paths of the marsh jungle, silent, swift, and elu- 

 sive as a shadow. 



It was the clapper-rail, the "marsh-hen." One 

 never finds such a combination of long legs, long 

 toes, long neck and bill, with this long but heavy 

 hen-like body, outside the meadows and marshes. 

 The grass ought to have been alive with the 

 birds : it was breeding- time. But I think the 

 high tides must have delaj^ed them or driven 

 them elsewhere, for I did not find an egg, nor 

 hear at nightfall their colony-cry, so common at 

 dusk and dawn in the marshes just across on the 

 coast about Townsend's Inlet. There at sunset 

 in nesting-time one of the rails will begin to call 

 —a loud, clapping roll ; a neighbor takes it up, 

 then another and another, the circle of cries 

 widening and swelling until the whole marsh is 

 a-clatter. 



Heading my way with a slow, labored stroke 

 came one of the fish-hawks. She was low down 

 and some distance away, so that I got behind a 

 post before she saw me. The marsh-hen spied 

 her first, and dropped into the grass. On she 

 came, her white breast and belly glistening, and 

 in her talons a big glistening fish. It was a 

 [62] 



