streak that was growing along the distant
eastern sea-line.

The great birds were racked with hunger. Even the nestlings, to meet the
petitions of whose gaping beaks they stinted themselves without mercy,
felt meagre and uncomforted. Day after day the parent birds had fished
almost in vain; day after day their wide and tireless hunting had
brought them scant reward. The schools of alewives, mackerel, and
herring seemed to shun their shores that spring. The rabbits seemed to
have fled from all the coverts about their mountain.

The mother eagle, larger and of mightier wing than her mate, looked as
if she had met with misadventure. Her plumage was disordered. Her eyes,
fiercely and restlessly anxious, at moments grew dull as if with
exhaustion. On the day before, while circling at her viewless height
above a lake far inland, she had marked a huge lake-trout, basking near
the surface of the water. Dropping upon it with half-closed, hissing
wings, she had fixed her talons in its back. But the fish had proved too
powerful for her. Again and again it had dragged her under water, and
she had been almost drowned before she could unloose the terrible grip
of her claws. Hardly, and late, had she beaten her way back to the
mountain-top.

And now the pale streak in the east grew ruddy. Rust-red stains and
purple, crawling fissures began to show on the rocky face of the peak. A
piece of scarlet cloth, woven among the fagots of the nest, glowed like
new blood in the increasing light. And presently a wave of rose appeared
to break and wash down over the summit, as the rim of the sun came above
the horizon.

The male eagle stretched his head far out over the depth, lifted his
wings and screamed harshly, as if in greeting of the day. He paused a
moment in that position, rolling his eye upon the nest. Then his head
went lower, his wings spread wider, and he launched himself smoothly and
swiftly into the abyss of air as a swimmer glides into the sea. The
female watched him, a faint wraith of a bird darting through the gloom,
till presently, completing his mighty arc, he rose again into the full
light of the morning. Then on level, all but moveless wing, he sailed
away toward the horizon.

As the sun rose higher and higher, the darkness began to melt on the
tops of the lower hills and to diminish on the slopes of the upland
pastures, lingering in the valleys as the snow delays there in spring.
As point by point the landscape uncovere