ss, a cross of jet that a lady might wear at her
throat, against the clear, unfathomable blue of the June
heavens--there! he is lost in the blue, so high that I cannot see any
more. But even as I turn away he plunges down into vision again,
dropping with folded wings straight down like a plummet, faster and
faster, larger and larger, through a terrifying rush of air, till I
spring to my feet and catch the breath, as if I myself were falling.
And just before he dashes himself to pieces he turns in the air, head
downward, and half spreads his wings, and goes shooting, slanting down
towards the lake, then up in a great curve to the tree tops, where he
can watch better what Kakagos, the rare woods-raven, is doing, and
what game he is hunting. For that is what Cheplahgan came down in such
a hurry to find out about.

Again he would come in the early morning; sweeping up river as if he
had already been a long day's journey, with the air of far-away and
far-to-go in his onward rush. And if I were at the trout pools, and
very still, I would hear the strong silken rustle of his wings as he
passed. At midday I would see him poised over the highest mountain-top
northward, at an enormous altitude, where the imagination itself could
not follow the splendid sweep of his vision; and at evening he would
cross the lake, moving westward into the sunset on tireless
pinions--always strong, noble, magnificent in his power and
loneliness, a perfect emblem of the great lonely magnificent
wilderness.

One day as I watched him, it swept over me suddenly that forest and
river would be incomplete without him. The thought of this came back
to me, and spared him to the wilderness, on the last occasion when I
went hunting for his life.

That was just after we reached the big lake, where I saw him robbing
the fish-hawk. After much searching and watching I found a great log
by the outlet where Old Whitehead often perched. There was a big eddy
hard by, on the edge of a shallow, and he used to sit on the log,
waiting for fish to come out where he could wade in and get them.
There was a sickness among the suckers that year (it comes regularly
every few years, as among rabbits), and they would come struggling out
of the deep water to rest on the sand, only to be caught by the minks
and fish-hawks and bears and Old Whitehead, all of whom were waiting
and hungry for fish.

For several days I put a big bait of trout and whitefish on the edge
of the shal