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 other rodents abounded; in the wilderness of marsh grass stretching on every side hundreds of clapper rails made their homes. On all these Eyes o' Flame levied tribute, now and again varying his fare by hunting quail or robbing some plantation henroost on the larger inhabited island across the boggy tidal plains. Yet, better than all these, Eyes o' Flame's whimsical palate loved the mink; and often, in the dusk and in the dark, he haunted the shadowy margins of shallow pools and creeks where the minks of the marshes sought the big blue crabs which came in from the inlets and the sea with the flooding tide.

On this September evening the horned owl was in luck. He had caught his mink without hunting for it—caught it in daylight, before the time for his hunting had arrived. This was a stroke of fortune; he need not hunt that night unless he chose to do so, for here was his dinner ready for the eating. Yet as his soft wings bore him noiselessly toward the old oak in the island woods, Eyes o' Flame, despite his passion for mink meat, was conscious of no eager desire for the feast.

Perhaps he had dined more sumptuously than usual the night before. Perhaps the sluggishness of his appetite was due to the fact that sunset was not his accustomed hour for dining, but, on the contrary, the hour at which he prepared to set forth in search of game. At any rate, having reached his dining

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 table—a crotch of the oak where three stout limbs diverged—he did not proceed to rend and devour his prey, but instead stood idly upon the mink's carcass for perhaps a quarter of an hour while the dusk deepened round him.

At last his barred and mottled tawny pinions opened and he planed outward and downward from the oak, swerved in the air and sailed buoyantly up to a bulky nest of sticks, bark and Spanish moss near the top of a pine. In this nest—the deserted home of a pair of red-shouldered hawks—he deposited the body of the mink. Then he spread his velvet wings again and faded into the gloom.

He had been gone perhaps three minutes when a lump on one of the limbs of the live oak moved. For a quarter of an hour that lump had remained utterly motionless, except for an almost imperceptible movement of its sides which proved that the lump breathed; but throughout that quarter of an hour two beady black orbs had watched Eyes o' Flame as he perched in the crotch of the oak—watched him eagerly yet patiently, calmly yet perhaps vindictively.

Lotor the Lucky was very small, but he was very wise. When he was three months old a cottonmouth moccasin had bitten him. He had recovered, but somehow the venom had retarded his growth. Seasoned veteran though he was, rich in woods lore,

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 expert in all the essential arts of forest life, he was a poor thing to look at—a scraggy runt of a raccoon, scarcely more than half his proper size, boasting only a mere remnant of a tail, lacking four toes which steel traps had taken, walking always with a limp because another trap had crushed a hind foot. How he lost his tail is another story and does not matter. It was at the opposite end of his person that his brain was situated; and the important thing about Lotor was his brain.

That brain was busy now. It had been busy from the moment when Lotor's sharp eyes discerned the great horned owl winging silently toward the oak with prey hanging from his talons. In that moment the little raccoon, returning along one of the oak's main limbs after a raid on certain clusters of wild grapes, had frozen into absolute immobility. Thirty feet from him Eyes o' Flame came to rest in the oak; and Lotor, watching through a screen of leaves which hid him from the owl, waited with that vast, patience which was a basic ingredient of his wisdom.

There was stored away in Lotor's brain considerable knowledge of horned owls. When this owl did not begin at once to devour the prey which he had taken, the little raccoon knew that it might be worth his while to keep watch from his ambush; and while he watched, his sharp eyes shot quick glances to right and left, searching the surrounding trees.

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 When, a few minutes later, he spied the deserted hawks' nest in the pine, the discovery served to fortify his patience. He felt fairly confident now that he knew what the ow! would do, and he was not surprised in the slightest when presently Eyes o' Flame flew with his prey to the abandoned nest, which he occasionally used as a storehouse, lingered there a half second, then departed empty-clawed for his night's hunting.

Lotor the Lucky waited a few minutes for safety's sake. On the ground he stood in no fear of horned owls; on the slim trunk of that pine, fifty feet above the ground, the steel-clawed, great-winged hunter of the night would have him at a disadvantage. One of the things that Lotor had learned about these monarchs of the owl tribe was the fact that they varied much in strength and courage. He had been living on the little island in the marshes only about a week, having come there from a much larger island where his tribe abounded; but already he had had one encounter with this horned owl which had given the wily old coon an eloquent hint of the big bird's daring.

Hence, for some three minutes after Eyes o' Flame had disappeared, Lotor remained a mere inanimate knob on the rugged limb of the oak. Then the knob stirred and became again a small stump-tailed raccoon which moved swiftly along the

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 oak limb and down the tree's massive trunk. A quarter of an hour later—for more than once he had paused to listen keenly and look about him—Lotor's eager black eyes peered over the rim of the hawks' nest in the pine.

What he saw there at first pleased, then disappointed him. His prize lay where he expected to find it; but it was not the prize which he had hoped for—a young marsh rabbit. The victim that Eyes o' Flame had left in his storehouse was a creature which Lotor knew well, but upon which he was not accustomed to prey, because, in the first place, he had never succeeded in catching a mink and had learned long ago that it was waste of time to stalk or pursue them. Yet having climbed fifty feet for this supper, he was not disposed to reject it hastily. He took the brown carcass delicately in his jaws, and with another quick, apprehensive glance around him, backed over the rim of the nest.

Lotor the Lucky was halfway down the pine when a strange thing happened. As suddenly as though a rifle bullet had touched his spine, he loosed his hold on the tree and dropped, his body twisting frantically, his feet clawing the air. Into the top of a low, dense, wide-spreading cassena bush at the base of the pine he fell with a crash that shattered the silence of the island woods; and as the stiff, small-leaved twigs of the bush engulfed him and

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Rh one right way through the storm. For good reasons, the followers of Lincoln came to believe that he was being guided by God Himself to save the Union.

The genealogists of Lincoln trace his ancestry back to Virginia and to Massachusetts and to those Lincolns who came from England about 1635. The name Abraham recurs frequently among the Lincolns and our President seems to have been named after his grandfather Abraham who was killed by the Indians in Kentucky in 1778, when Thomas, the father of the President, was only ten years of age. Thus left fatherless at a tender age in a rude pioneer community, Thomas did not even learn to read. He worked about as best he could to live, became a carpenter, and in 1806 married his cousin, Nancy Hanks, the daughter of Joseph Hanks and his wife, Nannie Shipley, a sister of Thomas Lincoln's mother, Mary.

The first child of Thomas Lincoln and his wife Nancy was a daughter. Our President, the second child, was born February 12, 1809, in a log cabin, three miles from Hodgensville, then Hardin, now LaRue County, Kentucky. When little Abraham was seven years old his father moved to Indiana and took up a claim near Gentryville, Spencer County, and built a rude shelter of unhewn logs without a floor, the large opening protected only by hanging skins. In this discomfort they lived for a year, when they erected a log cabin. There was plenty of game, but otherwise the fare was very poor and the life was hard. In


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 closed over him, a great dim shape, wide-winged and savage-eyed, hammered with mighty pinions at the leafy gates of his refuge and struck long trenchant talons deep into the barricade of twigs.

Lotor the Lucky, somewhat disheveled and rather breathless, felt the needle point of one of those talons lightly scratch his hide. It was a mere pin prick and it did the coon no harm. But it was vivid proof of how narrowly he had escaped, and he sprawled motionless for a minute or two amid the inner branches of the cassena before recovering his equanimity. Then he jumped lightly to the ground and stood for an instant considering, the mink still hanging from his jaws. Above and around him the stiff interlacing twigs and branches formed a barrier which Eyes o' Flame could never penetrate; but Lotor the Lucky, now that he had the solid ground under him again, no longer feared the owl, and for a moment he was on the point of stepping boldly out into the open.

The impulse passed quickly. Always, Lotor had found discretion the better part of valor. It had been his settled rule to avoid fights of all kinds, and he had won through to old age because Nature, as if to make amends for giving him so small a body, had endowed him with cunning beyond the cunning of his kind and senses sharper than those of most raccoons—senses so sharp that somehow his ears had

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 warned him of the big owl's unexpected retum, although those velvet wings had seemed as silent as the wings of a ghost. So Lotor the Lucky, who might better have been named Lotor the Discreet, remained for the present within his cassena fortress and gave his attention to the booty for which he had nearly paid a high price; and presently he discovered to his disgust that he had risked his hide and his neck for nothing.

