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 swiftly along, his head half-submerged, straining water and mud through the comb-like teeth of his bill.

All about him in the darkness he heard the voices of feathered myriads, the hoarse or nasal tones of other ducks of half a dozen kinds, the incessant, infinitely varied conversation of the coots. Dawn came, and the mists of morning, then rosy sunlight melting the mists. Again the lone shoveller heard, far away across the marshes, that rolling thunder of innumerable wings which announced that the tyrant was abroad. But on this morning the thunder came no nearer. The big gray eagle was seeking his prey a little farther to the northward where the flats were wider and even more populous.

The morning hours passed quietly with no hint of notable developments in store. Then, just before noon, the great event befell.

The crippled drake saw her when she was half a mile away, a mere speck against the sky, seemingly indistinguishable at that distance from the hundreds of other ducks dotting the air. Instantly the pupils of his eyes contracted and their golden circlets glowed like flame. Straight onward she came, flying almost as fast as a teal, guided by chance or fate to the one pool in all that wilderness of marsh where another of her kind awaited her. Probably she saw the drake before she actually