For a time he gained prestige with Irene Straley, especially as he gave her bright feathers now and then, an oriole's gilded mourning, or a tanager's scarlet vesture. One day Drury Boldin was at her porch when Ed came in from across the river with a brace of duck. "You can have these for your dinner to-morrow, Reny," he said, as he laid the limp, silky bodies on the porch floor. Their bills and feet were grotesque, but there was something about their throats, stretched out in waning iridescence, that asked for regret. "Oh, much obliged!" Irene cried. "That's awful nice of you, Eddie. Duck cook awful good." And then her enthusiasm ebbed, for she caught the look of Drury Boldin as he bent down and stroked the glossy mantle of the birds, not with zest for their flavor, nor envy of the skill that had fetched them from the sky, but with sorrow for their ended careers, for the miracle gone out of their wings, and the strange fact that they had once quawked and chirruped in the high air and on hidden waters--and would never fly or swim again. "I wonder if they had souls," he mumbled. Eddie Crosson winked at Irene. There was no use getting mad at Drury. Eddie only laughed: "'Course not, you darn galoot!" "How do you know?" Drury asked. "Anybody knows that much," was Crosson's sufficient answer, and Drury changed to another topic. He asked: "Did it hurt 'em much to die?" "'Course not," Eddie answered, promptly. "Not the way I got 'em. They just stopped sailin' and dropped. I lost one, though. He was goin' like sixty when I drew bead on him. Light wasn't any too good and I just nipped one wing. You ought to seen him turning somersets, Reny. He lit in a swampy spot, though, and I couldn't find him. I hunted for an hour or more, but I couldn't find him and it was growin' dark, so I come home." Drury spoke up quickly: "You didn't kill him?" "I don't guess so. He was workin' mighty hard when he flopped." "Oh, that's terrible!" Drury groaned. "He must be layin' out there now somewheres--sufferin'. Oh, that's terrible!" "Aw, what's it your business?" was Crosson's gruff comment. But there was uneasiness in his tone, for Drury had set Irene to wringing her hands nervously, and Crosson felt a trifle uncomfortable himself. Twilight always made him susceptible to emotions that daylight blinded him to, as to the stars. He remembered that boyhood emotion now in his pulpit, and his shoulder-blades twitched; an icy finger seemed to have written something on them. He was casting up his eyes and his hands in a familiar gesture and quoting a familiar text: "'Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust.'" From the roof of the church he seemed to see that wounded wild duck falling, turning in air, striking at the air frantically with his good wing and feebly with the one that bled. Down he fell, struggling somewhere among the pews.