Had there been water at hand in which he could have washed the mink, he might have eaten at least a part of it; for the raccoon is loath to swallow meat which has not been dabbled and soaked in water with his own paws. But even if he had been able to prepare it in the approved way, Lotor would probably have left most of this carcass to the woods scavengers. As it was, he left nearly all of it. It was meat strange to his palate, tough, stringy and rank; and, accustomed as he was to the choicest delicacies of the woods, the marshes and the creeks, he ate only the soft inner parts, then lost interest altogether. Giving the mangled, furry body a last contemptuous push with his nose, he ambled to the thicket's edge and thrust his sharp-pointed, black-spectacled face out through the leafy barricade.

The moon, now three nights past the full, had not yet risen high enough to send its pallid radiance down into the woods; but Lotor's eyes could see in

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 the dark almost or quite as well as in the light; and, after a few minutes' inspection, he felt fairly confident that the horned owl had gone on about his business. Sharp and clear above the low thunder of the surf on the barrier beach a half mile away, the voices of invisible myriads—ricebirds and warblers, herons and plovers—floated down to Lotor's ears. Again to-night the far-called armies of the migrating birds were passing southward down the long, lonely coast, bound for their winter quarters in the tropics.

In Lotor's brain, as he listened, an idea was born. Those voices dropping down through the darkness were the voices of the fall. The long Low Country summer was over. The cool crisp nights of autumn were at hand. For Lotor and all his kind that lived in the jungly woods along the sea, the coming of the new season was the signal for a change of habit.

From now on, as the nights grew cooler, the whiskered, ring-tailed folk of the island woods would roam more widely and more adventurously. From now on their tracks, almost like the handprints of little men, would be seen in many places where for months no trail of a raccoon had been found. Lotor, listening to those autumnal voices, felt within him the impulse to roam; and gradually this impulse took definite form. The night had just begun. There was ample time for a visit to a cer-

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 tain spot, unvisited for months, but rich with succulent memories.

A half hour later, Eyes o' Flame, the horned owl, motionless on the top of a tall dead cedar at the edge of the marshes, saw a gray hump-backed shape ambling like a tiny bear along an abandoned causeway leading across the marshy flats toward the ocean beach. To the great owl's eyes the night was more transparent than the day. At once he recognized his foe—the little tailless coon that had come to live in his woods, the thief that had raided his storehouse and stolen his milk. Yet Eyes o' Flame did not move. Bold as he was, he was prudent also, and it was not his habit to trifle rashly with raccoons unless there was some compelling reason for doing so or unless conditions gave him an advantage. Some night perhaps he would catch Lotor again high in the air on the slender trunk of a tree, where he could not meet the big owl's lightninglike onset. Then there would be a reckoning. Eyes o' Flame bided his time.

So Lotor the Lucky passed on along the causeway toward the sea, unaware of the grim, hostile orbs that watched him go; and presently he came without mishap or adventure to the back beach of the small barrier isle to which the causeway led. There he paused for a few moments to take stock of his surroundings.

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 The tide was very high. On both sides of the causeway the waters had spread far and wide across the marshy flats; and the barrier isle itself, the lowest and narrowest on the coast and for most of its length bare of trees, was now nothing more than a low ridge of sand, on one side of which the ocean broke in hissing phosphorescent foam while on the other stretched the flooded marshes.

Lotor did not altogether like the look of things. Yet he had seen tides as high as this, and' even higher, and always after a while the waters had subsided. The little coon had a certain practical understanding of tides—the fruit of long experience. He knew that although they sometimes rose much higher than at other times, there were limits which they never passed. Obviously, this tide had nearly reached its limit and would soon begin to recede. This meant that long before daylight conditions at the spot which he intended to visit would be exactly suited to his purpose. Forgetting his misgivings, he set out at a good pace along the sandy ridge above the surf.

Lotor, for all his wisdom, could not know that a hundred miles offshore a mighty hurricane was raging. He could not know that this far-off storm was driving the waters of the sea against the Low Country coast, pushing them higher and higher, so that, although the flood tide still had two hours

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 more to run, the normal high-water mark had already been passed. There was nothing to warn Lotor of these things, for the clear, almost windless night held no hint of menace; and though he could not help noticing that a heavier surf than usual thundered along the ocean front, he attached no significance to it until the continued rise of the waters forced it upon his attention. By that time he had traveled more than half the length of the barrier island, heading for the small inlet near which he expected to feast on oysters. A dramatic discovery woke him to his peril.

Ahead of him the sandy ridge dipped and flattened. Suddenly Lotor saw that, where once dry sands had stretched between clumps of low dunes, the sea had broken through. Before him surged a seething torrent some fifty yards in width, where great ocean breakers, tossing their white crests as if in triumph, hurled themselves clear across the narrow island and into the quiet waters covering the marshes behind.

Instantly Lotor turned and made off at his best speed along the back trail. Within a half mile he halted, perplexed, even a little frightened. Since he had passed, the ocean had broken through in another place. His retreat was cut off.

It was an hour after this that Lotor came to a disagreeable decision. He would have to swim

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 across the inundated marshes to one of the wooded islands behind the barrier beach. The little coon was a practiced swimmer, but he did not enjoy the prospect of so long a swim as this one would be—a swim of a mile or more across open spaces too brightly illumined by the moon to suit his cautious spirit. Yet there were no terrors in the placid sheltered waters which he must cross comparable with the white tumultuous terror roaring just behind him and threatening each moment to engulf him.

The barrier isle was disintegrating under him. As long as he could he had held his place on a knoll of the sandy ridge, still hoping that after a while the tide would reach its crest and begin to recede. But closer and closer came those rearing white-maned chargers of the surf; louder and louder roared their savage voices; more and more often long tongues of white water shot forward from the onrushing ranks of the breakers and, swishing past his knoll on either side, swept clear over the ridge. It was plain at last that in a little while Lotor's knoll must go; and, wisely, Lotor made up his mind that he would go first.

Sidling down the slope of the knoll away from the ocean, he waded delicately across a submerged carpet of short, jointed, salt grass and dropped suddenly almost out of sight into still water too deep for wading. Then, with only his head and a little

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 of his shoulders showing, he began his long journey across the flooded marshes.

Lotor the Lucky, being much smaller than most raccoons, was also weaker and less enduring. Pitifully small he seemed on the face of those wide waters under the moon. The eyes of a careless or unpracticed man would not have recognized him as a raccoon, for at a little distance in that dim deceptive light he resembled a floating fragment of water-soaked driftwood; but if a man had watched closely he would have perceived that this driftwood fragment was moving not with the tide but against it or across it, and that twice within the space of a few minutes it changed its course.

Presently it changed its direction for a third time. Lotor, far from land now, was not his normal, cool, calculating self. In this test which confronted him, his cunning, upon which he always relied, was of no avail. It was muscle that he needed—strength and endurance for a long unremitting effort which was proving much more severe than he had expected, because he had not taken into account the slow current setting across the inundated marshes. If he yielded to that current it would bear him he knew not whither, and he battled against it desperately, spending his small strength. He gained, but very slowly, and he knew that his goal was still far away.

In his long life Lotor had encountered most of the

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 perils of the woods. The marshes were not strange to him, for he roamed over them often, generally by night, and hundreds of times he had swum the salt creeks which wound everywhere through the level plains of waving grass. But never before had he found himself in such surroundings as those which now encompassed him; never before had he struggled for his life in waters which seemed illimitable, waters which seemed to have covered all the world.

Lotor was afraid—afraid of the gurgling unending waters, of the current which clutched and pulled him, of the shadowy forms which swept over him now and then in the moonlight, of other vague sinister shapes which he could not see or hear but which he somehow knew to be near at hand. And suddenly the fear that gripped him flamed into mad terror.

Close beside him, so close that it seemed almost at his ear, sounded a loud, deep sigh, long-drawn and melancholy, yet sibilant and therefore menacing like the hiss of some huge snake. Startled half out of his wits, Lotor saw a great plated head thrust up out of the water—a hideous, yellow-brown head, many times larger than his own, naked, big-eyed and reptilelike, yet beaked like a bird of prey. Often Lotor, roaming the barrier beaches at night, had found the trails or crawls of sea turtles and occasionally he had unearthed their eggs buried deep

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 in the island sands. Once or twice he had come upon the ponderous sea creatures themselves, laboriously making their way across the beach in the darkness. But in his terror he did not recognize this monstrous head thrust up beside him as the head of a giant turtle which had come in through an inlet with the storm tide to explore the tidal channels winding through the flooded marsh plains.

