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 head high to look and listen. A swamp rosebush hid the gobbler from the wood duck a hundred feet away on the lagoon. Yet the duck saw something move on the bank beyond the bush, though the intervening foliage prevented her from perceiving that it was only a turkey. Since the thing that had moved was on the bank it might be a man, and the mother duck did not believe in taking chances. She turned, spoke a word to her children and headed back along the water lane that led deep into the cypress woods.

The two black knobs moving across the carpet of duckweed came to rest, and presently there rose from the water behind them a black, thing which, viewed at right angles, looked rough and jagged. Though he was not aware of it, the young five-foot alligator was a good deal of a philosopher. If he could not dine on duck just now, at any rate he could resume his interrupted sun-bath and enjoy the warmth of the sunlight on his back.

The brooding anhinga was watching the turkey, still standing erect and alert on the pine log, when another note, this time shrill and insistent, from the mother duck caused him to turn his head. The duck had turned out of the winding water lane and was leading her children away from it through the flooded cypress woods, following a tortuous course in and out amid the tree trunks. In a mo-