black decoys picketed before us
straining at their cords, gossiping, dozing for a moment, preening their
wings or rising up for a vigorous stretch, appeared by some curious
optical illusion four times their natural size; now they seemed to be
black dogs, again a group of sombre, misshapen gnomes.

While I watched, the cure slept soundly, his body shrouded in the
blankets like some carved Gothic saint of old. The silence was
intense--a silence that could be heard--broken only by the brisk
ticking of the cure's watch on the narrow shelf. Occasionally a
water-rat would patter over the sunken roof, become inquisitive, and
peer in at me through the slit within half a foot of my nose. Once in a
while I took down the fat opera-glass, focussing it upon the dim shapes
that resembled ducks, but that proved to be bits of floating seaweed or
a scurrying shadow as a cloud swept under the moon--all illusions, until
my second watch, when, with a rush, seven mallards tumbled among our
decoys. Instantly the cure awakened, sprang from his cot, and with sharp
work we killed four.

"Stay where you are," he said as he laid his gun back in its rack. "I'll
get into my hip-boots and get them before the water-rats steal what
we've earned. They are skilled enough to get a decoy now and then. The
marsh is alive with them at night."

Morning paled. The village lay half hidden behind the rifts of mist.
Then dawn and the rising sun, the water like molten gold, the black
decoys churning at their pickets sending up swirls of turquoise in the
gold.

Suddenly the cracked bell rang out from the distant village. At that
moment two long V-shaped strings of mallards came winging toward us from
the north. I saw the cure glance at them. Then he held out his hand to
me.

"You take them--I cannot," he said hurriedly. "I haven't a moment to
lose--it is the bell for mass. Here's the key. Lock up when you leave."

"Dine with me to-night," I insisted, one eye still on the incoming
ducks. "You have no _bonne_."

His hand was on the _gabion_ door. "And if the northeast wind holds," he
called back, "shall we shoot again to-night?"

"Yes, to-night!" I insisted.

"Then I'll come to dinner." And the door closed with a click.

Through the firing-slit I could see him leaping across the marsh toward
the gray church with the cracked bell, and as he disappeared by the
short cut I pulled the trigger of both barrels--and missed.

An hour later Suzette greeted me