The huge beaked head remained visible only 'for a moment, but the dread which it inspired did not so swiftly wear away. Lotor was still quivering from the shock of that apparition when, directly ahead of him and not more than fifty feet distant, the water boiled and swirled, writhed like a live thing, then burst into white seething foam.

A black bulk heaved upward from the depths and close beside it another and another—three great beasts of the waters, swimming side by side, rushing straight down upon the little coon.

Panic gave Lotor strength. He turned and swam for his life; yet even with the current under him, he moved at a snail's pace compared with the huge black water beasts racing onward at a speed which might rival that of a fleeing deer. Lotor heard the swish of spray close behind him, felt the water surge under him, gave himself up for lost.

Waves drenched his head and face, foam bubbled round him, his small body spun and bobbed in a

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 whirlpool which all but pulled him under. Then swiftly the water grew calm again so that once more it was placid as a lake, save for small ripples and swirls here and there; and presently Lotor saw, yards away and dimly visible in the pale moonlight, the tall fins and black rounded backs of the three big porpoises racing onward at top speed.

The strength of frenzy, of wild irresistible terror, which for a little while had spurred him to redoubled exertions, passed suddenly out of him. Great weariness came upon him; his limbs grew heavy, his body cold. No longer able to stem the current, he drifted with it, swimming feebly, barely keeping himself afloat. Suddenly, as though hope and strength had been mysteriously born again, he swung around in a half circle, and with some semblance of his former vigor resumed his battle with the current, swimming not directly against it, but diagonally across it. Far away to his left a low, black, irregular wall lay athwart the moonlit waste of waters. Lotor knew that what he saw was a line of trees.

For a few minutes he made good headway. There were wide stretches where the current moved very slowly; but wherever a creek channel wound through the submerged marshes the tide was swifter and stronger; and presently Lotor knew that fate was against him, that just ahead of him lay such a channel. He could see the faster flow of the tide, the

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 swirls and ripples at the surface; and no sooner had he passed from the comparatively shallow water over the marsh into the much deeper water of the creek bed than the current laid hold of him with a grip which he could not resist.

Slowly, ruthlessly, it swept him down. He saw the line of trees slipping past him like giants marching across a moonlit sea. Already he was opposite the last of them, and he knew that those pines lined a little peninsula projecting into the flooded marshes and that the tide was sweeping him past this peninsula's tip. Doggedly, despairingly, he struggled. For every inch that he gained the current carried him sideways a yard. But at last, when his strength was all but gone, he knew that he had won.

The tide had relaxed its grip. He floated now in water that was almost still, and not more than a hundred feet away loomed the black spires of the pines. One last rally of strength and of courage and he was safe. Wearily he struggled on, his limbs like lead—a small, forlorn, gallant figure, making its last brave, pitiful fight for life.

From the top of a tall pine at the end of the peninsula round yellow orbs scanned the still, shimmering waters. Suddenly, as though lit by some inner fire, they glowed like small twin suns. At last, after hours of fruitless hunting, Eyes o' Flame, the horned owl, saw that which he sought—a wet

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 6 1818 little Abraham's mother, delicate, refined, pathetic and too frail for such rude life, sickened and felt that the end was near. She called her little children to her bed of leaves and skins and told them to "love their kindred and worship God," and then she died and left them only the memory of her love.

Thomas Lincoln made a rude coffin himself, but there were no ceremonies at that most pathetic funeral when he laid his young wife in her desolate grave in the forest. Little Lincoln was nine years old, and the mystery of death, the pitiless winter, the lone grave, the deep forest—shivering with his sister in the cold cabin—it all made a deep impression on the sensitive boy.

Late in the year 1819 Thomas Lincoln went back to Kentucky, and there courted and married a widow named Sarah Buck Johnston, who had once been his sweetheart. She brought with her some household goods and her own three children. She dressed the forlorn little Lincolns in some of the clothing belonging to her children. She was described as tall, straight as an Indian, handsome, fair, talkative and proud. Also she had the abundant strength for hard labor. She and little Abraham learned to love each other dearly.

Abraham went to school in all less than a year, but this good stepmother encouraged him to study at home and he read every book he heard of within a circuit of many miles. He read the Bible, Aesop's Fables, Murray's English Reader, Robinson Crusoe, The Pilgrim's Progress, A History of the United States,


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 furry thing moving across the water; judging from its size, the protruding head of a swimming marsh rabbit.

A shadowy form floated outward from the pine top, outward and downward in a half circle, noiseless as a ghost. Wide, silent wings darkened over Lotor the Lucky, long claws struck deep into his nape. Fora space of moments those wings churned the air frantically; then the place where they had been was empty. Only a foaming and splashing of the water marked the spot where Lotor and Eyes o' Flame had met once more.

Mat Norman, wielding his paddle lazily, glanced at the moon and decided that it was time to go home. The storm tide had kept him up late. All afternoon and evening he had watched the waters rise higher and higher until the miles of green salt flats in front of his house were completely covered. Knowing that the tide would not reach its crest until near midnight, Norman realized that something unusual was taking place. The hurricane season had not yet passed altogether, but there were no signs of an approaching storm. Norman concluded that a hurricane was moving up the coast well out at sea, too far away to be dangerous, but near enough to cause an abnormally high tide.

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 The still waters glittering in the moonlight lured him to the landing where he kept his small bateau. For hours he paddled over salt flats which ordinarily stood several feet above high-water mark. He was a mile or more from home, paddling along the edge of a wooded tongue of land where tall pines ranged themselves in a long line, when drowsiness came upon him.

He swung the boat around and retraced his course along the pineland's edge. Just before rounding the point of the peninsula, he saw dimly in the moonlight a big bird perching on a high limb of a pine. From its shape and size he knew it to be a horned owl, probably the same owl which he had encountered a few nights earlier and to which, in accordance with a custom of his, he had given a fanciful name.

He stopped the boat and sat for a while watching. Old Eyes o' Flame, he judged, was on the lookout for marsh rabbits driven from their' accustomed haunts by the rising tide.

Suddenly Norman saw the owl leave his perch, sweep outward in a descending half circle, swing noiselessly down to the water. The big bird did not rise again; from the spot where he had dipped to the surface came a sound of wildly beating wings. This soon ceased; but Norman saw a commotion in the water just at that spot, and instantly, with

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 strong thrusts of his paddle, he drove the boat forward.

He could hear the tops of the marsh blades brushing against the bateau's bottom. The water was not more than four feet deep; but not even the tip of an owl wing was visible when he reached the place—only a churning and swirling of the water as though a struggle were proceeding beneath the surface. Norman hesitated an instant. It might be a small shark that Eyes o' Flame had struck by mistake; it might be an otter or something else that could bite. He took a chance, thrusting in his arm as far as he could reach. Almost at once his fingers closed on both feathers and fur.

Norman had paddled halfway home when Eyes o' Flame, the great horned owl, took his leave. For a while he had lain, apparently more dead than alive, on the forward thwart where Norman had placed him, making queer gurgling noises in his throat, his round eyes dazed and glassy, his head wabbling weakly. Soon, however, he struggled to a sitting posture, the gurgling sounds ceased, his eyes became again alert and defiant.

Norman was wondering whether those wet wings would bear the owl aloft, when suddenly the wings opened, the big horned head was thrust forward menacingly, the strong curved bill snapped twice

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 with a sharp metallic sound. Next moment Eyes o' Flame was gone.

Norman watched him fade into the gloom, then glanced again at the little tailless coon, draggled and tousled, lying in the bottom of the boat, his wet fur flecked with blood where sharp claws had pierced his neck so deeply that Norman had not found it easy to withdraw them. Lotor the Lucky had not moved. He lay as limp and still as when he had first been lifted from the water. Though he still breathed, his eyes were closed. Norman shook his head.

He was sorry. For years he had known the old bobtailed raccoon, and often he had studied the record of Lotor's wanderings, recognizing his trail by the four missing toes and the crushed heel which caused the little coon to limp. Norman knew that he would not find that trail again in the wet paths through the rush-grown meadows or along the margins of the marsh plains. The luck of Lotor the Lucky—luck which was really the reward of wisdom—had failed at last.

