She turned toward him, wondering whether he might be serious; then smiled as he smiled.

At the same instant, coming apparently from nowhere, four canvasbacks suddenly appeared over the clamoring decoys, so close in that, as they came driving by the blind and rose slightly, wings bowed, Marche could almost see their beady little eyes set in the chestnut red of the turning heads. Mechanically his gun spoke twice; rap-rap, echoed Miss Herold's gun, and splash! [Pg 65]splash! down whirled two gray-and-red ducks; then a third, uncertain, slowed down, far out beyond the decoys, and slanted sideways to the water. The fourth went on.

[Pg 65]

"Duffer that I am," said Marche good-humoredly. "That was a clean double of yours, Miss Herold!—clean-cut work."

She said, slightly knitting her straight brows: "I should have crossed two of them and killed the one you missed. I think I'd better get the boat."

"No, I'll go out after that kicker," he said, ashamed of his slovenly work.

Five minutes later he returned with his kicker and her two ducks—great, fat, heavy canvasbacks, beautiful in their red, black, and drab plumage.

[Pg 66] "What about blue-bird weather, now?" he laughed.

[Pg 66]

But she only smiled and said, "I'm very much afraid."

For a long while they sat there, alert behind their wall of rustling reeds, watching sky and water. False alarms were not infrequent from their decoys. Sometimes the outbreak of quacking and honking was occasioned by some wandering gull, sometimes by a circling hawk or some eagle loitering in mid-heaven on broad and leisurely wings, reluctant to remain, unwilling to go; sometimes to a pair or two of widgeon or pintails speeding eastward high in the blue. But the sparkling, cloudless hours sped away, and no duck or goose or swan invaded the vicinity. Only one [Pg 67]sly old black duck dropped into the reeds far back on the island; and Marche went after him with serious designs upon his fraudulent old life.

[Pg 67]

When the young man returned, twenty minutes later, perfectly innocent of duck murder, he found the girl curled up in her corner of the pit, eyes closed, tired little head cradled in the curve of her left arm. She waked as he slid into the blind, and smiled at him, pretending not to have been asleep.

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