contemplation; nor the impassive kingfisher--an ornithological
Marius--reviewing the desolate expanse; nor the black raven that went to
and fro over the face of the marsh continually, but evidently couldn't
make up his mind whether the waters had subsided, and felt low-spirited
in the reflection that, after all this trouble, he wouldn't be able to
give a definite answer. On the contrary, it was evident at a glance that
the dreary expanse of Dedlow Marsh told unpleasantly on the birds, and
that the season of migration was looked forward to with a feeling
of relief and satisfaction by the full-grown, and of extravagant
anticipation by the callow, brood. But if Dedlow Marsh was cheerless
at the slack of the low tide, you should have seen it when the tide was
strong and full. When the damp air blew chilly over the cold, glittering
expanse, and came to the faces of those who looked seaward like another
tide; when a steel-like glint marked the low hollows and the sinuous
line of slough; when the great shell-incrusted trunks of fallen trees
arose again, and went forth on their dreary, purposeless wanderings,
drifting hither and thither, but getting no farther toward any goal
at the falling tide or the day's decline than the cursed Hebrew in the
legend; when the glossy ducks swung silently, making neither ripple nor
furrow on the shimmering surface; when the fog came in with the tide and
shut out the blue above, even as the green below had been obliterated;
when boatmen lost in that fog, paddling about in a hopeless way, started
at what seemed the brushing of mermen's fingers on the boat's keel, or
shrank from the tufts of grass spreading around like the floating hair
of a corpse, and knew by these signs that they were lost upon Dedlow
Marsh and must make a night of it, and a gloomy one at that--then you
might know something of Dedlow Marsh at high water.

Let me recall a story connected with this latter view which never failed
to recur to my mind in my long gunning excursions upon Dedlow Marsh.