100 BEYOND THE PASTUEE BAKS 



of life. It was a woodcock that had nested for 

 several seasons along a slender, alder-hidden 

 stream about half a mile from my home. 



I was not expecting him to come back this 

 spring. When the gunning season had opened 

 in July, at least a score of men knew that a single 

 pair of woodcocks had nested along the stream; 

 and up and down, over and over, one after an- 

 other those men beat the swale, beat it by clump, 

 by tussock, by square foot for the birds, and killed 

 five. Four of these were the young of that sum- 

 mer ; the fifth bird was one of the parents. 



The swale turned brown that autumn, and soon 

 lay silent and bleak. I could not pass it during 

 the winter without a feeling of anger. It was a 

 narrow strip of swampy ground, barely fifty feet 

 across at its widest part, and bordered by a 

 wooded hillside and by wide, tilled fields. But 

 it was all the swamp, all the meadow that I had. 

 And that this should be robbed of its life, that all 

 my out-of-doors within walking distance of home 

 should never again hold a woodcock's nest, was 

 more than a grief. It made me angry. 



I had been robbed. Twenty men against six 

 woodcocks ! And they had been eager to kill the 

 last pair breeding in this last shrinking covert, 



