Of all the broods I have met in the wilderness, only one, I think, ever grew to recognize me and my canoe a bit, so as to fear me less than another.  It was on a little lake in the heart of the woods, where we lingered long on our journey, influenced partly by the beauty of the place, and partly by the fact that two or three bears roamed about there, which I sometimes met at twilight on the lake shore.  The brood were as wild as other broods; but I met them often, and they sometimes found the canoe lying motionless and harmless near them, without quite knowing how it came there.  So after a few days they looked at me with curiosity and uneasiness only, unless I came too near.

There were six in the brood.  Five were hardy little fellows that made the water boil behind them as they scurried across the lake.  But the sixth was a weakling.  He had been hurt, by a hawk perhaps, or a big trout, or a mink; or he had swallowed a bone; or maybe he was just a weak little fellow with no accounting for it.  Whenever the brood were startled, he struggled bravely a little while to keep up; then he always fell behind.  The mother would come back, and urge, and help him; but it was of little use.  He was not strong enough; and the last glimpse I always had of them was a foamy wake disappearing round a distant point, while far in the rear was a ripple where the little fellow still paddled away, doing his best pathetically.

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One afternoon the canoe glided round a point and ran almost up to the brood before they saw it, giving them a terrible fright.  Away they went on the instant, putter, putter, putter, lifting themselves almost out of water with the swift-moving feet and tiny wings.  The mother bird took wing, returned and crossed the bow of the canoe, back and forth, with loud quackings.  The weakling was behind as usual; and in a sudden spirit of curiosity or perversity—­for I really had a good deal of sympathy for the little fellow—­I shot the canoe forward, almost up to him.  He tried to dive; got tangled in a lily stem in his fright; came up, flashed under again; and I saw him come up ten feet away in some grass, where he sat motionless and almost invisible amid the pads and yellow stems.

How frightened he was!  Yet how still he sat!  Whenever I took my eyes from him a moment I had to hunt again, sometimes two or three minutes, before I could see him there.

Meanwhile the brood went almost to the opposite shore before they stopped, and the mother, satisfied at last by my quietness, flew over and lit among them.  She had not seen the little one.  Through the glass I saw her flutter round and round them, to be quite sure they were all there.  Then she missed him.  I could see it all in her movements.  She must have clucked, I think, for the young suddenly disappeared, and she came swimming rapidly back over the way they had come, looking, looking everywhere.  Round the canoe she went at a safe distance, searching among the grass and lily pads, calling him softly to come out.  But he was very near the canoe, and very much frightened; the only effect of her calls was to make him crouch closer against the grass stems, while the bright little eyes, grown large with fear, were fastened on me.