tree-top, and I could gain no foothold, from which to look over and
see the eaglets, without tearing the nest to pieces. I did not want to
do that, and I doubted whether the mother-eagle would stand it. A
dozen times she seemed on the point of dropping on my head to tear it
with her talons; but always she veered off as I looked up quietly, and
Old Whitehead, with the mark of my bullet strong upon him, swept
between her and me and seemed to say, "Wait, wait. I don't understand;
but he can kill us if he will--and the little ones are in his power."
Now he was closer to me than ever, and the fear was vanishing. But so
also was the fierceness.

From the foot of the tree the crevice in which it grew led upwards to
the right, then doubled back to the ledge above the nest, upon which
Cheplahgan was standing when I discovered him. The lip of this crevice
made a dizzy path that one might follow by moving crabwise, his face
to the cliff, with only its roughnesses to cling to with his fingers.
I tried it at last, crept up and out twenty feet, and back ten, and
dropped with a great breath of relief to a broad ledge covered with
bones and fish scales, the relics of many a savage feast. Below me,
almost within reach, was the nest, with two dark, scraggly young birds
resting on twigs and grass, with fish, flesh and fowl in a gory,
skinny, scaly ring about them--the most savage-looking household into
which I ever looked unbidden.

But even as I looked and wondered, and tried to make out what other
game had been furnished the young savages I had helped to feed, a
strange thing happened, which touched me as few things ever have among
the wild creatures. The eagles had followed me close along the last
edge of rock, hoping no doubt in their wild hearts that I would slip,
and end their troubles, and give my body as food to the young. Now, as
I sat on the ledge, peering eagerly into the nest, the great
mother-bird left me and hovered over her eaglets, as if to shield them
with her wings from even the sight of my eyes. But Old Whitehead still
circled over me. Lower he came, and lower, till with a supreme effort
of daring he folded his wings and dropped to the ledge beside me,
within ten feet, and turned and looked into my eyes. "See," he seemed
to say, "we are within reach again. You touched me once; I don't know
how or why. Here I am now, to touch or to kill, as you will; only
spare the little ones."

A moment later the mother-bird dropp