m Slade's blood run cold, and he held his
breath in frightful suspense, expecting to see the form of his young
friend come crashing to earth.

But the boy who had ventured out so far upon that straining branch had
swung free of it just in time, and was swinging from the branch above.
The great bird had played into the hands of his dexterous enemy when he
had placed his weight upon the branch above, from which the nest hung.

Hervey could not have trusted his own weight upon that upper branch, and
he knew it. But even had he dared to do this he could not have passed
the enraged bird who stood guard within a yard or two of his little
victim. When the weight of the bird's great body bent the branch down,
Hervey, close in toward the trunk just below, saw his chance. He did not
see the danger.

Scrambling out upon that slender branch, he moved cautiously but with
beating heart, out to a point where the bending branch above was within
his reach. If the eagle had left the branch above, that branch would
have swung out of Hervey's reach and he would have gone crashing to the
ground when his own branch broke. He knew that branch must break under
him. He knew, he _must_ have known, that the chances were at least even
that the eagle would desert the branch above in either assault or
flight.

Hervey's chance was the chance of a moment, and it lay just in this: in
getting far enough out on the branch before it broke to catch the branch
above before it sprang up and away from him. Also he must trust to the
slightly heavier branch above not breaking.

It would be impossible to say by what a narrow squeak he saved himself
in this dare-devil maneuver. His one chance lay in lightning agility.

Yet, first and last, it was an act of fine and desperate
recklessness--the recklessness of a soul possessed and set on one
dominating purpose. This was Hervey Willetts all over. And because he
had a brain and the eagle none or little, he thus used his very enemy to
help him accomplish his purpose.

In that very moment when Tom Slade heard with a shudder the appalling
sound of that splitting branch, something beside the brown nest was also
dangling from the branch which the baffled eagle had suddenly deserted.
Right close to the swaying nest the boy hung, his limbs encircling it,
his two hands locked upon it, trusting to it, just trusting to it. It
bent low in a great sweeping curve, the nest swayed and swung from the
movement of the swing d