Frog was awake yet, and if the sweet singers of the Smiling Pool
had begun their wonderful spring chorus.

Down the Crooked Little Path cross the Green Meadows he tramped,
and as he drew near the Smiling Pool, he stopped whistling lest
the sound should frighten some of the little people there. He was
still some distance from the Smiling Pool when out of it sprang a
big bird and on swift, whistling wings flew away in the direction
of the Big River. Farmer Brown's boy stopped and watched until the
bird had disappeared, and on his face was a look of great surprise.

"As I live, that was a Duck!" he exclaimed. "That is the first time
I've ever known a wild Duck to be in the Smiling Pool. I wonder
what under the sun could have brought her over here."

Just then there was a distant bang in the direction of the Big River.
Farmer Brown's boy scowled, and it made his face very angry-looking.
"That's it," he muttered. "Hunters are shooting the Ducks on their
way north and have driven the poor things to look for any little
mudhole where they can get a little rest. Probably that Duck has
been shot at so many times on the Big River that she felt safer
over here in the Smiling Pool, little as it is."

Farmer Brown's boy had guessed exactly right, as you and I know, and
as Peter Rabbit and Jerry Muskrat knew. "It's a shame, a downright
shame that any one should want to shoot birds on their way to their
nesting-grounds and that the law should let them if they do want
to. Some people haven't any hearts; they're all stomachs. I hope
that fellow who shot just now over there on the Big River didn't
hit anything, and I wish that gun of his might have kicked a little