Farther along, in the highway,--a sandy track, with wastes of scrub on
either side,--boy of eight or nine, armed with a double-barreled gun,
was lingering about a patch of dwarf oaks and palmettos. "Haven't got
that rabbit yet, eh?" said I. (I had passed him there on my way out, and
he had told me what he was after.)

"No, sir," he answered.

"I don't believe there's any rabbit there."

"Yes, there is, sir; I saw one a little while ago, but he got away
before I could get pretty near."

"Good!" I thought. "Here is a grammarian. Not one boy in ten in this
country but would have said 'I seen.'" A scholar like this was worth
talking with. "Are there many rabbits here?" I asked.

"Yes, sir, there's a good deal."

And so, by easy mental stages, I was clear of the swamp and back in the
town,--saved from the horrible, and delivered to the commonplace and
the dreary.

My best days in Sanford were two that I spent on the river above the
lake. A youthful boatman, expert alike with the oar and the gun, served
me faithfully and well, impossible as it was for him to enter fully into
the spirit of a man who wanted to look at birds, but not to kill them. I
think he had never before seen a customer of that breed. First he rowed
me up the "creek," under promise to show me alligators, moccasins, and
no lack of birds, including the especially desired purple gallinule. The