At the landing, Norman laid down his paddle and, stepping forward past the coon, took a turn of the bowline around a post. The boat's momentum carried it forward a few feet so that it swung broadside against the bank where myrtle bushes formed thickets here and there and live-oak limbs overhung

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 the water. Norman jerked the rope twice to tighten it on the post, then turned.

He saw a small raccoon with only the stump of a tail climbing from the boat to the bank. The raccoon moved with considerable agility. Limping a little, Lotor the Lucky ambled briskly up the slope and vanished in the shadow of the myrtles.

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OR a week the daisy-starred upland meadows al had danced and glittered in sunlight much to warm for June. Then, in the early afternoon of the seventh day, a great storm broke about the craggy summit of Devilhead and for three hours or more the cannon of the clouds rumbled and roared amid the peaks. Young Dan Alexander, watching the spectacle from the deep valley under Devilhead, talked to himself, as was his habit.

"Cloud King and Red Rogue," he muttered, "you're gettin' some music now; an' up where you are that thunder's ten times as loud. I wonder how you like it."

They liked it little, because all this tumult of the elements was a departure from the normal course of things and interfered seriously with the necessary business of life. Yet neither Cloud King, the peregrine falcon, nor Red Rogue, the fox, who had their homes on Devilhead within twenty yards of each other, was frightened by the storm. They knew what it was, having experienced many storms in their time, and they took it calmly enough. 35

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 Red Rogue dozed quietly on a dry bed of leaves at the inner end of the deep natural tunnel which was his favorite den. Here, in the heart of the huge rock mass forming Devilhead's summit, the old fox was snug and safe from wind and rain and lightning, while even the mightiest of the thunderclaps came to his ears so softened and subdued that the storm seemed miles away. Cloud King, the falcon, had no such remote retreat. The wind and the rain beat upon the portal of his castle; the glare of the lightning lit its inmost recesses; the crash of the thunder was like the crack of doom. But Cloud King, the peregrine, was a brother of the thunder, a son of the mountain storms. All his life he had dwelt with them and they struck no terror to his heart. While Red Rogue slept peacefully in his rock-ribbed fortress, the big gray duck hawk stood alert and wakeful in his aerie, a small cave in the face of the cliff fifty feet above the entrance of Red Rogue's den, and watched with sullen, undismayed eyes the prodigious drama of the storm.

Dan Alexander, gazing up at the peak from the porch of his father's cabin under Devilhead, guessed that this would be the way of it. A rare man was Dan. He had had some schooling and even a year at college in a city of the lowlands; but his mountains had called to him and presently he had returned to share with his father the little cabin under

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 Devilhead, to farm a little after the fashion of the mountaineers and to indulge to the utmost his passion for hunting. He knew the beasts and the birds of the upland woods as few mountain woodsmen have known them; and somewhere in him there was a romantic, imaginative strain, strengthened and developed by his schooling and by the books he had read, which caused him to give names to certain ones among the wild creatures which, for one reason or another, strongly stirred his interest.

Chief among these were the two dwellers on Devilhead peak. Many times Dan's path had crossed that of Red Rogue, the old dog fox. Day after day he had watched Cloud King, the peregrine falcon, patroling the air roads of his wide kingdom. Again and again he had seen the bloody handiwork of these two wild hunters who inhabited the inaccessible cliff at the summit of the mountain; and long ago he had declared war against them, matching his skill and woodcraft against their wiliness and swiftness, finding all the more pleasure in the contest when he learned, as he very soon did, that the two buccaneers of Devilhead were well able to take care of themselves.

For weeks he had hunted them persistently, neglecting all other game, often lying in ambush on the mountain's summit above the precipice where they had their homes, even risking his life in an

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 effort to traverse the face of the cliff itself. Once he had clipped a feather from Cloud King's wing; once and once only he had looked at Red Rogue along the barrel of a rifle. It was a long shot and the bullet had gone an inch too high. Angry and piqued because his woodcraft had been set at naught, Dan nevertheless realized that he was wasting his time and abandoned his intensive campaign. But he did not acknowledge himself beaten. On the contrary, he was constantly on the alert for the opportunity which he was satisfied would come. Always, when he roamed the mountain slopes and valleys in search of grouse or turkeys or squirrels, he kept Red Rogue and Cloud King in mind; and always, when he looked up at the huge mountain towering above his cabin, his eyes sought the lofty cliff where the two wild hunters had their homes.

For many minutes he gazed at that cliff on the June afternoon when, after a week of heat and drought, the first summer storm of the season broke about Devilhead's summit. The rain, which was fast hiding the mountain, was drenching the valley also. Already the first big drops were pattering on the roof of Dan's cabin. There were chores to be attended to, but for the present he must wait under shelter until the worst of the storm had passed. So, with feet cocked up on the railing of the porch, he sat and puffed at his old black pipe, watching the

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 onward sweep of a great leaden cloud which barely topped the peak a thousand feet above him across the narrow valley, marveling a little at the play of the lightning and the crash of the thunder, idly wondering how the two dwellers on Devilhead were faring in the storm.

Presently Dan's gray eyes narrowed and brightened. He took the pipe from his mouth and pursed his lips, frowning thoughtfully and drumming on his knee with long bony fingers.

"It'll rain all afternoon an' pretty much all night," he muttered. "They'll not be able to hunt an' they'll be hungry in the mornin'. Lord knows where Cloud King'll go; but I'll bet a hat Red Rogue'll go straight to Rocky Meadow as soon as the grass is dry an' pick up some mice to take the sting out of his appetite."

Dan knocked out his pipe, yawned and stretched his long arms, bare to the elbow.

"Got a good notion to meet him there 'bout an hour after sunup," he said to himself.

At first dawn Red Rogue awoke. He had slept blissfully throughout the night, seeming somehow aware, even in the retirement of his rocky retreat, that outside the rain was still falling. Red Rogue did not like rain. He hated to get his fur or even

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 his feet wet; and though he was hungry, he was loath to leave the shelter of his dry bed until the sun had shone for at least a little while on the drenched grasses and weeds of the high upland meadows. So, although the rain had ceased a little before dawn, the old fox, after considering the situation for a moment without moving, went to sleep again and dozed until after sunrise. Then he rose, stretched his long, lithe, rusty-red body lazily, scratched a black-tipped ear with a black hind foot, and trotted briskly toward the exit of his rock-walled tunnel.

On the narrow shelf outside he halted, testing the wind with quivering nostrils while his gaze roved over the vast panorama spread before him. The storm had washed the air clean and crystal clear; the heat which had lain so heavy on the land for seven days had broken; there was a sharp nip in the gentle breeze, which drove the last vestige of drowsiness from Red Rogue's brain.

That cold, crisp air was like wine. Red Rogue was old—so old that for two springs he had not mated, though he was still strong of wind and limb; but, old though he was, he was sensible of the magic of the morning and felt new energy and vigor in every fibre of his body.

His eyes shining, his slim ears cocked, his long, beautiful, white-tipped tail held high behind him, he drank the faint fragrance of a million daisies and

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 looked out over his blue-and-purple kingdom of mountain and valley. Once, for a moment, his gaze rested on Dan Alexander's cabin nestling in the oak and chestnut woods clothing the gorgelike valley far below. As though the sight of that cabin were a challenge, he barked three times, each bark a clear thin note, less querulous than usual, with something of joy and something of confident defiance in the ring of it. Then jauntily, with mincing steps and elevated brush, he trotted along the shelf and, lightly leaping a gap in the narrow way, passed around a jutting shoulder of the cliff with never a glance at the abysmal chasm yawning under him.

Indifferently, with no change of expression in his grim dark eyes, Cloud King, the peregrine falcon, watched him go. The big duck hawk took little interest in the old red fox who shared with him the craggy summit of Devilhead; but because it was his business to watch every moving thing within range of his vision, his eyes followed Red Rogue as he picked his sure-footed way around the precipitous face of the cliff, until he vanished in a dense kalmia thicket fringing the rocky forehead of the mountain. Yet, except that the nature of wild things forbade it, there might have existed a certain fellow feeling between these two dwellers on Devilhead's loftiest peak.

Not only were they near neighbors, sharing the

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 security of a precipice virtually inaccessible to man. They shared, too, the distinction of bachelorhood—a real distinction in their case, because it indicated that they had been victors in the stern battle for life, and, eluding death in many forms, had won through to old age, when love and mating no longer interested them.

