glowing face and curly hair through a dusky green frame of boughs, and
then mounting again. "I'm coming to it," he kept exclaiming.

Meanwhile his proceedings seemed to create a sensation among the
feathered house-keepers, one of whom rose and sailed screaming away into
the air. In a moment after there was a swoop of wings, and two eagles
returned and began flapping and screaming about the head of the boy.

Mara, who stood at the foot of the tree, could not see clearly what was
going on, for the thickness of the boughs; she only heard a great
commotion and rattling of the branches, the scream of the birds, and the
swooping of their wings, and Moses's valorous exclamations, as he seemed
to be laying about him with a branch which he had broken off.

At last he descended victorious, with the eggs in his pocket. Mara stood
at the foot of the tree, with her sun-bonnet blown back, her hair
streaming, and her little arms upstretched, as if to catch him if he
fell.

"Oh, I was so afraid!" she said, as he set foot on the ground.

"Afraid? Pooh! Who's afraid? Why, you might know the old eagles couldn't
beat me."

"Ah, well, I know how strong you are; but, you know, I couldn't help it.
But the poor birds,--do hear 'em scream. Moses, don't you suppose they
feel bad?"

"No, they're only mad, to think they couldn't beat me. I beat them just
as the Romans used to beat folks,--I played their nest was a city, and I
spoiled it."

"I shouldn't want to spoil cities!" said Mara.

"That's 'cause you are a girl,--I'm a man, and men always like war; I've
taken one city this afternoon, and mean to take a great many more."

"But, Moses, do you think war is right?"

"Right? why, yes, to be sure; if it ain't, it's a pity; for it's all
that has ever been done in this world. In the Bible, or out, certainly
it's right. I wish I had a gun now, I'd stop those old eagles'
screeching."

"But, Moses, we shouldn't want any one to come and steal all our things,
and then shoot us."

"How long you do think about things!" said Moses, impatient at her
pertinacity. "I am older than you, and when I tell you a thing's right,
you ought to believe it. Besides, don't you take hens' eggs every day,
in the barn? How do you suppose the hens like that?"

This was a home-thrust, and for the moment threw the little casuist off
the track. She carefully folded up the idea, and laid it away on the
inner shelves of her mind till she could think more about it.