Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/299

288 of rescue for her; he knew that the only hope for her, or for himself, lay in the course he now pursued; and he went out to his toil. There was abundance both of sport and of labour in those wild marshes and ill-preserved pools to have occupied for months one who brought to them the lore and the skill of Scottish moorlands, and he returned to them with unflagging pertinacity, mowing down the osiers, slinging the teal, and widgeon, and mallards, reckless of season so long as they served to fill the monks' buttery; stretching the nets and thrashing the sedges till the frightened fish swam in by the score; working through hour on hour till the Umbrian brought him his mess of breakfast-soup, and some tough cakes of rye, and sat down beside him under the stunted cypresses, gazing with devouring, delighted eyes at the stores of food laid upon the banks.

"Thanks, father; but that is a poor breakfast for either of us. See here; I have done better than you," said Erceldoune, as he stooped over a fire he had lit with the touchwood, and broke the clay covering off two succulent water-birds and half-a-dozen dainty trout, that he had baked in a sports-man's fashion, practised many a time in Canadian woods, and Kansas wilds, and Thuringian forests,