stepping on some slightly raised portion of it. And now there is a glimpse of the wealth of bird life. On and about the lagoon, all over the surface, fowl are swimming and paddling. One lot are coots, clicking and clanking. Over them, high up, a marsh harrier, the duck-hawk of the marshes, is sailing. He comes lower- lower yet- he is near enough and pounces. The coots are as ready for him as he for them, and as he pounces, with a loud clank they flirt the water up, enough to swamp him, before they dive. The marsh folks have always a reason for their local names of the birds; they call him the coot-teaser. The fowl do not, however, always escape him so easily. Green plovers, pewits, are all round about, screaming and squeaking out their mournful pewit-weet, weet, pewit-weet. They have their young with them, and as Den passes quite near, they go through their clever broken wing and leg performance, even falling to the ground in a dying state. No need for it all; he does not intend to molest them. As he proceeds a redshank or pool snipe comes to meet him, yelping his loudest, starting up a couple of hares from the mole hillocks. These hillocks are covered with fine herbage, the best feed in the marshes. One farmer there had all his land levelled; he was not the first to do so; and even now many a one is ignorant that the long-nosed little Hercules, the mole, is a good friend to the farmer or stock-grazier, making the ground fruitful by his labours. The herons do not frequent this part; the water is too deep for them. It is not brackish here; still it is unfit for drinking, flat and soft to the taste. The fresh streams that run into the flats from the higher grounds filter through the spongy soil and fill this large hollow. From this again it filters through to the dykes near the sea-wall. The brooks that find their way here are to all appearance rapid ones, and you would expect them to be full of fish, but it is not so. We have searched them: plenty of long green weeds are there, but all our pains only resulted in sticklebacks, or, as they call them there, crow-fish. The streams that run from the water-meads down to the salt water, on the contrary, have plenty of eels and flounders. The head of these streams was one of the favourite resorts of Den's boyhood; he got many a quilting for going there. It was a water-lane--a public way for any cart horse or cow that the owners might think fit to take there as wide as an ordinary road; high and very steep banks were on either side, covered with ash and alder. All sorts of tangle flourished close to the water, which was never more than a foot deep, and in some places not so deep. Water-cress, and a thick growing plant they called water-parsley, covered the bottom, except where the current had made a clear lane through the middle. One day Den was going through this with the miller's son, when a fine silverbellied eel dashed out from the weeds where he had been concealed; they could follow his course for a long way down the clear bed of the stream. This excited Den; but when his companion told him not only eels in plenty but also dabchicks were to be caught, the temptation was too much for him, and he quietly planned an exploring expedition with one or two companions whom he knew to be always ready for sport. They started from home on a morning fixed upon between themselves, trim and neat, as their mothers liked to send them to school; but instead of going there, they hurried away up the water-lane to capture dabchicks and big eels. The plan of campaign was that two were to pull up the weeds and water-cress by the roots, and the other two were to catch the eels as fast as they were dislodged. But, alas! the eels bolted out between the small hands and legs so fast, that they were only as so many flashes of light in the eyes of their would-be captors; and in their eagerness they only fell over each other in the water. Then they fought all round because the job had not gone off as they expected. The uprooted weeds floating down the main stream told their own tale; and when the four boys found their way back to the starting-point, their mothers were awaiting them there. I will draw a veil over what followed. To be "quilted" by their fathers was bad, but there was a humiliation about the whipping from the maternal hand which is not easily described. In spite of chastisement, as the four grew older they gained experience. Dabchick or water-rail both had to look alive when they were on the hunt; and when the gates of the tidal mill-pond were up, few flounders or eels escaped their spears. The younger children idolised Den and his friends, for they used to carry them on their shoulders through the swamps, and make |