swept the wide expanses of the marshlands, golden brown now that autumn had come—vast plains of tall salt grasses watered by numberless winding creeks and tideways and filling all the broad spaces between the narrow barrier islands along the sea's edge and the mainland behind.
Hour after hour he followed with his eyes the comings and goings of the feathered peoples of the marshes—the big blue herons moving with stately deliberate wing beats; the long-tailed marsh harriers quartering the grassy plains; the ospreys circling and poising above the creeks, then plunging like feathered spearheads upon the fish which they had spied from above; the white crimson-billed terns winnowing the air, swooping and swerving with the grace of swallows, darting down at intervals with lightninglike swiftness upon their prey.
With a strange absorption, which must have had some deeper source than the cravings of appetite, the wounded eagle watched the wild duck hosts come in from the sea. Although in fall and winter, bluebill and mallard, teal and widgeon had formed part of his diet, fish had been his staple food. Yet always in the late afternoons he awaited with undiminished eagerness the coming of the fast-flying feathered regiments.
He saw them first, far away over the ocean be-
