164 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 



willow bush far across the marsh. I waited, one, 

 two, three minutes, but no bird rose. Evidently she 

 was on the nest. Keeping my eye fixed on that special 

 bush, which looked like a score of others, I plunged 

 into the marsh, intending to bound like a chamois 

 from crag to crag. On the second bound I slipped off 

 a tussock and went up to my knees in mud and 

 water. The rest of the way I ploughed along, 

 making a noise at each step like the bittern's note. 

 Half-way to the bush, the mother hawk rose and 

 circled around us, screaming monotonously. For 

 half an hour we searched back and forth without 

 finding any nest. At last we hid in a willow thicket, 

 thinking that perhaps the hawk might go back to 

 her nest. Instead, both birds disappeared in some 

 distant woods. The sun was getting low and we were 

 miles from our inn; yet as this was the nearest 

 either of us had ever been to finding a marsh hawk 's 

 nest, we decided to hunt on until dark. 



I laid out a route from my bush to another about 

 thirty yards away, and between those two as bounds 

 planned to quarter back and forth over every square 

 foot of ground, moving toward the woods where the 

 hawks had gone. It seemed an almost hopeless hunt, 

 for the marsh at this point was dry, with patches of 

 bushes, masses of sedge, and piled heaps here and 

 there of dry rushes. As I reached my farther boun- 

 dary and was about to return, I straightened my 

 aching back and looked beyond the bush. There, 

 directly ahead, in a space fringed by spirea bushes 

 but in plain sight, lay a round nest on the ground 



