"No, madam!" Gwynne turned upon her the glittering eye of an animal at bay. Then he laughed. "I have heard that proposition from every man I have met and daily from my superintendent until I managed to suppress him. I won't have a chicken on the ranch. The sight of them not only fills me with ennui, but I have no intention of presenting your comic papers with material. I could write their jokes myself--'_Gwynne before and after_': Westminster in the background and a hayseed figure in front addressing a constituency of chickens. Stumping the country with eggs in my pockets for the children. Dining the eminent members of my constituency on horse-meat, under the delusion that what is good for chickens is good for votes. 'Leghorn Gwynne.' 'The Member from Chickenville.' No thanks. No weapons that I can withhold." IX "This is all on my ranch," said Isabel; "so there is no danger of being peppered. The rest of the marsh is owned by clubs, and as there was no shooting here last year the ducks should be thicker than anywhere else. We should get our fifty apiece in no time." They were entering a narrow slough, hardly wider than the boat. It cut its zigzag way through the marsh for many miles, and they could follow its course with the eye but a few feet at a time. Gwynne shipped the oars and began to scull, his gun across his knee. Isabel, in front and with her back to him, sat with her own gun ready for a shot. On one side of them was a large piece of marsh-land, on the left, smaller patches, and little islands caught in the long grasping fingers of the tide. Gwynne had attired himself with an ill grace in a pair of his cousin Hiram's rubber boots that completely covered his body below the waist, and an old shooting-coat with capacious pockets. Isabel wore a similar costume, and but for her hair might have been mistaken for a lad. She possessed no interest for Gwynne whatever at the moment. Nor did anything else but the prospect of a new and exciting sport. The October evening was mellow and full of color, the entire reach of the marsh steeped in a golden haze shed from the glory in the west. Even the forests and the lower ridges rising to Tamalpais had something aqueous in their vague outlines, swayed gently in the golden tide. Only the tide lands were green; the very water was yellow. Here and there, but far away, a mast or sail rose above the level surface of the marsh. From the distance came the sound of constant shooting.