Page:Gray Eagle (1927).pdf/14

 tomed to the faint, furtive sounds of the woods, throbbed with the mighty din of the tyrant's vassals; but already her cool, keen, calculating brain was occupied once more with the pressing business of the moment, the stalking of the little brown marsh hare whose scent was strong in her nostrils.

These, however—the whitetail buck and the fox—were exceptions. To them the coming of the tyrant meant nothing, because he was not their ruler and over them he exercised no sovereignty. But they were two among many. Under the white blanket of mist hanging over the watery flats that winter morning huddled a vast multitude of living things—ducks and coots in regiments and legions, mallard and pintail and blue-winged teal and widgeon; and all these were vassals of the tyrant, subject to his will and his power. To all these his coming brought not merely fear but overwhelming panic; and that hollow, drumming thunder, which rolled along the flats and filled the air and seemed to shake the mist blanket spread above the marshes, was the roar of their myriad pinions as, regiment after regiment, they rocketed upward and fled on swiftly whirring wings before the great gray eagle who was their scourge and sovereign.

He came on rather slowly, sailing on set, rigid Pinions just under the opaque stratum of vapor which veiled the marshes from the morning sunlight.