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 was no protection from surrounding trees.  He was bending the rank grass with his cudgel, and thinking of the shade the denser swamp afforded, when he suddenly dodged sidewise; the cudgel whistled sharply through the air and Freckles sprang back.

From the clear sky above him, first level with his face, then skimming, dipping, tilting, whirling until it struck, quill down, in the path in front of him, came a glossy, iridescent, big black feather.  As it touched the ground, Freckles snatched it up with almost a continuous movement facing the sky.  There was not a tree of any size in a large open space.  There was no wind to carry it.  From the clear sky it had fallen, and Freckles, gazing eagerly into the arch of June blue with a few lazy clouds floating high in the sea of ether, had neither mind nor knowledge to dream of a bird hanging as if frozen there.  He turned the big quill questioningly, and again his awed eyes swept the sky.

“A feather dropped from Heaven!” he breathed reverently.  “Are the holy angels moulting?  But no; if they were, it would be white.  Maybe all the angels are not for being white.  What if the angels of God are white and those of the devil are black?  But a black one has no business up there.  Maybe some poor black angel is so tired of being punished it’s for slipping to the gates, beating its wings trying to make the Master hear!”

Again and again Freckles searched the sky, but there was no answering gleam of golden gates, no form of sailing bird; then he went slowly on his way, turning the feather and wondering about it.  It was a wing quill, eighteen inches in length, with a heavy spine, gray at the base, shading to jet black at the tip, and it caught the play of the sun’s rays in slanting gleams of green and bronze.  Again Freckles’ “old man of the sea” sat sullen and heavy on his shoulders and weighted him down until his step lagged and his heart ached.