CHAPTER XVIII. 
QUAIL SHOOTING. 
We stood in the marsh one day, Don and I, 
He retrieving duck I killed almost in the sky.— 
Great friends were we, chums, just like two boys,— 
When a whistling quail coaxed us from our decoys. 
OFTENTIMES in the sear and yellow fall, when Oc- 
tober frosts have blighted the green summer sward, I 
have stood in the marsh, my faithful four-footed friend 
beside me, and he and I have looked away up on the 
hillside, where golden corn-stalks were bending to the 
breeze, where little thickets stood apart from one an- 
other in clustered bodies, and the osage hedges formed 
a line of impenetrable fence. At such times, the clear 
air bore to our ears the sweetest cry known to the hunt- 
er,—the call of the quail, whistling for its scattered 
mates. We looked at each other, and when I said to 
him, “Shall we go?” the bright, honest face, with its 
eloquent eyes, beamed on me so wistfully, no words 
