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Rh in the depleted lunch-baskets had been offered this impassive fowl from time to time without response. It appeared not to see them but sat sphinx-like and immovable beside its rescuer.

Abel had been sent forth at sun-down to seek us by the one anxious member of the household who had stayed behind, and the relief with which the "Emma Jane" was sighted by us on that waste of darkening water, where shoals abounded, and waves continually increased in violence, remains to this day a joyful recollection. His exclamations of astonishment when he beheld the blue-heron sitting in fixed and stony silence on the lap of its friend sent a thrill through the entire framework of the Emma Jane. As soon as he recovered—which took time—he cleared his throat and said in an awed sort of voice, "Mis' 'Elen, don't that thar bird want to bite ye?"

I knew by his tone that he regarded the situation as unusual, not to say critical, but how critical I didn't realize until the following day when the stupefied fowl, having been placed in solitary confinement in the boathouse, sufficiently recovered its equanimity to inflict a severe wound upon a hand that ven-