10 



THE SPRING OF THE YEAR 



the pond, to lay their eggs in the waters where they 

 were hatched, in the waters that to them were home. 



Something very much like this all the other fish 

 are doing, as are the birds also. The spell of 

 home is over land and sea, and has been laid upon 

 them all. The bird companies of the fall went 

 south at the inexorable command of Hunger ; but 

 a greater than Hunger is in command of the forces 

 of spring. Now our vast bird army of North Amer- 

 ica, five billion strong, is moving northward at the 

 call of Home. And the hosts of the sea, whose 

 shining billions we cannot number, they, too, are 

 coming up, some of them far up through the shal- 

 low streams to the wood-walled ponds for a drink of 

 the sweet waters of Home. 



As a boy I used to go down to the meadows at 

 night to hear the catfish coming, as now I go down 

 to the village by day to see the herring coming. The 

 catfish would swim in from the Cohansey, through 

 the sluices in the bank, then up by way of the meadow 

 ditches to the dam over which fall the waters of Lup- 

 ton's Pond. 



It was a seven- or eight-foot dam, and of course 

 the fish could not climb it. Down under the splash- 

 ing water they would crowd by hundreds, their 

 moving bodies close-packed, pushing forward, all 

 trying to break through the wooden wall that blocked 

 their way. Slow, stupid things they looked ; but was 

 not each big cat head pointed forward ? each slow, 



