beautiful, when at the slight noise up raised four tiny baby heads with
wide-open mouths, uttering hunger cries. Freckles stepped back. The
brown bird alighted on the edge and closed one cavity with a wiggling
green worm, while not two minutes later the blue filled another with
a white. That settled it. The blue and brown were mates. Once again
Freckles repeated his "How I wish I knew!"

Around the bridge spanning Sleepy Snake Creek the swale spread widely,
the timber was scattering, and willows, rushes, marsh-grass, and
splendid wild flowers grew abundantly. Here lazy, big, black water
snakes, for which the creek was named, sunned on the bushes, wild ducks
and grebe chattered, cranes and herons fished, and muskrats plowed the
bank in queer, rolling furrows. It was always a place full of interest,
so Freckles loved to linger on the bridge, watching the marsh and water
people. He also transacted affairs of importance with the wild flowers
and sweet marsh-grass. He enjoyed splashing through the shallow pools on
either side of the bridge.

Then, too, where the creek entered the swamp was a place of unusual
beauty. The water spread in darksome, mossy, green pools. Water-plants
and lilies grew luxuriantly, throwing up large, rank, green leaves.
Nowhere else in the Limberlost could be found frog-music to equal
that of the mouth of the creek. The drumming and piping rolled in
never-ending orchestral effect, while the full chorus rang to its
accompaniment throughout the season.

Freckles slowly followed the path leading from the bridge to the line.
It was the one spot at which he might relax his vigilance. The boldest
timber thief the swamp ever had known would not have attempted to enter
it by the mouth of the creek, on account of the water and because there