A MOORLAND SANCTUARY 127 



wide hollow, between sand-banks overgrown 

 with rushes and fringed with stunted trees, in 

 the middle of the marsh. There, from dawn to 

 dusk, he slept secure, his long stilt-like legs out 

 of sight in the coarse herbage growing among the 

 rushes, his head turned back beneath his wings, 

 and the delicately mottled feathers of his breast 

 rising and falling as he breathed. And thence, 

 after sunset, he wandered in quest of food, by 

 ditch and bank and across the open waste. And 

 even as he thus wandered he often felt an 

 intense longing to join the ranks of the great 

 bird-armies. 



During the previous autumn that desire had 

 been strong within him while the birds were 

 departing from the south ; then, however, he 

 was suffering from an injury, and so was unable 

 to venture on the long journey oversea. For he 

 had flown one night far from the gorge to a 

 sheltered valley, where, among woods and corn- 

 fields and meadows, the wide river he had 

 recently followed on his way to the sea glistened 

 in the moonlight. The call of the water rippling 

 over the fords could not be resisted, so, descend- 

 ing, he hid among the thickets of a little island 

 in mid-stream. Presently, he emerged from his 

 retreat and stole out into the shadows by the 

 side of the island. He had just begun to fish 

 when suddenly the alarm note of a wild duck to 