Even as Red Rogue was mateless, so, too, was Cloud King. If a mate had come to him he might have taken her. But the peregrine, boldest and most destructive of the falcons, had been the hated enemy of mankind for generations and its numbers had been thinned. Never abundant in the high inland region around Devilhead, where there were no large rivers or extensive lakes to attract ducks, the peregrine's favorite prey, this swiftest and handsomest of all the hawk kind had all but vanished from the mountain country.

For this Cloud King cared nothing. He was as contented in his loneliness as was Red Rogue, the fox; and the absence of other buccaneers of his race meant simply a larger food supply for himself. Only occasionally did the golden eagles, which nested farther to the westward, invade his hunting ground. In general he enjoyed a virtual monopoly—so far as other preying birds were concerned—of the ruffed grouse, the choicest game which the mountain country afforded, while quail and doves

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 were abundant enough to supply his own needs as well as those of the lesser hawks which also hunted them. Except when the imperial eagles came, Cloud King was lord of all the airy spaces above the peaks and valleys, a monarch as valiant as he was ruthless, swift as the wind, thewed and muscled more powerfully in proportion to his size than any other bird of prey—a perfect specimen of the "Noble Peregrine" which the knights of ancient time, who delighted in falconry, considered the premier bird of the chase.

From his aerie fifty feet above the entrance of Red Rogue's den, Cloud King saw the old fox pass around the shoulder of the cliff and vanish amid the kalmias. Then, as though the sight of his neighbor going forth to the hunt had whetted his own appetite, he spread his dark barred wings, much longer than those of most other hawks, and swept out from the face of the precipice. After a few strong wing thrusts, he closed his pinions and dropped for perhaps thirty feet. Spreading his wings again, he planed down a long incline, gaining speed every second, rushing down toward the billowy tops of the tall chestnuts at the bottom of the deep valley. When it seemed that in another instant he must crash into the uppermost branches of the trees, he checked his descent by an almost imperceptible movement of his wings and sped onward past the

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 afternoon. M. and Mme. Forget were, I thought, safe having their siestas, Oranie was with Mme. Gacon. I knew where Mme. Gacon was for certain; she was with M. Gacon; and I knew he was up in the sawmill shed, out of sight of the river, because of the soft thump, thump, thump of the big water-wheel. There was therefore no one to keep me out of mischief, and I was too frightened to go into the forest that afternoon, because on the previous afternoon I had been stalked as a wild beast by a cannibal savage, and I am nervous. Besides, and above all, it is quite impossible to see other people, even if they are only black, naked savages, gliding about in canoes, without wishing to go and glide about yourself. So I went down to where the canoes were tied by their noses to the steep bank, and finding a paddle, a broken one, I unloosed the smallest canoe. Unfortunately this was fifteen feet or so long, but I did not know the disadvantage of having, as it were, a long-tailed canoe then—I did shortly afterwards.

The promontories running out into the river on each side of the mission beach give a little stretch of slack water between the bank and the mill-race-like current of the Ogowé, and I wisely decided to keep in the slack water, until I had found out how to steer—most important thing steering. I got into the bow of the canoe, and shoved off from the bank all right; then I knelt down—learn how to paddle standing up by and by—good so far. I rapidly learnt how to steer from the bow, but I could not get up any pace. Intent on acquiring pace, I got to the edge of the slack water; and then displaying more wisdom, I turned round to avoid it, proud as a peacock, you understand, at having found out how to turn round. At this moment, the current of the greatest equatorial river in the world, grabbed my canoe by its tail. We spun round and round for a few seconds, like a teetotum, I steering the whole time for all I was worth, and then the current dragged the canoe ignominiously down river, tail foremost.

Fortunately a big tree was at that time temporarily hanging against the rock in the river, just below the sawmill beach. Into that tree the canoe shot with a crash, and I hung on, and shipping my paddle, pulled the canoe into the slack water


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 tree tops and across a little wheat field a hundred yards behind Dan Alexander's cabin.

A score of startled eyes saw him as he cleared the chestnut tops. Almost in the center of the wheat field stood a small wild cherry tree loaded with shining crimson fruit—crowded, too, with birds from the surrounding woods and thickets. Brown thrashers, catbirds, wood thrushes, towhees and one brilliant black-winged scarlet tanager were feasting in the cherry tree when the feathered cannon ball shot into view from behind the chestnut grove; and, of them all, the tanager, partial as always to the higher branches, was the most exposed, seeking his breakfast amid the topmost twigs. With a frightened cry the blood-red bird darted from his perch; but Cloud King, his eye caught instantly by that vivid spot of color, gripped him with long black talons before he had flown five feet.

When he had plucked and eaten his prey in a tall white oak which was one of his favorite feeding stations, the big duck hawk set about the real business of the day. The tanager was merely an appetizer. Often in cherry time Cloud King began his morning with a raid on the small birds which breakfasted at the small but prolific tree in the wheat field a thousand feet below his aerie; but he was never content with such trivial game, and these morning raids were little more than diversions.

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 Leaving the white oak, he spiraled upward, mounting higher and higher above the deep narrow valley, until he looked down upon the peak of Devilhead itself. Still higher he rose, so high that the flutelike tones of wood thrushes singing on the wooded mountain slopes no longer came to him; so high that he could view from end to end the whole summit of the long irregular ridge of which Devilhead peak was the loftiest eminence. Here and there, on saddles of this high ridge, the hardwood forest which clothed the slopes and most of the summit fell away, giving place to small natural meadows embosomed like lakes of vivid green in the darker green of the surrounding woods. Suddenly a small dark object in one of these meadows almost directly beneath him arrested Cloud King's attention.

A man looking down from that vast height would have distinguished nothing worthy of special note. The tiny object upon which the hawk's eyes were fixed would have appeared no different from a hundred other dark spots on the green grass carpet—spots which were merely rocks and bowlders, from the abundance of which Rocky Meadow got its name. Nor would a human eye have perceived that this particular dark spot was moving—moving gradually and intermittently, inch by inch and foot by foot, out toward the center of the grassy space.

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 Yet to the marvelous eyes of Cloud King not only was the slow movement of this dark object perceptible but so also was almost every detail of the object itself.

To the eyes of the circling peregrine this dark spot among many other dark spots was a man—a man crawling on hands and knees and carrying a rifle in his right hand. More than that, Cloud King's eyes disclosed to him exactly what man this was; for they could distinguish the brown canvas cap and the gray woolen shirt which belonged to the tall young woodsman who lived in the valley under Cloud King's aerie on Devilhead. So much the peregrine's wonderful vision told him. Had his brain been as perfectly developed as his eyes, he might presently have seen more than this; for he would then have deduced a purpose in the slow, sinister advance of the hunter across the rock-strewn meadow, and he would have scanned the ground to discover what game it was that the hunter was stalking so cautiously.

But Cloud King's powers of reasoning did not extend so far. He saw the man and watched him curiously; but nothing told him that this man was engaged upon a very definite quest now nearing a climax. His attention centered upon the hunter, the falcon saw the smaller dark spot which was Red Rogue, the fox, without distinguishing its nature.

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 Had this smaller spot moved while Cloud King was circling above the meadow, his eyes would have focused upon it instantly and he would have recognized his neighbor of Devilhead peak. But Red Rogue, after catching a mouse or two,hadtwo, had [sic] discovered a cottontail feeding on certain juicy stems which grew along the tiny stream meandering across the meadow, and he had now completed his preparations for a cottontail breakfast. Making a wide detour, he had posted himself behind a rock toward which the rabbit was moving slowly, following the course of the brook. Close to this rock the old fox sat on his haunches as motionless as a stump, unaware of the hunter, down the wind from him and at his back, crawling nearer and nearer and skillfully utilizing the scattered rocks and bowlders of the meadow to screen his approach.

For perhaps five minutes the peregrine swung in wide circles high above Rocky Meadow, watching the hunter idly yet intently, never suspecting that in the green amphitheatre far beneath him the stage was being set for a tragedy. Then, the edge of his curiosity dulled, he resumed his spiral ascent. Up and up he climbed, passing through and above a thin mistlike layer of cloud which, for all its gauzy tenuousness, presently shut the earth from his view. Two hundred feet above this cloud blanket the big hawk careened suddenly in the air, like a schooner

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 struck by a sudden squall. Righting himself with a few swift thrusts of his pinions, he turned his head eastward and, with wings widely extended, shot at terrific speed in that direction, his long barred tail twisting spasmodically to right and left.

