chose the wildest and most lonely looking places he could find, as
far as possible from the homes of men, but even then he was never
careless. He would lead us around back and forth over the place
he had chosen, and we would all look with all our might for signs
of danger. If we saw none, we would drop down a little nearer and
a little nearer. But with all our watchfulness, we never could be
sure, absolutely sure, that all was safe. Sometimes those terrible
two-legged creatures would be hiding in the very middle of the
wildest, most lonely looking marshes. They would be covered with
grass so that we couldn't see them. Then, as we flew over them,
would come the bang, bang, bang, bang of terrible guns, and always
some of our flock would drop. We would have to leave them behind,
for we knew if we wanted to live we must get beyond the reach of
those terrible guns. So we would fly our hardest. It was awful,
just simply awful!"

Mrs. Quack paused and shuddered, and Peter Rabbit and Jerry Muskrat
shuddered in sympathy.

"Sometimes we would have to try three or four feeding-places before
we found one where there were no terrible guns. And when we did
find one, we would be so tired and frightened that we couldn't
enjoy our food, and we didn't dare to sleep without some one on
watch all the time. It was like that every day. The farther we got,
the worse it became. Our flock grew smaller and smaller. Those who
escaped the terrible guns would be so frightened that they would
forget to follow their leader and would fly in different directions
and later perhaps join other flocks. So it was that when at last we
reached the place in the sunny Southland for which we had started,
Mr. Quack and I were alone. What became of our twelve children I