fowls, which was more than we had seen West of us — and now and again a family cat dozing on some doorstep freshly swept.

“I had forgotten there was such calm and peace in the world,” said Boyd. “And the women look not unkindly on us — do you think, Loskiel?”

But I was intent on watching a parcel of white ducks leaving a little pond, all walking a-row and quacking, and wriggling their fat tails. How absurd a thing to suddenly close my throat so that I could not find my voice to answer Boyd; for ever before me grew the almost forgotten vision of Guy Park, and of our white waterfowl on the river behind the house, where I had seen them so often from my chamber window leaving the water’s edge at sundown.