Unknowingly and without warning the falcon had climbed up into a current of warm air rushing through space like a vast invisible river to fill some hole or hollow in the upper atmosphere produced by the storm of the previous night. Cloud King disliked being jostled and hustled in this fashion; but the aerial river was bearing him in the direction which he had intended to follow as soon as he had gained the desired altitude. Hence, for a while, he was content to ride on the wings of this ghostly soundless gale racing on its mysterious way above the clouds which hid the world.

Mile after mile the peregrine rode the wind, balancing himself with slight movements of his wings and tail, borne eastward at a rate which nearly equaled the swiftest pace at which his own pinions could have driven him. Then, apprised by some faculty beyond human ken that he was approaching the high ridge where he intended to hunt ruffed grouse, he adjusted the rudder of his tail in such a way as to guide him downward in a gradual slant toward the white cloud blanket far beneath him. As suddenly as he had entered it, he passed out

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 of the rushing river of wind into air which was practically still; and a few minutes later, spiraling downward, he plunged into the stratum of cloud. Through this shallow sea of vapor he dropped swiftly with half-closed wings and presently saw the familiar panorama of forested mountain and valley spread beneath him.

Something else also he saw—something which immediately riveted his attention. Far away to the westward, just under the white cloud blanket, a black speck moved across the sky—a speck which resolved itself at once to Cloud King's farsighted eyes as a large, long-necked, short-tailed bird flying at high speed with rapid, powerful wing beats. Instantly the peregrine forgot the ruffed grouse which frequented the wooded slope beneath him and in quest of which he had traveled many miles from the aerie on Devilhead. Here was game even choicer and far rarer than the drumming cocks of the upland woods—game not often to be had among the mountains and not to be neglected when some fortunate chance brought it into the mountain country.

Cloud King had no doubt that the big long-bodied bird, speeding westward on whirring wings five hundred feet above the long valley of the Chinquapin, was a duck. Even at that great distance he could see its contour plainly. Its shape was that of a duck

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 and it flew as a duck flies. Yet it seemed too large to be either a wood duck or a hooded merganser, the only species of the duck tribe at all likely to be seen in the high uplands in early summer. But the question of its precise identity was of little concern to the peregrine. It mattered little what kind of duck this was. All the ducks were royal provender; and the moment called for action, not speculation.

An instant Cloud King hung almost motionless in the air, like a runner who nerves himself for the start of a hard race. Then his long pointed wings began to move with regular measured strokes—strokes which seemed deliberate and unhurried, yet somehow gave an impression of great power. Faster and faster those calm, monotonously even wing beats drove his hard, muscular body forward; and gradually, imperceptibly, as the speed of his flight increased, the movement of his long pinions became more rapid. But never at this stage of the chase was there any appearance of undue exertion. The big hawk was driving through the air at a rate far exceeding that of the fastest locomotive; yet he seemed not to hurry at all, but sped on his way as easily and lightly as a migrating swallow.

It may be that a definite purpose, to which he reacted instinctively rather than through exercise of any reasoning faculty, governed the falcon's tactics. It was often his custom tc carry choice bits

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 of game to his aerie on the cliff; and if in this instance he postponed the fatal blow for a while, he would not have to transport the carcass so far, for his quarry was heading straight up the valley toward the blue peak of Devilhead, dimly visible in the distance. Possibly, on the other hand, the seeming deliberateness of his flight was simply an instinctive recognition of the fact that this was likely to be a hard chase, in which he must not wear himself out at the beginning. His quarry had a long start; the test was one of endurance as well as speed. With all his superb muscular development, the falcon might not win this race if at the outset he expended his strength too lavishly.

So, for a space of minutes, Cloud King's long dark pinions fanned the air with a motion scarcely more rapid than that which he habitually employed when journeying to some outlying corner of his widespread kingdom. Nevertheless, the keen, fierce eyes, fixed immovably upon that flying form far ahead, told him that he was gaining. As a matter of fact, the peregrine, though he had not yet called all his powers into play, was flying nearly twice as fast as his prospective victim.

The latter—a long-bodied, torpedo-shaped, grayand-white bird, considerably larger than a mallard, and marked with a chestnut patch on his throat—was evidently unaware of his peril. His rather

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 short wings, smiting the air rapidly, drove his heavy projectilelike body forward at high speed. But that speed had not been increased in the few minutes which had elapsed since the beginning of the chase; those wing beats had grown no more rapid. The big bird, unconscious of the stern, masterful pursuer racing after him and still far in his rear, was flying at the rate characteristic of the red-throated loon when migrating or when journeying overland from one feeding ground to another.

It was a journey of the latter sort that the loon was now undertaking. Having depleted the fish resources of one small mountain lake, he was in search of another; and since the mountain region was strange to him and lakes were very few and small, he was eagerly scanning the country over which he passed. He was in that country as the result of accident. A bird of the seacoast, whose summer home was the upper North, he had started on his return to Labrador, when a spring gale of unusual violence blew him far inland. Winging his way over forested ridges and valleys, he saw beneath him a small lake not unlike those of his Canadian home. Here he had alighted, and, finding the lake well stocked with fish, here he had been content to linger.

Spring came later to the mountains than to the coast, and when, as the days grew warmer, the migratory urge took hold of him again, the normal

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 time of his mating was far past. Perhaps for that reason the instinct which should have sent him on toward the Arctic was dulled and crippled. Vaguely discontented and somewhat lonely, twice he rose into the air to fly to the far-off boreal land where his fellows were nesting; and twice instinct failed him and he returned.

Thus he had stayed on, an accidental exile in a region where his kind were almost unknown; and as spring merged into summer his restlessness gradually passed, and, despite the unaccustomed warmth, he grew more and more contented with his placid little lake, ringed round with alders and shaded by tall hemlocks and gigantic tulip trees. He might have remained there months longer but for the fact that after a while the fish upon which he fed became inconveniently scarce. It was this exigency, the failure of his food supply, which finally compelled him to seek a new fishing ground; and it was grim chance which directed his flight southward across a high balsam-covered range, then westward up the long valley of the Chinquapin, toward Devilhead peak, where Cloud King, the peregrine, had his home.

A third of the distance to Devilhead had been covered when at last the red-throated loon became aware of his pursuer. By that time—and scarcely more than five minutes had elapsed since the begin-

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 ning of the chase, so swiftly were the two birds moving—the hawk had cut down the distance between himself and his quarry by more than half. Cloud King now knew that the big bird ahead of him and perhaps a hundred feet below him was not a duck of any of the species known to him; but he judged it to be of the duck kind, and although it was larger than the birds upon which he was accustomed to prey, he was more determined than ever to attack and kill it. He could not grapple so large a bird in the air. Instead, he planned to fall upon it from above and hurl it to the ground. The chase had fanned into fierce flame the fury which possessed him in moments of violent action, and his bold spirit counted no odds of size or weight.

The peregrine was instantly aware that his approach had been discovered. The loon's pinions whirred twice as rapidly as before; his long body leaped forward and shot onward at a speed which was a startling revelation of his powers. Cloud King's fierce eyes glowed with a sterner light; his great yellow feet, armed with long, black, needle-pointed talons, opened and closed convulsively. Suddenly he screamed—a wild, shrill cry which the fugitive might have interpreted as a cry of disappointment and baffled rage.

Yet, though he no longer gained, and perhaps even dropped a little behind, the falcon apparently

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 made no effort to increase the velocity of his flight. His long wings still smote the air with that deliberateness and evenness of stroke which gave a sinister impression of confident mastery of the situation and seemed somehow to hint of hidden powers still held in reserve.

The red-throated loon was fleeing for his life. Terror gripped him, and in the clutch of that terror he was exerting every atom of his strength. But Cloud King, the peregrine, even in the wild fury of the chase, was cool, skillful, clear-headed, a master craftsman; and the craft, the business of the peregrine, is the pursuit of swift, strong-winged birds, some of them—like the teal, for instance—among the swiftest of all the birds that fly. Instinctively Cloud King knew the strategy of the problem before him, the age-old problem of his kind. He made no mistake, was betrayed into no false step. The sudden burst of speed which seemed to forecast the fugitive's escape was no surprise to the pursuer. On the contrary, the latter expected it; for always at the moment of discovery, this spurt came.

