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. 
T 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 — 
