With his teeth buried in the leg he looked across at David.

David had eaten duck before; that is, he had eaten of the family _anas boschas_ disguised in thick gravies and highbrow sauces, but this duck that he ate at Thoreau's table was like no other duck that he had ever tasted in all his life.

He began with misgivings at the three-pound carcass, and he ended with an entirely new feeling of stuffed satisfaction.

He explored at will into its structure, and he found succulent morsels which he had never dreamed of as existing in this particular bird, for his experience had never before gone beyond a leg of duck and thinly carved slices of breast of duck, at from eighty cents to a dollar and a quarter an order.

He would have been ashamed of himself when he had finished had it not been that Father Roland seemed only at the beginning, and was turning the vigour of his attack from duck to rabbit and onion.