ckly: "You didn't kill him?"

"I don't guess so. He was workin' mighty hard when he flopped."

"Oh, that's terrible!" Drury groaned. "He must be layin' out there now
somewheres--sufferin'. Oh, that's terrible!"

"Aw, what's it your business?" was Crosson's gruff comment. But there
was uneasiness in his tone, for Drury had set Irene to wringing her
hands nervously, and Crosson felt a trifle uncomfortable himself.
Twilight always made him susceptible to emotions that daylight blinded
him to, as to the stars. He remembered that boyhood emotion now in his
pulpit, and his shoulder-blades twitched; an icy finger seemed to have
written something on them. He was casting up his eyes and his hands in a
familiar gesture and quoting a familiar text:

"'Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler and from the
noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his
wings shalt thou trust.'"

From the roof of the church he seemed to see that wounded wild duck
falling, turning in air, striking at the air frantically with his good
wing and feebly with the one that bled. Down he fell, struggling
somewhere among the pews.

A fantastic notion drifted into the preacher's mind--that Satan had shot
up a bullet from hell and it had lodged among the feathers of Jehovah
the protector, and He was falling and lost among that congregation in
which so often the preacher had failed to find God.

Doctor Crosson shook his head violently to fling away such madnesses,
and he propounded his next "furthermore" with added energy. But he could
not shake off the torment in the recollection of Drury Boldin's nagging
interest in that wild duck.

II

Drury insisted on knowing where the wild duck fell, and Crosson told him
that it was "near where the crick emptied into the sluice, where the
cat-tails grew extra high."

He went on home to his supper, but the thought of the suffering bird had
seized his mind; it flopped and twisted at the roots of his thoughts.

A few days later Drury met him and asked him again where the duck had
fallen.

"I can't find it where you said," he said.

"You ain't been lookin' for it, have you?"

"Yes, for days."

"What'd you do if you found it?" Crosson asked.

"Kill it," Drury answered. It was a most unexpectable phrase from him.

"That sounds funny, comin' from you," Crosson snickered. Then he spoke
gruffly to conceal his own misgivings. "Aw, it's dead long ago."

"I'd feel bet