Page:Gray Eagle (1927).pdf/76

 ages in this place? Yes, he had done these things. But in doing them he had merely made Tiger Swamp a suitable habitation for her, a place of abundant coverts and green, impenetrable refuges where the wildest of her wild creatures could find sanctuary.

And not sanctuary only. The swamp was a fortress as well as a retreat. From its edges hostile invisible eyes looked out at hunters who came to the swamp's margins in search of game; and from its recesses, under cover of night, those of its inhabitants who knew how to wage war in the secret, furtive way of the wild killers launched raids and forays against the neighboring farms.

On a low pine stump near the western edge of Tiger Swamp sat a tall, dun shape, a shape as motionless as the stump of which it might have been a part. It had been there for more than half an hour; it had seen and heard many things; but as yet it had neither seen nor heard the two things which would have interested it most.

It did not know that two pairs of eyes were fixed upon it, that one of those pairs of eyes had never wavered in their gaze since the moment when they had seen this tall, dun shape steal cautiously through the sparse grove of second-growth oaks and sweet gums which bordered the swamp at this point