Fortunately Don was a good retriever and had brought the duck in with scarcely a quill ruffled; so I had the satisfaction of breaking his bands and letting him go free with a splendid rush.  But the wind was too much for him; he dropped back into the water and went skittering down the harbor like a lady with too much skirt and too big a hat in boisterous weather.  Meanwhile Don lay on the sand, head up, ears up, whining eagerly for the word to fetch.  Then he dropped his head, and drew a long breath, and tried to puzzle it out why a man should go out on a freezing day in February, and tramp, and row, and get wet to find a bird, only to let him go after he had been fairly caught.

Kwaseekho the shelldrake leads a double life.  In winter he may be found almost anywhere along the Massachusetts coast and southward, where he leads a dog’s life of it, notwithstanding his gay appearance.  An hundred guns are roaring at him wherever he goes.  From daylight to dark he has never a minute to eat his bit of fish, or to take a wink of sleep in peace.  He flies to the ocean, and beds with his fellows on the broad open shoals for safety.  But the east winds blow; and the shoals are a yeasty mass of tumbling breakers.  They buffet him about; they twist his gay feathers; they dampen his pinions, spite of his skill in swimming.  Then he goes to the creeks and harbors.

Along the shore a flock of his own kind, apparently, are feeding in quiet water.  Straight in he comes with unsuspecting soul, the morning light shining full on his white breast and bright red feet as he steadies himself to take the water.  But bang, bang! go the guns; and splash, splash! fall his companions; and out of a heap of seaweed come a man and a dog; and away he goes, sadly puzzled at the painted things in the water, to think it all over in hunger and sorrow.

Then the weather grows cold, and a freeze-up covers all his feeding grounds.  Under his beautiful feathers the bones project to spoil the contour of his round plump body.  He is famished now; he watches the gulls to see what they eat.  When he finds out, he forgets his caution, and roams about after stray mussels on the beach.  In the spring hunger drives him into the ponds where food is plenty—­but such food!  In a week his flesh is so strong that a crow would hardly eat it.  Altogether, it is small wonder that as soon as his instinct tells him the streams of the North are open and the trout running up, he is off to a land of happier memories.

In summer he forgets his hardships.  His life is peaceful as a meadow brook.  His home is the wilderness—­on a lonely lake, it may be, shimmering under the summer sun, or kissed into a thousand smiling ripples by the south wind.  Or perhaps it is a forest river, winding on by wooded hills and grassy points and lonely cedar swamps.  In secret shallow bays the young broods are plashing about, learning to swim and dive and hide in safety.  The plunge