While he was thus employed, Sam was engaged in cutting branches from the willows that grew near by, and filling up the gaps the winds had made in the blind they had put up there the year before.
It was built upon the top of a little knoll, about thirty yards from the place where the decoys were anchored, and so completely was it concealed by the tall weeds and grass which grew on every side that anyone who did not know just where to look for it would have hard work to find it.
When their preparations were all completed, the skiff was hidden in a little bay, surrounded by the thicket of willows before spoken of; and the boys, with their guns in their hands, sat down behind their blind, opposite two loopholes, which commanded a view as far up as the point, and talked over the incidents of the morning while waiting for the first flock of ducks to swing to their decoys.
They came to three conclusions concerning the man they had saved from going to the bottom of the river. He was well-to-do in the world, judging by his appearance; he knew something about physical geography, and he was not a proper person to be entrusted with the management of a sail-boat.
Thus far they agreed, and then they began to differ in their opinions.
Sam declared that there was something wrong with his upper story. No man, with a level head on his shoulders, would talk as he did immediately after being rescued from a watery grave.
Oscar, however, had other ideas, and, as it happened, they were correct.
"He is completely wrapped up in his books," said the boy. "Perhaps he does not know much outside of them, but you take him there, and he is perfectly at home. There's more knowledge in that little bald head of his than you and I can ever hope to acquire."
Sam shrugged his shoulders with an air which said, "Perhaps there is, and perhaps there isn't," and just then the discussion was cut short by the appearance of a flock of mallards, which drew to their decoys.
They circled around them once or twice, and were on the point of alighting among them, when one wary old fellow in the flock, not liking the looks of the wooden deceptions, mounted higher into the air with a warning quack. Some of the flock followed him, and others tried to do so, but could not.