This was my last day of liberty for many, many months. The very next
evening I was stunned by a stone thrown by a small boy who accompanied
a hunter. Picking me up he ran toward his father, who was coming back
from the neighboring swamp with his loaded gamebag.

"This bird isn't dead," said the boy, holding me up to view, "and I'm
going to put it in a cage and train it to talk."

"Crows are the kind that talk. That's no crow nor no starling
neither," answered the man. "Better give it to me to kill. I'll pay
you a penny for it."

"Naw, you don't," and the boy drew back, at the same time closing his
hand over me so tightly that I feared I would be crushed. "I'm going
to keep him, I tell ye. He's mine to do what I please with, and I
ain't agoing to sell him for a penny, neither."

So saying he ran along in front of his father till we reached the mule
cart. Into this clumsy vehicle they climbed and soon we were jogging
over the sandy road to their home. As we drove along the man computed,
partly to himself, partly aloud, how much money the contents of his
game-bag would bring him. The result must have been satisfactory, for
presently he observed:

"Purty fair day's wages, but I believe I could make more killing terns
and gulls than these birds. Bill Jones and the hunters up on Cobb's
Island last year got ten cents apiece for all the gulls they killed.
Forty thousand were killed right there. Oh, it's bound to be a mighty
good business for us fellows as long as the wimmen are in the notion,
that is, if the birds ain't all killed off."