I sank down on the hay, and watched him melt into the grayness. I was alone in the dim marsh. There was no wind, no sound but the far-off whistle and rush of a train. I lay there and thought of nothing. I let myself be absorbed into the twilight. I did not even feel that I had a soul. I was nothing but a point of consciousness in the midst of a gray infinity. Suddenly I was aware of a sound--a rapid pulsing of soft, high tone--too soft for a whistle, too high for a song,--pervasive, elusive; it was overhead, it was beside me, behind me, where? Ah--it was wings! The winnowing of wings! I half rose, grasping my gun, with a sense of responsibility to Jonathan. But my vision was caught in the grayness as in a web. The sound grew clearer, then fainter, then it passed away. The twilight gathered, and the fog partly dissolved. A fine rain began to fall, and in the intense silence I could hear the faint pricking of the drops on the stiff marsh stubble. I had thought the patter of rain on a roof was the stillest sound I knew, but this was stiller. Again came the winnowing of wings--again and again; and sometimes I was able to see the dark shapes passing overhead and vanishing almost before they appeared. Now and then I heard the muffled, flat sound of Jonathan's gun--he was evidently living up to his opportunities better than I was. Occasionally, in a spasm of activity, I shot too. Until night closed in about us that sound of wings filled the air, and I knelt, listening and watching. It is strange how one can be physically alert while yet one's soul is withdrawn, quiet and receptive. Out of this state, as out of a trance, I was roused by the sense of Jonathan's dim bulk, seeming "larger than mortal," as he emerged from the night. "Cold?" he said. "I don't know--no, of course I'm not." I found it hard to lay hold on clear ideas again. "I heard you shoot. Get any?" "I think I hurried them a little." We started back. At least I suppose it was back, because after a while we came to the road we had left. I was conscious only of bewildering patches of snow that lay like half-veiled moonlight on the dark stretches of the marsh. At last a clump of cedars made themselves felt rather than seen. "There's the fence corner! We're all right," said Jonathan. A snow-filled horse rut gave faint guidance, the twigs of the hedgerow lightly felt of our faces as we passed. We found the main road, and it led us through the quiet, fog-bound village, whose house lights made tiny blurs on the mist, to the hot, bright little station. Then came the close, flaringly lighted car, and people--commuters--getting on and off, talking about the "weather," and filling the car with the smell of wet newspapers and umbrellas. We had returned to the land of "weather." Yet it did not really touch us. It seemed a dream. The reality was the marsh, with its fog and its pricking raindrops and its sentinel cedars, its silence and its wings.