Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/319

 She knew that very well; but her love of the soft wild things of lagoon and woodland was stronger than self-love, and the bold blood that filled her veins was warm' with pleasure as she strained at the wood or the cordage of the great traps closing in the mouths of streams, or drawn round the sleeping places of the unconscious palmipedes.

It was not often that she had the chance of saving her feathered friends, for not very often did the snarers leave their prey, but whenever the power came in her way she made use of it, and whenever she saw ill-looking fellows, strangers or natives, coming in upon the territory which she regarded as the birds' and beasts' and hers alone, she followed them unseen, creeping under the heather of the uplands, and the cane-brakes of the swamps, to watch their choice of place, and foil their efforts if she could.

To a snarer of birds she would have had no more mercy than he would have had to her, if he had known what she was about; and she had almost as much scorn for the so-called sportsmen, hiding amongst the reeds to take the bright porphyrion unawares, or steering their boat through water strewn with a thousand dead and dying coots.