shredded clouds, and,swarming in the sky, swinging, drifting, sheered eastward, out towardthe unseen Atlantic.
"Bluebills and sprigs," said the girl, resting her elbow on the tiller."There are geese on the shoal, yonder. They've come out from Currituck.Oh, I'm afraid it's to be blue-bird weather, Mr. Marche."
"I'm afraid it is," he assented, smiling. "What do you do in that case,Miss Herold?"
"Go to sleep in the blind," she admitted, with a faint smile, the firstdelicate approach to anything resembling the careless confidence ofcamaraderie that had yet come from her.
"See the ducks!" she said, as bunch after bunch parted from the water,distantly, yet all around them, and, gathering like clouds of duskybees, whirled away through the sky until they seemed like bands of smokehigh drifting. Presently she turned and looked back, signaling adieu tothe shore, where her brother lifted his arm in response, then turnedaway inland.
"That's a nice boy," said Marche briefly, and glanced up to see in hissister's face the swift and exquisite transformation that requires nowords as answer.
"You seem to like him," said he, laughing.
Molly Herold's gray eyes softened; pride, that had made the love inthem brilliant, faded until they grew almost sombre. Silent, her aloofgaze remained fixed on the horizon; her lips rested on each other insensitive curves. There was no sound save the curling of foam under thebows.
Marche looked elsewhere; then looked at her again. She sat motionless,gray eyes remote, one little, wind-roughened hand on the tiller. Thesteady breeze filled the sail; the dory stood straight away toward theblinding glory of the sunrise.
Through the unreal golden light, raft after raft of wild ducks rose andwhirled into the east; blue herons flopped across the water; asilver-headed eagle, low over the waves, winged his way heavily towardsome goal, doggedly intent upon his own business.
Outside Starfish Shoal the girl eased the sheet as the wind freshened.Far away on Golden Bar thousands of wild geese, which had been tippingtheir sterns skyward in plunging quest of nourishment, resumed a morestately and normal posture, as though at a spoken command; and the longranks, swimming, and led by age and wisdom, slowly moved away into theglittering east.
At last, off the starboard bow, the low, reedy levels of Foam Islandcame into view, and in a few minutes more the dory lay in the shallows,oars, mast, and rag stowed; and the two young people splashed busilyabout in their hip boots, carrying guns, ammunition, and food into theblind.
Then Molly Herold, standing on the mud bank, flung, one by one, asquadron of wooden, painted, canvasback decoys into the water, wherethey righted themselves, and presently rode the waves, bobbing andsteering with startling fidelity to the real things.
Then it came the turn of the real things. Marche and Molly, a strugglingbird tucked under each arm, waded out along the lanes of stools, feelingabout under the icy water until their fingers encountered the wire-coredcords. Then, to the leg rings of each madly flapping duck and swan andgoose they snapped on the leads, and the tethered birds, released, beatthe water into foam and flapped and splashed and tugged, until, finallyreconciled, they began to souse themselves with great content, andeither mounted their stools or swam calmly about as far as their tetherspermitted.
Marche, struggling knee-deep in the water, his arms full of wildlyflapping gander, hailed Molly for instructions.
"That's a mated bird!" she called out to him. "Peg him outside byhimself!"
So Marche pegged out the furious old gander, whose name was UncleDudley, and in a few minutes that dignified and insulted bird, missinghis spouse, began to talk about it.
Every wifely feeling outraged, his spouse replied loudly from theextreme end of the inner lane, telling her husband, and every duck,goose, and swan in the vicinity, what she thought of such an inhumanseparation.
Molly laughed, and so did Marche. Duck after duck, goose after goose,joined indignantly in the conversation. The mallard drakes twisted theiremerald-green heads and began that low, half gurgling, half quackingconversation in which their mottled brown and gray mates joined withlouder quacks. The geese conversed freely; but the long-necked swansheld their peace, occupied with the problem of picking to pieces thesnaps on their anklets.
"Now," said Molly breathlessly, as the last madly protesting bird hadbeen stooled, "let's get into the blind as soon as we can, Mr. Marche.There may be ducks in Currituck still, and every minute counts now."
