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 at precisely that moment; but only three days before he had looked down from his nest upon a rather interesting occurrence which took place shortly after a cottontail had hopped along the bank and turned down to the water at that very spot to nibble at those same succulent plant stems.

Possibly, therefore, the anhinga expected to see what he now saw—a gradual subsidence of the 'gator's back until it had sunk out of sight altogether and only the black knobs which were the saurian's eyes and nostrils remained above the surface.

Very slowly these knobs moved in the water. Then they, too, sank until only the hind pair were visible—two dark spots, each of them no bigger than a walnut, on the level carpet of duckweed, the surface of which was marred by many other spots and objects of various shapes—rounded tips of cypress knees, the ends of waterlogged sticks, small logs, and branches fallen from the trees, with here and there the upthrust head of a terrapin or a frog. A man would not have been likely to pick out from among all these the two dark knobs which were the 'gator's periscope; and so slowly did these knobs move across the duckweed carpet that upon a casual glance they would not have seemed to move at all.

The cottontail at the edge of the water nibbled away contentedly. The shadows which swept over