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 and cursing also the cheap shells bought at the little cross-roads store.

The negro poacher lingered only a short time on the bank beside the lagoon. His shot might have been heard at the plantation house and he had no wish to fall foul of the master of that plantation.

Fully a half-hour passed before Anhinga Town resumed the even tenor of its life. Within a few minutes the redoubled clamor of the herons sank back to normal, but a longer period elapsed before the two alligators, which had vanished instantly as the shot rang out, renewed their interrupted sun-bath and a big brown banded water snake, which had been sunning itself on a little island of cypress knees, reappeared out of the wine-brown depths.

Gradually those elements of the town's population which had been dispersed or driven into temporary seclusion by the hunter's coming returned to their accustomed places. The gobbler, of course, did not come back; but after a while as many great blue herons and snakebirds as ever were passing back and forth above the tree-tops or perching on convenient limbs, while the fish crows and grackles, which were among the town's most abundant inhabitants, had resumed their comings and goings and the small bird-life of the place was active and vocal again.

Presently other visitors came from the woods