Page:Gray Eagle (1927).pdf/112

 knew, and he could not substitute its feathered head for the bare head of Sanute, the veteran. Leaving it for his dog Brutus or for the turkey vultures, who would find it soon enough if Brutus scorned it, he turned back indoors to cook his breakfast.

Three miles beyond Cam Reppington's house, on a low bluff over-looking the wide emerald marshes of the bay, stood the small, white, vine-covered cottage where John Marston lived with his blue-eyed, brown-haired granddaughter Ellen. He, too, was astir early but no earlier than was his habit; for the little old man, as all the bay-dwellers called him, loved the fragrance and freshness of the June dawns even better than the crimson glories of the June sunsets, and nearly always he was up and dressed before the sun rose from behind the woods on the distant barrier islands along the edge of the sea.

There was another reason why, when June had come to the Low Country, John Marston seldom lay late abed. June brought the wood ibises to his marshes—tall, fantastic, long-necked and long-legged black and white storks that somehow gave him more pleasure than any others of the marshland birds; and early every morning from June to October an army of wood ibises, headed by an old ibis whom Marston had known for years and to whom