94 AN AFTERNOON OFF. 
lying low and close together over the water 
like wild duck. All of them were the richer 
by many scraps. But they did not stop at 
the ragged surf; the golden sand did not 
delay them; but inland they flickered—inland, 
past fields, over woods; inland, above hills, 
along dales, till the brown and lonely marsh 
grew out to meet them—the marsh with its 
foot or two of water, its smelly, rotting islands 
covered with black-headed gulls a-nesting. 
The flock swerved and broke into silver 
fragments, each fragment going down to its 
nest. And the leader was one of those 
fragments. 
How he knew his nest—you could scarce 
walk on an island without treading on young 
gulls or eggs—was his own secret. And he 
wanted to know it, too, for he had left three 
newly hatched ‘young leaders’ here, and on 
his return found but two. 
His wife looked very sheepish. What she 
said with her noisy cries and her brown head 
abob cannot have been of much good, for she 
went away to feed, now her lord had come 
back, and he settled down to guard her charge 
none the wiser. 
She had been gone about nine minutes, 
when there came among the rustling rushes, 
threading its way in and out among the sere 
