212 IN WET COMPANY. 
Suddenly the cock-wigeon who led that 
flock put up his head. He remained quite 
motionless for perhaps twenty seconds, his 
beak pointed straight towards the squat, 
mud-like, half-guessed, half-seen shape that 
moved so almost imperceptibly. 
And next instant he was climbing swiftly 
up to the stars on whistling pinions, his flock 
following in faithful imitation of his every 
action. In a few seconds their soft ‘ Wheu- 
wheu !’ died into the upper dark. 
Then, from the middle of that apparent low 
mud-hummock arose the seated form of a 
man, and one realised, as much by his language 
as anything else, that he was a wildfowler in 
his gunning-punt. A few yards nearer, and 
he would have wiped out that wigeon flock 
with a ane meee of his gun. 
That iets long or tha foratells fie day 
whispered and sighed over the marshes, and 
purfled the shallows. A faint suggestion of 
the darkness being a little less dark stole upon 
the scene. 
The old cock-wigeon, feeding with his flock, 
put up his round, buff head, and stretched one 
wing. He scented the day. Suddenly his 
head nicked round, and in a flash he had 
sprung upwards, his flock moving with him as 
