Wild Folk

s one bitter winter night and woke up Silas Smith, who kept the store at Cornwall Bridge, to give h

his wife, Hen Root his hired man, Nip Root his yellow dog and-the Ducks. The Deacon had rumpled white hair and

th good-will and good works, and had twinkling eyes of horizon-blue. If anyone was sick, or had une

e for the Liberty Loan was started in Cornwall, he bought a bond for himself

lness as a lure. It was evident, however, that she had been trifling with Rashe, for before she had been on the farm a month, somewhere in sky or stream she found a mate. Later, down by the ice-pond, she stole a nest-a beautiful basin made of leaves and edged with soft down from

on, the order never changed. The old hen, clucking frantically, tried again and again to turn them back. Each time they scattered and, waddling past her, fell into line once more. When at last they reached the bank, their foster-mother s

ood, stopped setting and clucking, and never again recognized her foster-children, as they found out to their sorrow after their swim. All the rest of that day they plopped sadly after her, only to be received wit

oft sorrowful little quackings, which ought to have touched her heart-but didn't. By this time they were so weak that, if Aunt Maria had no

ursing and petting and soothing, that it almost seemed to Aunt Maria as if a half-century had rolled back, and she was once more looking after babies long, long lost to her. Even old Hen became attached to them enough to cuff Nip violently when that pampered animal growled at the newcomers, and showed s

they would snuggle down contentedly under the flannel, and sing like a lot of little tea-kettles, making the same kind of a sleepy hum that a flock of wild mallards gives when they are sleeping far out on the water. They liked

had taken ten steps. They followed her all the way down, and stood with their beaks pressed against the bay-window, watching her as she sat in Mrs.

their heads off if I don't lea

le yipping note, and lie down flat on their backs, and hold their soft little paddles straight up in the air, to show how sore

er of the house as a load of hay went past. Finding her gone, the ducks started solemnly down the road, following the hay-wagon, evidently convinced that she was hidden somewhere beneath the load. They we

elightedly. When she turned back, they would form a circle around her, snuggling their soft necks against her gown until she scratched each uplifted head softly. If she wore button-shoes they would pry away at the loose buttons and attempt to swallow them. When she was working in her flower-garden, they

when Hen suggested roast duck for Thanksgiving, Deacon Jimmy and Aunt Maria lectured him so severely for his cruelty, that he was glad to explain that he was only joking. Once, when the ducks were sick, he dug

m bearing of the aristocratic mallard. On the other hand, Blackie had all the wariness and sagacity of the black duck, than whom there is no wiser bird. As the winter came on, a coop was fixed up for them not far from the kitchen, where they slept on warm stra

st forests, where the sullen green of the pines gleamed against a silver sky, a great waste-land stretched clear to the tundras, beyond which is the ice of the Arctic. In this wilderness, where long leagues of rushes hissed and whispered to the wind, the drake had dwelt. Here and there w

ey southward. There were gaggles of wild geese flying in long wedges, with the strongest and the wisest gander leading the converging lines; wisps of snipe, and badlings of duck of many kinds. The widgeons flew with whistling wings, in long black streamers. The scaup came down the sky in dark masses, giving a rippling purr as they flew. Here and there scat

urn, he lingered among the last to leave. As the nights went by, the marshes became more and more deserted. Then there dawned a cold, turquoise day. The winding streams showed sheets of sapphire and pools of molten silv

south, it is no time for lesser folk to linger. The night was aflame with its million candles as he sprang into the air, circled once and again, and followed southward the moon path which lay like a long streamer of gold across the waste-lands. Night and day and day and night and night

fierce grip of steel, and he was fast in one of Hen's traps. There the old man found him at sunrise, and brought him home wrapped up in his coat, quacking, flapping, and fighting every foot of the way. An examination showed

rom the ground. Again and again the drake tried to fly, only to realize at last that he was clipped and shamed and earthbound. Then for the first time he seemed to notice the six who stood by, watching him in silence. To them he quacked, and quacked, and quacked fiercely, and Aunt Maria

e evident that the ducks were reluctantly convinced that the gentle little woman had been guilty of a great crime, and more and more they began to shun her. There wer

ral times they started for the pond, but each time at a quack from the drake they came back. It was Blackie who finally solved the difficulty. Flying back over the fence, she found a place where a box stood near one of the sides of the pen. Climbing up on top of this, she fluttered to the top rail. The drake clambered up on the box, and tried to follow. As he was scrambling up the fence, with desperate flappings of his disabled wings, Blackie and the others, who had joined her on the top rail, reached down and pulled him upward with tremendous tugs from their flat bills, u

kes and marshes still locked against them. Then came the strange, wild call from the sky of the killdeer, who wears two black rings around his white breast; and the air was full of robin notes and bluebird calls and the shrill high notes of the hylas. On the sides of the Cobble th

een uneasy. One by one he had moulted his clipped wing-feathers, and the long curved quills which had been his glory had come back again. Late in the afternoon, as he was leading his flock toward the kitchen, a great hubbub of calls and cries floated down from the afternoon sky. The who

nd shot up through the sky toward the disappearing company-and not alone. Even as he left the ground, before Aunt Maria's astonished eyes, faithful, clumsy, wary Blackie sprang into the ai

rceful Blackie. The flock too was lost without them, and took chances and overlooked dangers which they never would have been allowed to do under the reign of their lost king and queen. At last fate overtook them one da

always it was only a dream. Then the cold came, and one night a great storm of snow and sleet broke over the Cobble, and the wind howled as it did the night before the drake was found. Suddenly Aunt Maria started out of

ter. Back of him Blackie's soft, dark head rubbed lovingly against Aunt Maria's trembling knees, with the little caressing, crooning noise which Blackie always made when she wanted to be petted. Back

the way, were the same as his day clothes except for the shoes; for, as Hen said, he could not

m pesky ducks again," h

Deacon Jimmy, "I don't suppose

mething warm and wet trickled down her wrinkled cheeks, as she stopped and