So Marche towed the dory around to the westward and drew it into achannel where it might lie concealed under the reeds.
When he came across to the blind he found Molly there, seated on theplank in the cemented pit behind the screen of reeds and rushes, layingout for him his cartridges.
There they were, in neat rows on the rail, fives, sixes, and a few ofswanshot, ranged in front of him. And his 12-gauge, all ready, save forthe loading, lay across the pit to his right. So he dropped his bootedfeet into the wooden tub where a foot-warmer lay, picked up the gun,slid a pair of sixes into it, laid it beside him, and turned toward MissHerold.
The wool collar of her sweater was turned up about her delicately moldedthroat and face. The wild-rose color ran riot in her cheeks, and hereyes, sky tinted now, were wide open under the dark lashes, and the windstirred her hair till it rippled bronze and gold under the edge of hershooting hood. She, too, was perfectly ready. A cheap, heavy, and ratherrusty gun lay beside her; a heap of cheap cartridges before her.
She turned, and, catching Marche's eyes, smiled adorably, with a slightnod of comradeship. Then, the smile still faintly curving her lips, shecrossed her legs in the pit, and, warming her hands in the pockets ofher coat, leaned back, resting against the rail behind.
"You haven't a foot-warmer," he said.
"I'm not cold--only my fingers--a little--stooling those birds."
They spoke in low voices, under their breath.
He fished from his pocket a flat Japanese hand-warmer, lighted thepaper-cased punk, snapped it shut, and passed it to her. But shedemurred.
"You need it yourself."
"No, I'm all right. Please take it."
So she shyly took it, dropped it into her pocket, and rested hershapely little hand on it. "How delightful!" she said presently,shifting it to the other pocket. "Don't you really need it, Mr. Marche?"
"No. Does it warm you?"
"It is delicious. I _was_ a little chilled." She drew out one bare handand looked at it thoughtfully. Then, with a little sigh, and quiteunconscious of his gaze, she touched her lips to the wind-roughenedskin, as though in atonement for her maltreatment of herself.
Even as it now was the shape and beauty of the hand held Marchefascinated; it was so small, yet so firm and strong and competent, sofull of youthful character, such a delicately fashioned little hand,and so pathetic, somehow--this woman's hand, with its fineness oftexture and undamaged purity under the chapped and cruelly bruised,tender skin.
She pocketed it again, looking out from under the wind-blown hairclustering from the edge of her shooting hood. "Blue-bird weather," shesaid, in her low and very sweet voice. "If no birds swing in by teno'clock we might as well sleep until four."
Marche leaned forward and scanned the water and sky alternately. Nothingstirred, save their lazily preening decoys. Uncle Dudley was stillconversing with his wife at intervals; the swans and the cygnets fed orworried their leash snaps; the ducks paddled, or dozed on the stools,balanced on one leg.
Far away, on Golden Bar, half a thousand wild geese floated, feeding;beyond, like snowflakes dotting the water, a few wild swans drifted.There were ducks, too, off Starfish Island again, but nothing flying inthe blue except a slow hawk or some wandering gull, or now and then aneagle--sometimes a mature bird, in all the splendor of white head andtail, sometimes a young bird, seemingly larger, and all gray from crestto shank.
Once an eagle threatened the decoys, and Uncle Dudley swore so lustilyat him, and every duck and goose set up such a clamor, that Molly Heroldpicked up her gun for the emergency. But
the magnificent eagle, beatingup into the wind with bronze wings aglisten, suddenly sheered off; and,as he passed, Marche could see his bold head turn toward the blind wherethe sun had flashed him its telegraphic warning on the barrel of Molly'slifted gun.
"Fine!" he whispered. "Splendid! I'm glad you didn't kill him."
"I'm glad I didn't have to," she said.
"Do you think you could have?"
She turned toward him, wondering whether he might be serious; thensmiled as he smiled.
At the same instant, coming apparently from nowhere, four canvasbackssuddenly appeared over the clamoring decoys, so close in that, as theycame driving by the blind and rose slightly, wings bowed, Marche couldalmost see their beady little eyes set in the chestnut red of theturning heads. Mechanically his gun spoke