rrangements. At last all
was ready, the guns, ammunition, &c., were placed in the boat, and La
Salle had gone to hide the sledge behind a neighboring hummock, when,
turning his head, he saw Davies and Creamer running hastily to their
box, and Kennedy frantically gesticulating and calling on him to do the
same.

With the best speed he could make on such slippery footing, La Salle
crossed the intervening space, and threw himself down into the boat,
panting and breathless with exertion. After a moment's breathing space,
he slowly raised his head so that his eyes could just see over the edge
of the shooting-boat. To the east he heard the decoy-calls of Creamer
and Davies, and, somewhere between himself and them, the low,
questioning calls of the wished-for geese.

"They are near us somewhere, Kennedy," he whispered, "and, I guess,
coming in to our decoys. Don't fire until I tell you. Here they come.
No, they sheer off. Yes, there's one scaling down; there's another.
They're all coming. We've got them now."

The goose is far from being the silly fowl which popular belief supposes
him to be, even when tamed and subdued, and, in a state of nature, is
one of the most wary of birds. The flock in question, flying in from the
narrow, open channels of the Gulf, had seen the decoys, and heard the
calls of Ben and Creamer, who had not yet completed their preparations.
Swooping around the box at a safe distance, the wary leader decided that
all was not right there, and swung over the leading decoys of La Salle,
and doubtless wondering at the apathy of the strange geese which refused
to answer his calls, gave a signal which caused his flock to describe a
circle around the boat, full forty rods away. Still nothing could be
seen which could warrant a well-founded suspicion; and one or two of the
younger birds, impatient of restraint, and anxious for rest and food,
set their broad pinions, and, with outstretched wings, scaled down to
the decoys, alighting on the ice not twenty feet from the muzzles of the
concealed guns. Their apparent safety decided the rest, and in twenty
seconds as many geese, with clamorous cries, were hovering over the
heads of La Salle and his companions.

It takes a quick eye, steady hand, and good judgment, to kill a
partridge in November, when, with a rush of wings like an embryo
whirlwind, he gets up under your feet, and brushes the dew from the
underbrush with his whizzing wings. It is not every amateur tha