and level--they sped through the air on
short, powerful, swift-beating wings at the rate of sixty or seventy
miles an hour. Their flight, indeed, and their terrific speed were not
unlike those of some strange missile. The pair who had dropped behind
paid no heed to their going; and in two minutes they had faded out
against the pale saffron morning sky.

These two were the only mallards in this whole wide expanse of grass
and water. Other kinds of ducks there were, in plenty, but the
mallards at this season kept to themselves. The little island which
they selected for their peculiar domain was so small that no other
mating couples intruded upon its privacy. It was only about ten feet
across; but it bore a favourable thicket of osier-willow, and all
around it the sedge and bulrush reared an impenetrable screen. Its
highest point was about two feet above average water level; and on
this highest point the mallard duck established her nest.

The nest was a mere shallow pile of dead leaves and twigs and dry
sedges, scraped carelessly together. But the inside was not careless.
It was a round smooth hollow, most softly lined with down from the
duck's own breast. When the first pale, greenish-tinted egg was laid
in the nest, there was only a little of this down; but the delicate
and warm lining accumulated as the pale green eggs increased in
number.

In the construction of the nest and the accumulation of the eggs no
interest whatever was displayed by the splendid drake. He never,
unless by chance, went near it. But as a lover the lordly fellow was
most gallant and ardent. While his mate was on the nest laying, he was
usually to be seen floating on the open mere beyond the reed-fringe,
pruning his plumage in the cold pink rays of the first of the
sunrise.

It was plumage well worth pruning, this of his, and fully justified
his pride in it. The shining, silken, iridescent dark green of the
head and neck; the snowy, sharply defined, narrow collar of white,
dividing the green of the neck from the brownish ash of the back and
the gorgeous chestnut of the breast; the delicate pure grey of the
belly finely pencilled with black lines; the rich, glossy purple of
the broad wing-bars shot with green reflections; the jaunty, recurved
black feathers of the tail; the smart, citron-yellow of the bill and
feet;--all these charms were ample excuse for his coxcombry and
continual posings. They were ample excuse, too, for the admiration
be