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 yond the barrier islands, as long faint streaks like wisps of smoke above the horizon, or else as dim gray clouds which moved and shifted and changed, darkening as they drew nearer and presently thinning out into black lines or irregular wedges shooting across the sky. Some of the smaller flocks passed near at hand, coming in above Little Inlet and flying comparatively low. But the larger flocks, many of them containing hundreds of ducks, passed for the most part farther to the southwest, where a river came down from the rice lands to the ocean. These were not bluebills, but mallards heading for the old ricefields and fresh-water marshes a few miles back from the coast; and as the days passed their numbers increased, so that sometimes toward sunset the eagle, gazing into the dim distance, could see thousands of them at the same moment as the long armies winged inland high in the air like trailers of cloud against the glowing sky.

His eyes fixed on these far-off things, his thoughts ranging the air and the marshes miles distant from the hummock which was his prison, the eagle may have remained for a long while unaware of the watcher waiting for him to die. Yet a time came when he saw the fox, and it may be that he understood somehow the significance of her vigil. At any rate, after some days had passed, the fox noted for the first time that the big bird was watching her