it likely that, even if he had tried
for weeks and weeks, he could ever have found his wife of the previous
summer? His flight was swift and his sight keen, and his clarion voice
rang far and wide over the marshes; but it is no joke to find one
particular bird in a region covering half a dozen States. If they had
arranged to come north separately, and meet at the Glimmerglass, there
would not have been so many difficulties in the way, but they didn't do
that. Anyhow, Mahng brought a wife home. That much, at least, is
established. They set to work at once to build a nest and make ready for
some new babies; but, alas! there was little parental happiness or
responsibility in store for them that year.

If you had been there you might have see