On the line side he left the bushes thick for concealment, entering by a narrow path he and Duncan had cleared in setting up the case.  He called this the front door, though he used every precaution to hide it.  He built rustic seats between several of the trees, leveled the floor, and thickly carpeted it with rank, heavy, woolly-dog moss.  Around the case he planted wild clematis, bittersweet, and wild-grapevines, and trained them over it until it was almost covered.  Every day he planted new flowers, cut back rough bushes, and coaxed out graceful ones.  His pride in his room was very great, but he had no idea how surprisingly beautiful it would appear to anyone who had not witnessed its growth and construction.

This morning Freckles walked straight to his case, unlocked it, and set his apparatus and dinner inside.  He planted a new specimen he had found close the trail, and, bringing his old scrap-bucket from the corner in which it was hidden, from a near-by pool he dipped water to pour over his carpet and flowers.

Then he took out the bird book, settled comfortably on a bench, and with a deep sigh of satisfaction turned to the section headed.  “V.”  Past “veery” and “vireo” he went, down the line until his finger, trembling with eagerness, stopped at “vulture.”

“‘Great black California vulture,’” he read.

“Humph!  This side the Rockies will do for us.”

“‘Common turkey-buzzard.’”

“Well, we ain’t hunting common turkeys.  McLean said chickens, and what he says goes.”

“‘Black vulture of the South.’”

“Here we are arrived at once.”

Freckles’ finger followed the line, and he read scraps aloud.

“’Common in the South.  Sometimes called Jim Crow.  Nearest equivalent to C-a-t-h-a-r-t-e-s A-t-r-a-t-a.’”

“How the divil am I ever to learn them corkin’ big words by mesel’?”

“’—­the Pharaoh’s Chickens of European species.  Sometimes stray north as far as Virginia and Kentucky——­’”

“And sometimes farther,” interpolated Freckles, “’cos I got them right here in Indiana so like these pictures I can just see me big chicken bobbing up to get his ears boxed.  Hey?”

“’Light-blue eggs’——­”

“Golly!  I got to be seeing them!”

“’—­big as a common turkey’s, but shaped like a hen’s, heavily splotched with chocolate——­’”

“Caramels, I suppose.  And——­”

“‘—­in hollow logs or stumps.’”

“Oh, hagginy!  Wasn’t I barking up the wrong tree, though?  Ought to been looking close the ground all this time.  Now it’s all to do over, and I suspect the sooner I start the sooner I’ll be likely to find them.”

Freckles put away his book, dampened the smudge-fire, without which the mosquitoes made the swamp almost unbearable, took his cudgel and lunch, and went to the line.  He sat on a log, ate at dinner-time and drank his last drop of water.  The heat of June was growing intense.  Even on the west of the swamp, where one had full benefit of the breeze from the upland, it was beginning to be unpleasant in the middle of the day.