The question—the only important question—was, how long would the spurt last? And until he had some indication of the answer Cloud King was far too expert at this game of life and death—a game which his forbears had played for countless

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 centuries—to call upon that reserve of strength which might be needed before the end.

Quickly he had his answer. After a minute or two he saw that the rapidity of the fugitive's wing strokes was slackening; and presently the hawk's intent, unwinking eyes, marvelously accurate measurers of distance, told him that the space between pursuer and pursued was beginning to diminish again.

In that moment Cloud King knew that the victory was his whenever he chose to grasp it; and he knew also that the moment was near at hand. The tall peak of Devilhead, which at the beginning of the chase had stood pale and dim on the blue horizon, now reared its dark forested bulk scarcely more than three miles away. In another minute or so the loon would be directly over the long irregular ridge of which Devilhead crag, at the ridge's southern end, was the apex.

Suddenly—so suddenly that the effect was mysterious and startling, as though some unseen outside force had hurled the hawk forward—Cloud King doubled his speed. Gone now was that appearance of grim, calm, masterful deliberateness. The long pointed wings were driving now as hard and as fast as muscle and sinew could drive them; and the peregrine, still a hundred feet higher than

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 his quarry, was overhauling the fugitive almost as though the latter were standing still.

A half minute more and Cloud King's head reached downward, his fierce eyes measuring the distance. Again he screamed and again the great yellow feet with their armament of trenchant claws opened and shut beneath him. Then, his wings half closed, his talons spread, his barred tail open like a fan, he shot down upon his victim.

Dan Alexander, flat on his stomach behind a low mossy bowlder near the center of Rocky Meadow, heard that scream faintly, but was too busy to glance upward. He had completed his long stalk at last; and now, for the second time in his life, he was looking at Red Rogue, the fox, along the barrel of a rifle. Dan was supremely content. He had given much time and labor to this bit of still-hunting and had crawled painfully across half the width of Rocky Meadow. But he had not taken all this trouble in vain. Red Rogue, still sitting on his haunches beside the big bowlder near the brook, was an easy target. Dan, squinting along his rifle barrel, was debating whether to aim for the middle of that rusty-red back—in which case he could not miss—or risk a fancy shot at the fox's head.

Red Rogue also heard the peregrine's scream; and

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 he also was too busy at that moment to concern himself with the business of his neighbor of Devilhead peak. The cottontail, nibbling her way along the brook margin, had nibbled in leisurely fashion and—had kept the old fox waiting a long while for his breakfast. Now, however, the rabbit had approached within a few yards of the bowlder. In another minute or two Red Rogue's chance would come.

Of the three who were playing the grim game of hunter and hunted in Rocky Meadow, only the cottontail had even a moment's warning of the strange thing that occurred. At the falcon's scream she crouched low in the weeds beside the brook, her frightened eyes searching the sky. She saw a dark body hurtling downward and she crouched still lower, expecting each moment to feel the hawk's talons in her flank. But neither Red Rogue nor Dan Alexander saw that falling body. Neither of these two knew that it was falling until it struck the ground between the hunter and the fox, not more than ten feet behind the fox's back.

Red Rogue never knew what it was that fell from the sky. He did not stop to investigate its nature. Startled half out of his wits by a swish of wind and a sudden heavy thud directly behind him and close by, he leaped over the bowlder in front and raced twenty yards at top speed before he looked back.

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 He saw the tall young woodsman who lived in the cabin under Devilhead running forward, rifle in hand; and, changing his direction slightly, the old fox continued on his way.

As for Dan, he quickly unraveled one mystery. But another and deeper one remained. When he had examined the big bird which had fallen out of the clouds—a queer bird of a kind that he had never before seen in the mountains—and discovered that its back was ripped and torn from neck to tail as though sharp claws had raked it, he remembered that faintly heard scream, and, looking up, he saw Cloud King, the peregrine, circling high in the air. He knew then why the unknown bird had fallen.

Yet he was puzzled and a little troubled. The superstition of the mountain folk, inherited from generations of ancestors, was strong in him. This thing which had happened before his eyes was strange beyond all imagining, a marvel for which there was no precedent in all his experience of the woods. Another moment and he would have sent a bullet crashing into Red Rogue's back or brain; but in that moment Cloud King, the falcon, appearing suddenly in the sky, had saved the life of the neighbor with whom he shared the solitude of Devilhead crag.

In spite of himself, Dan wondered whether the strange thing which he had witnessed was not a sign,

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 an omen—perhaps a grim, uncanny warning like those of which old women in the mountain cabins sometimes told. Even while he mocked his own thoughts, Dan knew that, for a while at any rate, he would hunt the bachelors of Devilhead no more.

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T was in the days when Moytoy of Tellequo was High Chief of the Cherokee nation that the wild chestnut stallion known afterwards as Northwind left the savannahs of the Choctaw country and traveled to the Overhills of the Cherokees. He made this long journey because the Choctaw horse-hunters had been pressing him hard. A rumor had run through the tribe, started perhaps by some learned conjurer or medicine man, that the tall, long-maned chestnut stallion who was king of the wild horse herds was descended from the famous steed which the Prince Soto rode when, many years before, he led his Spaniards through the Choctaw lands far into the Mississippi wilderness and perished there.

This rumor sharpened the eagerness of the younger braves, for it was well known that Soto's horse had magic in him. That spring they hunted the wild stallion more persistently than ever; and at last, taking two sorrel mares with him, he struck northeastward, seeking safer pastures.

He did not find them in the Overhills, as the

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 Cherokees called the high Smokies and the Blue Ridge where they lived and hunted. At dawn one May morning, as he lay on a bed of fresh sweetscented grass near the middle of a natural pasture known as Long Meadow, a warning came to him. He raised his head high and sniffed the air, then jumped nimbly to his feet. For a half-minute, however, he did not rouse the two mares lying on either side of him: and they, if they were aware of his movement, were content to await his signal.

He gave the signal presently, and the mares rose, their ears pricked, their nostrils quivering. A light breeze blew across the meadow from the north. The stallion faced south, for his sensitive nose told him that no foeman was approaching from the opposite direction. He knew that his ears had not deceived him and that the sound which he had heard was near at hand. But he did not know the exact quarter from which the sound had come; and though his large eyes were well adapted to the dim light, nowhere could he discern that sinister weaving movement of the tall, close-growing grass which would reveal the stealthy approach of bear or puma. So, for some minutes, he waited motionless, his head held high, every faculty keyed to the utmost.

Twenty yards away down the wind Corane the Raven, young warrior of the Cherokees, crouching

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 low in the grass, watched the wild stallion eagerly. Himself invisible, he could see his quarry more and more plainly as the light grew stronger; and he knew already that the wits of this slim, long-maned chestnut horse, which had come over the mountains from the west, were worthy of his beauty and strength. With all his art—and the Raven prided himself on his skill as a still-hunter—and with all the conditions in his favor, he had been baffled. Having located the beds of the wild horses, he had left his own horse, Manito-Kinibic, at the edge of the woods and had crept through the grass as furtively as a lynx. But his approach had been detected when he was yet five lance-lengths distant, and since then the stallion had made no false move, had committed no error of judgment.

Corane the Raven knew the wild horses well. Most of them were small and wiry, already approaching the mustang type of later years; but in those early days, before inbreeding had proceeded very far, an occasional stallion still revealed unmistakably the fine qualities of blooded forbears. From his hiding place in the grass the young warrior, naked except for a light loincloth of deer-hide, studied the great chestnut carefully, thoughtfully, marveling at the lithe symmetry of his powerful but beautifully moulded form, admiring his coolness and steadiness in the face of danger. The stallion

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 showed no sign of fear. He did not fidget or caper nervously. Only his head moved slowly back and forth, while with all his powers of sight, scent and hearing he strove to locate the precise spot where his enemy was lurking.

The Raven smiled in approval; and presently he applied a test of another kind.

With his long spear he pushed the grass stems in front of him, causing the tops of the tall blades to quiver and wave. The movement was slight; yet even in the pale morning light the wild horse saw it. He watched the spot intently for some moments. Then he moved slowly and cautiously forward, the mares following in his tracks. He moved neither towards the danger nor away from it. Instead, he circled it, and the Raven realized at once what the stallion's purpose was. He intended to get down wind from the suspected spot, so that his nose could tell him whether an enemy hid there, and, if so, what kind of enemy it was.

