The tide was out, and the miles on miles of naked red mud flats shone like burnished copper beneath the flaming sunset. Along high-water mark, as far as the eye could see, ran an interminable line of dyke, fencing from the fury of the spring tides the vast pallid expanse of the marshes just filming with the light green of early spring. At one point the rampart of the dyke, following a crook in the low coastline, thrust the blunt apex of a spacious angle far out into the sheen of the mud-flats. In this corner, partly hidden by a tangle of dry brown mullein stalks, crouched a man with a gun, peering out across the flats and scanning the sky towards the southwest. Behind him, dotting the well-drained marsh with patches of shimmering light, stretched a chain of shallow, sedgy meres. In the centre of the nearest one a tall blue heron, motionless as if painted on a Japanese screen, stood watching and waiting to spear some unwary frog.
Steve Barron, owner of the little farm on the uplands half a mile back, and of the section of
