BIRD STORIES 



urges the salmon to leave the Atlantic Ocean in the 

 spring and travel up the Penobscot or the St. John 

 River. I never felt quite sure why Peter Piper left 

 Brazil for the shore where the blue-bells nod. All I can 

 tell you about it is that a feeling came over the loons 

 that is called a migration instinct; and, almost before 

 Gavia and her mate knew what was happening to them, 

 they had flown far and far from the Ocean, and were 

 laughing weirdly over the cold waters of Immer Lake. 



The shore was dark with the deep green of fir trees, 

 t^hose straight trunks had blisters on them where drops 

 of fragrant balsam lay hidden in the bark. And here 

 and there trees with white slender trunks leaned out 

 over the water, and the bark on these peeled up like 

 pieces of thin and pretty paper. Three wonderful vines 

 trailed through the woodland, and each in its season 

 blossomed into pink and fragrant bells. But what these 

 were, and how they looked, is not a part of this story, 

 for Gavia never wandered among them. Her summer 

 paths lay upon and under the water of the lake, as her 

 winter trails had been upon and under the water of 

 the sea. 



Ah, if she loved the water so, why did she suddenly 

 begin to stay out of it? If she delighted so in swim- 

 ming and diving and chasing wild wing-races over the 

 surface, why did she spend the day quietly in one place? 



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