For a long while they sat there, alert behind their wall of rustling reeds, watching sky and water. False alarms were not infrequent from their decoys. Sometimes the outbreak of quacking and honking was occasioned by some wandering gull, sometimes by a circling hawk or some eagle loitering in mid-heaven on broad and leisurely wings, reluctant to remain, unwilling to go; sometimes to a pair or two of widgeon or pintails speeding eastward high in the blue. But the sparkling, cloudless hours sped away, and no duck or goose or swan invaded the vicinity. Only one sly old black duck dropped into the reeds far back on the island; and Marche went after him with serious designs upon his fraudulent old life. When the young man returned, twenty minutes later, perfectly innocent of duck murder, he found the girl curled up in her corner of the pit, eyes closed, tired little head cradled in the curve of her left arm. She waked as he slid into the blind, and smiled at him, pretending not to have been asleep. "Did you get him?" "No. He went off at two hundred yards." "Blue-bird weather," she sighed; and again they exchanged smiles. He noticed that her eyes had somehow become exceedingly blue instead of the clear gray which he had supposed was their color. And, after her brief slumber, there seemed to be a sort of dewy freshness about them, and about her slightly pink cheeks, which, at that time, he had no idea were at all perilous to him. All he was conscious of was a sensation of pleasure in looking at her, and a slight surprise in the revelation of elements in her which, he began to decide, constituted real beauty. "That's a quaint expression--'blue-bird weather,'" he said. "It's a perfect description of a spring-like day in winter. Is it a local expression?" "Yes--I think so. There's a song about it, along the coast"--she laughed uncertainly--"a rather foolish song." "What is it?" "If I remember"--she hesitated, thinking for a moment, then, with a laugh which he thought a little bashful--"it's really too silly to repeat!" "Please sing it!" "Very well--if you wish." And in a low, pretty, half-laughing voice, she sang: "Quiet sea and quiet sky, Idle sail and anchored boat, Just a snowflake gull afloat, Drifting like a feather-- And the gray hawk crying, And a man's heart sighing-- That is blue-bird weather:-- And the high hawk crying, And a maid's heart sighing Till lass and lover come together,-- This is blue-bird weather." She turned her head and looked steadily out across the waste of water. "I told you it was silly," she said, very calmly. III Blue-bird weather continued. Every day for a week Marche and Molly Herold put out for Foam Island under summer skies, and with a soft wind filling the sail; and in all the water-world there was no visible sign of winter, save the dead reeds on muddy islands and the far and wintry menace of the Atlantic crashing icily beyond the eastern dunes.