e hanging nest.

But every second brought also the scout nearer to the hanging nest. Up,
up he went, now straddling some bending limb, now swinging himself with
lightning agility to one above. Once, crawling on a horizontal branch,
he slid over and hung beneath it, like an opossum.

Twisting and wriggling his way out of this predicament, he scrambled on,
handing himself from branch to branch, and once losing his foothold and
hanging by one hand.

Tom Slade watched spellbound, as the agile form ascended, using every
physical device and disregarding every danger. More than once Tom almost
shuddered at the chances which his young companion took upon some
perilously slender limb. Once, the impulse seized him to call a warning,
but he refrained from a kind of inspired confidence in that young
dare-devil who by now seemed a mere speck of brown moving in and out of
the darkened green above him. Once he was on the point of shouting
advice to Hervey about what to do in the unlikely event of his reaching
the nest before the eagle, or in the more serious contingency of an
encounter with that armed warrior.

For, thrilled as he was at the young scout's agility and fine abandon,
he was yet doubtful of Hervey's power of deliberation and presence of
mind. But no one could advise a creature capable of being carried away
in a very frenzy of nervous enthusiasm, and Tom, sober and sensible,
knew this. Hervey Willetts would do this thing or crash his brains out,
one or the other, and no one could help or hinder him.

Amid the crackling sound of breaking limbs and a shower of leaves and
smaller twigs, the mighty bird of prey, extricating himself from every
obstacle, tore his way into the leafy recess where his little victim
waited, trembling. Every branch seemed agitated by his ruthless,
irresistible advance, and the hanging nest swayed upon its slender
branch, as the cruel talons of the intruder fixed themselves in the
yielding bark. The weight of the monster bird upon the very branch which
his little victim had chosen for a home caused it to bend almost to the
breaking point, and the hanging nest, agitated by the shock, swung low
near the end of the curving bough.

[Illustration: HERVEY SAVES THE LITTLE BIRD FROM THE EAGLE.

_Tom Slade on Mystery Trail. Page_ 42]

That was bad strategy on the part of the invader. As the end of the
bough descended under his weight, there was the appalling sound of a
splitting branch, which made To