There we stand on the stones, side by side, Bashan and I, and there, two paces from us, in insolent security, the duck sways lightly upon the waves, with her bill pressed in pretentious dignity against her breast, and though stormed at by Bashan’s maddened voice, absolutely undisturbed in her serenity, soberness, and common sense. She keeps rowing against the current, so that she remains approximately in about the same spot. For all that she is drawn a little down-stream. Only a yard or two from her there is a whirlpool, a beautiful foaming cascade towards which she turns her conceited and upstanding tail. Bashan barks and braces his forefeet against the stones, and inwardly I bark with him, for I cannot forbear sharing some of his feelings of hatred against the duck and her cool, insolent, matter-of-factness, and so I hope that evil may overtake her. “Pay at least some attention to our barking,” is the mental speech I hurl at her, “and not to the rapids, so that you may be drawn by accident into the whirlpool and thus expose yourself to danger and discomfiture before our eyes.” But this angry hope of mine is also doomed to remain unfulfilled, for precisely at the moment when she nears the edge of the cascade in the stream, the duck flutters a bit and flies a few yards upstream and sits down in the water once more—the shameless hussy! I am unable to think of the vexation with which we both contemplate the duck under these circumstances without recalling to mind an adventure which I shall recount at the close. It was attended by a certain satisfaction for me and my companion, and yet there was something painful in it, something disturbing and confusing. Yes, it even led to a temporary chill in the relationship between Bashan and myself, and could I have foreseen this, I would rather have avoided the spot where this adventure awaited us. It was a good distance out and down-stream, and beyond the ferryman’s house—there where the wilderness of the river bank approaches close to the upper road along the river. We were going along this, I with a leisurely step, and Bashan, a trifle in front of me, with an easy and somewhat lop-sided lope. He had been chasing a rabbit, or, if you prefer, had permitted himself to be chased by him. He had also routed out three or four pheasants and was now graciously minded to pay a little attention to me, so that his master might not feel utterly neglected. A small bevy of ducks with extended necks and in triangular formation flew over the river. They were flying pretty high and closer to the other bank than to ours, so that we could not consider them as game at all, so far as hunting purposes were concerned. They flew in the direction in which we were walking, without regarding us or even being aware of our presence, and we too merely cast a desultory and intentionally indifferent glance at them.