Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/110

92 he remarked after a while, as a man and a dog crossed the road just before us. "Any birds to-day, Cy?" he inquired. The man nodded a silent affirmative—a very unusual admission for a Yankee sportsman to make, according to my experience.

I was hardly on foot before I began to find traces of this good man's work. The first bird I saw was a sandpiper with one wing dragging on the ground. Near it was an unharmed companion which, even when I crowded it a little hard, showed no disposition to consult its own safety. "Well done," said I. "'There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.'"

A few steps more, and a larger bird stirred amid the short marsh herbage beyond the muddy flat—a black-bellied plover, or "beetle-head." He also must be disabled, I thought, to be staying in such a place; and perhaps he was. At all events he would not fly, but edged about me in a half circle, with the wariest kind of motions (there was no sign of cover for him, the grass coming no more than to his knees), always with his big black eye fastened upon me, while my