114 THE HERON OF CASTLE CREEK 



halt awhile, and, motioning the friar to hide 

 with him behind the hawthorns, told, in a 

 quick whisper, how he had often watched the 

 bird in the dell beside the brook, and on her 

 nest in the forest. The friar, who at heart was 

 gentle and a lover of Nature and solitude, listened 

 with interest, and delighted his companion by 

 explaining that the heron always seemed to be 

 asleep when luring fish, and that at the moment 

 she was surely in the act of emitting the oil from 

 her legs to tempt the trout. Immediately the 

 friar had finished speaking the bird, as if she felt 

 something nibbling at her long green shanks, 

 struck downwards and shook her head vigorously, 

 then lifted her beak high into the air, and de- 

 voured with utmost relish her glistening prey. 

 Had any doubt as to the friar's explanation of the 

 heron's method existed, it would inevitably at 

 once have vanished, for Renoult was too young 

 and inexperienced to judge that the fish had 

 more than likely mistaken the heron's legs for 

 stems of water v/eed, and had fearlessly ap- 

 proached them to suck at the glistening air- 

 bubbles collected on the scales. 



The monks, though they looked askance at 

 the visits of such an expert fisher as a heron to 

 their well-stocked ponds, delighted, scarcely less 

 than to sit fishing in the summer twilight, to 

 gaze from their garden at the movements of a 



