It was early afternoon. Through the study window I looked out upon a raw, foggy world, melting snow underfoot and overhead. It was the kind of day about which even the most deliberately cheerful can find little to say except that this sort of thing can't last forever, you know. However, if I had had a true instinct for "nature," I should, I suppose, have seen at a glance that it was just the day to go and lie in a marsh. But this did not occur to me. Instead, I thought of open fires, and popcorn, and hot peanuts, and novels, and fudge, and other such things, which are supposed to be valuable as palliatives on days like these. The telephone rang. "Oh, it's you, Jonathan!... What? No, not really! You wouldn't!... Well, if the ducks like it, they may have it all. I'm not a duck.... Why, of course, if you really want me to, I'll go, only.... All right, I'll get out the things.... Three o'clock train? You'll have to hurry!" I hung up the receiver and sat a moment, dazed, looking out at the reek of weather. Then I shook myself and darted upstairs to the hunting-closet. In half an hour the bag was packed and Jonathan was at the door. In an hour we were on the train, and at twilight we were tramping out into a fog-swept marsh. Grayness was all around us; underfoot was mud, glimmering patches of soft snow, and the bristly stubble of the close-cut marsh grass. "What fools we are!" I murmured. "Why?" said Jonathan contentedly. "Oh, if you can't see--" I said. And then, suddenly, as we walked, my whole attitude changed. The weather, as weather, seemed something that belonged in a city--very far away, and no concern of mine. This wasn't weather, here where we walked; it was a gray and boundless world of mystery. We raised our heads high and breathed long, deep breaths as the fog drifted against our faces. We were aware of dim masses of huddling bushes, blurred outlines of sheds and fences. Then only the level marsh stretched out before us and around us. "Can we find our way out again?" I murmured, though without real anxiety. "Probably," said Jonathan. "Isn't it great! You feel as if you had a soul out here! By the way, what was it you said about fools?" "I forget," I said. We went on and on, I don't know just where or how long, until we came to the creek, where the tide sets in and out. I should have walked into it if Jonathan hadn't held me back. As we followed it, there rose a hoarse, raucous "_Ngwak! ngwak! ngwak!_" and a great rush of wings. Jonathan dropped on one knee, gun up, but we saw nothing. "We'll settle down here," he said. "There'll be more coming in soon. Wait a minute--hold my gun." He disappeared in the fog, and came back with an armful of hay, taken from the heart of a haystack of whose existence he seemed, by some sixth or seventh sense, to be aware. "There! That'll keep you off the real marsh. Now settle down, and don't move, and listen with all your ears, and be ready. I'll go off a little way."