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 the branches of the oak they chased one another with what seemed like reckless abandon, racing along the stout main limbs, flinging themselves in long leaps from bough to bough, swinging precariously on the smaller moss-draped branches which swayed and bent beneath their weight.

Even less than the cottontail were they concerned with those two black spots on the surface of the water almost directly beneath them and now scarcely fifteen feet distant from the place where the rabbit was feeding at the water's edge.

Away to the right, beyond the open space in the flooded woods, the brooding anhinga saw a dark shape come swinging down the water lane that wound amid the cypresses. This traveler of the water lane traveled not in the water but in the air some ten feet above the surface. His wide wings stirred the moss-pennants trailing from the trees, and he came so swiftly that almost in an instant he had reached the end of the lane and had swept out above the open water.

The anhinga crouched close on his nest. The great horned owls who lived in the deep woods near the farther edge of the lagoon had never molested him; yet he did not like them and on the rather frequent occasions when they hunted by daylight he took pains to keep out of their way. The owl was heading almost directly towards him, but he sat in