"Well, well! No one believed him, of course; but, for Heaven's sake, when you express incredulity again, wait until the lie is finished, if I am in the party!" grumbled La Salle.
"Well, never mind; he got through with the best part of it; and the great wonder is, how a distempered brain could imagine all that impossible but well-connected delusion."
"Kennedy," said La Salle, with unusual gravity, "how can we decide that it is all a delusion? Few men, indeed, have claimed to see the devil, to whom they sell themselves daily for trifles lighter than the hunter's meed of unrivaled success; and who can say that the story of yonder madman is more or less than the fruit of the idle habits and unbridled temper which burned up happiness, and consumed his reason? There are few who go mad who would have done so had they at the first governed and denied themselves, and been content to enjoy in reason the benefits of the great Giver."
"There is much that is true in what you say, and I've got a piece in this very Tribune which bears on that point. I'll read it to you. Hang me if ever I saw the like! Where's Davies' ice-house? Is there a fog coming up, or am I dizzy?"
"O, that's nothing," said La Salle, laughing. "You're only going blind—snow-blind, I mean. You know that Kane tells about his people using goggles to prevent snow-blindness; and you left yours off yesterday and to-day."
"Well, it's a curious thing. I can barely see you now; and I know I could not find my way home to save my life. But what shall I do? Will it last long?"
"If I had but a handkerchief full of clay, I could cure it in half an hour; but lie down in the straw, and get your head under the half-deck, where you can see neither sun nor snow, and I think you will rest yourself enough to see pretty well by the time we want to go home."
But Kennedy was fated to lie in impatient helplessness during the remainder of the afternoon. Several fine flocks came in to the decoys; and La Salle, using the double-barrel first, and firing the huge duck-gun at long range, killed three, and sometimes four, out of each flock, while Kennedy groaned in anguish of spirit. At last he could bear it no longer.
"Keep close, Kennedy; there's another flock coming, and the finest I've seen this year. There's twenty at the least, and they're coming right in."
"Give me my gun, Charley. I can't see much, but I can a little, and I can fire where I hear them call. This is my last day; for Patrick is coming out to-night with the boys, and I go in with them. Where are the birds now?"