rose to falsetto in amazement at the change 

 from the quiet little pond, which had been 

 all their world, to the vast panorama of seas 

 and mountains and cities of men spread wide 

 beneath their wings. 



Then in the autumn days the boy, like 

 all the rest of the male population in whom 

 something of the old savage lingered under 

 its coat of civilization, felt the hunter stir 

 within him, and saw visions and dreamed 

 dreams when the wild-goose call from the 

 heavens came down to him as a kind of a 

 challenge. When the weather was stormy 

 and the flight was low, the boy would climb 

 stealthily out of the rear window of the barn 

 with the forbidden old musket close to his 

 breast. Keeping the barn between his own 

 line of flight and the kitchen windows, he 

 would head across the brown fields to the 

 woods, holding steadily and swiftly on his 

 way to the little Widow Dunkle's, who kept 

 an old gray goose. Sometimes he begged, 

 sometimes he bribed, and sometimes, when 

 the flight was irresistible and the widow 

 away from home, he simply appropriated 



&QF 



',' 



179 



In Quest of 

 tVaptonk^- 





v^w:.. 



*Whs&3S 



