The things we do!

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.


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