eat
it would be for the whole family--a nice, fat, juicy, wild duck.

The bird was being carried rapidly up-stream by the force of the
waters.

"No, sir!" said Wilf to something inside him that wanted to go back.
"We're going to get that bird if we have to swim half-way across
England!"

It was almost as if the bird had come back to life. It seemed to be
swimming away from him.

Painfully, inch by inch, he began to gain on it. At last, when his
strength was all but gone, he caught up with it, and clutched the
feathery prize. Then he swam with it to the shore.

Panting and happy, he lay down on the bank a moment to rest.

"The family won't have to go without dinner after all!" he laughed.

He grabbed the duck by the feet, flung it over his shoulder, and
trotted back to his clothes and the gun. It was fun to go home with
the bird that he had shot himself. But if there had been no bird, he
would have been whistling or singing just as happily.

On one of his birthdays he was out in the wide, lonely marshes five
miles from home. It was more fun for him to go hunting, barefoot, than
to have a party with a frosted cake and twinkling candles. So, as the
nicest kind of birthday present, he had been given the whole day, to
do just as he pleased.

To-day, as there was still on the ground the snow of early spring, he
wore shoes, but it was cold work plashing about in those slimy pools
and the slippery mud among the sedges.

The birds he was after especially were the black-and-white "oyster
catchers," which when it was low tide would always be found making a
great racket above the patches of mussels which formed their favorite
food.

They were handsome birds, with gay red bills, and a bunch of them made
a fine showing when the little hunter carried them home over his
shoulder.

This time he had shot several of the birds, and then the problem was
to get them and bring them in.

There they lay--away off yonder, on a little tuft of, the coarse green
meadow-grasses, but between the hunter and the game was a swirling
inlet of salt water, and he couldn't tell by looking at it how deep it
was.

So, gun over shoulder, he started cautiously to wade out toward that
birthday dinner he meant to bring home.

First it was calf-deep--then knee-deep--then nearly waist-deep.

The cold water made his teeth chatter, but he didn't care about that.
All he thought of was the precious gun. That was his chief treasure,
and his first