196 What Birds Have Done With Me 



that it has been told that an explorer seeking its 

 outlet, it never had an inlet, followed its winding 

 course through more S's than are in the name of 

 the State of Mississippi ; and tied up his boat and 

 stayed all night at a farmhouse on a bend, and 

 after paddling all the next day, tied up his boat 

 and stayed the next night at the same house, 

 never having gotten out of sight of it. The lan- 

 guid little river, a river that never grew up, mean- 

 ders somewhere in the u Big Marsh." The owner 

 of the house at the bend, Mr. Wiselander, came 

 back from the Big Marsh one late September 

 afternoon with a high load of hay and a baby 

 Sand-Hill Crane, the longest-legged bird that ever 

 wet its ankles in the deep places of the Puckyan. 

 When he first saw it he got a notion that it wanted 

 to catch a ride and there was no waiting for a 

 second invitation to come along and take pot luck 

 at the farmhouse, not, however, the usual pot 

 luck given birds. This strangely tame creature 

 from the wild was soon at home at the farm and 

 spent its time taking bird's-eye views of terrestrial 

 things. How it spent the winter looking down 

 on the woolly creatures that some way got their 

 noses into a big barn that had been assigned to 

 a star boarder, are matters to be passed over in 

 well-bred silence. Neither have I time to tell of 

 his possession of a prudent mind, like Mrs. John 

 Gilpin, a mind that would not allow the daughter 