The young warrior waited, curious to see the out: come. Suddenly the stallion's head jerked upward. He was well down the wind now and a puff of air had filled his nostrils with the man-scent. A moment he stood at gaze; and in that moment one of the mares caught the tell-tale scent, snorted with terror and bolted at full speed. Close behind her raced the other mare; while the stallion, wheeling

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 gracefully, followed at a slower pace, his eyes searching the grassy plain ahead.

The Raven had risen to his feet and stood in plain view, but the chestnut stallion scarcely glanced at him again. He was no longer a menace. Of greater importance now were other dangers unknown, invisible, yet possibly imminent.

The natural meadows of lush grass and maiden cane were perilous places for the unwary. In them the puma set his ambush; there the black bear often lurked; hidden in that dense cover, the Indian horse-hunters sometimes waited with their snares. The mares, in a frenzy of panic, were beyond their protector's control. Their nostrils full of the mansmell, they had forgotten all other perils. But the stallion had not forgotten. Before the mares had run fifty yards the thing that he feared happened.

Out of the grass a black bulk heaved upward, reared high with huge hairy arms outspread, fell forward with a deep grunting roar on the haunch of the foremost mare. Screaming like a mad thing, the mare reeled, staggered and went down. In a fraction of a second she was on her feet again, but the big mountain black bear, hurling himself on her hindquarters, crushed them to the ground.

Corane the Raven, racing forward at the sound of the mare's frenzied scream, was near enough to see part of what happened. He saw the wild stal-

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 lion rear to his utmost height and come down with battering forefeet on the bear's back. He heard the stallion's loud squeal of fury, the bear's hoarse grunt of rage and pain. Next moment the mare was up again and running for her life, the stallion cantering easily behind her.

When the Raven reached the spot the bear had vanished; and the young Indian, marveling at what he had seen, ran towards the woods-edge where his swift roan, Manito-Kinibic, awaited him.

In this way began the chase of the chestnut stallion—Northwind, as he was afterwards known—that long hunt which Corane the Raven made long ago, even before the time of Atta-Kulla-Kulla the Wise. It was Dunmore the trader who first brought down from the Overhills the story of that hunt and told it one night in Nick Rounder's tavern in Charles Town. Dunmore had it from the Raven himself; and the Raven was known among the white traders and hunters as a truthful man. But he was known also as a man of few words, while Dunmore, great hunter and famous Indian fighter though he was, had a tongue more fluent than a play-actor's.

So it was probably Dunmore who put color into the story, and undoubtedly his quick brain, well warmed with rum that night in the tavern, filled in

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 many details. The tale appealed to him, for he was a lover of horses; and this story of the feud between Northwind, the wild stallion, and Manito-Kinibic, the Raven's roan, concerned two horses: which were paladins of their kind.

For the hunt which began that morning in Long Meadow became in large measure a contest between these two. It happened that the Raven had returned not long before from a peace mission to the Choctaws, and while in their country he had heard of the wonderful wild horse which was said to have in him the blood of the Prince Soto's steed and which had vanished from the savannahs after defying all attempts to capture him. In the Overhills wild horses were rare. When the Raven found the tracks of three of them near Long Meadow about sunset one May day, he thought it worth while to sleep that night near the meadow's edge and have a look at the horses in the morning.

So at dawn he had tried to stalk them in their beds; and the moment he saw the wild stallion rise from his sleeping place in the grass he knew that the great chestnut horse of which the Choctaws had spoken stood before him. That morning in Long Meadow he knew also that he could not rest until he had taken this matchless wild horse for his own.

It would be a long hunt, for the stallion would not linger in the Overhills. Small bands of wild

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 horses occasionally crossed the mountains from the west, and always these migrating bands traveled fast, pausing only to feed. Yet, though the hunt might carry him far, Corane the Raven, as he ran swiftly across Long Meadow towards the woods-edge where he had left Manito-Kinibic, had little doubt as to its issue. This wild stallion was a great horse, beautiful, swift and strong—by far the finest wild horse that the Raven had ever seen. But there was one other that was his equal in all things except beauty; and that other was Manito-Kinibic, the Raven's roan.

There was no chief of the Cherokees, the Creeks or the Choctaws who had a horse that could match Manito-Kinibic. His like had never been known in the Overhills. Dunmore the trader had seen him and had wondered whence he came; for though the Raven had taken him from the Chickasaws, whose country lay west of the mountains, it was plain that this big-boned burly roan was not of the western or southern wild breed, while his name, which in the white man's tongue meant Rattlesnake, had to Dunmore's ear a northern sound.

Thick-bodied, wide-headed, short-maned, heavy-eared, Manito-Kinibic was almost grotesquely ugly; yet in his very ugliness there was a sinister, almost reptilian fascination, heightened by the metallic sheen of his red-speckled coat, the odd flatness of

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 his head and the fixed stony glare of his small, deep-set eyes. No warrior of the Cherokees except the Raven could ride him. Few could even approach him, for his temper was as arrogant as that of the royal serpent for which he was named.

There lurked in him, too, a craftiness recalling the subtle cunning which the red men attributed to the rattlesnake and because of which they venerated the king of serpents almost as a god; and with this craftiness he harbored a savage hatred of the wild creatures which the Indians hunted, so that on the hunt he was even more eager, even more relentless than his rider. It was the Raven's boast that Manito-Kinibic could follow a trail which would baffle many a red hunter; that he could scent game at a greater distance than the wolf; that his ears were as keen as those of the deer; that he was as crafty as the fox and as ruthless as the weasel; and that he feared no wild beast of the forest, not even the puma himself.

Such was the horse that Corane the Raven rode on his long hunt. From the beginning of that hunt until its end Manito-Kinibic seemed to live for one thing only—the capture of the wild stallion whose scent he snuffed for the first time that morning in Long Meadow after the wild horse's encounter with the bear.

A few minutes after that encounter, the Raven

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 .—The fact recorded by the Rev. O. M. Feilden as to the nesting of the Magpie is extraordinary, but requires more evidence ere we can accept as proved that which may have been evolved from a fortuitous chain of circumstances. Concerning the question as to that feathered mystery, the Cuckoo, it will I think have come under the notice of every observer, as of myself, that now and then a Cuckoo's egg is found under circumstances—such as in a nest situated in a brush-wood stack—which positively forbid the hypothesis that it could have been laid in the ordinary manner, In the Field of July 1st, 1876, an account is given of the fading of a Cuckoo's egg in a Flycatcher’s nest in a hollow tree, the orifice being too small to admit the entrance of any bird so large as a Cuckoo. Again the same paper of July 15th, 1876, notices the discovery of a young Cuckoo in a Wren's nest, situated on the rafters of a shed, in such a position as to prevent the ingress of a bird any larger than its foster mother. That the Cuckoo must occasionally lay its egg first and then carry it in its bill, is, I think, partly proven by the foregoing instances,even without the testimony of a traveller— {?) I think—who actually shot a South African Cuckoo in the act of carrying its egg in its bill. Morris and other authors mention—on apparently good authority—that the European Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus L.) also has been shot in the act of carrying its egg, and if so does not this prove the possibility of the introduction of the egg by the bill into nests difficult of access? Howbeit, the subject is one infinitely interesting, and well worthy of being worked out in the coming spring by the ornithological readers of the "Midland Naturalist,"—A. M. B., Birmingham.

, of the Geological Society has just been awarded to Dr. Thomas Wright, F.R.S.E., F.G.S., &c., President of the Cheltenham Natural Science Society, (one of the societies forming the Midland Union of Natural History Societies,) in recognition of his detailed researches, continued for many years, on the structure, classification, and distribution of the Fossil Echinodermata, published by the Palæontographical Society, and for his other "Memoirs on the Jurassic and Tertiary Strata of England," contributed to the Geological and other kindred societies.

, of the University of Upsala, the well-known Swedish Botanist, died recently at the age of 83.

, M.A., Rector of Harborough Magna, died, we regret to have to record, on February 2nd, in his 77th year. He was one of the best botanists Warwickshire has produced. In an early number we purpose giving a memoir of his life and some account of his labours as a Naturalist.

, F.L.S., has, for some years past, been known as a hard-working Entomologist, engaged in investigating the injury done to field and garden crops by insects. The tiller of the soil has not known how to meet his insect foes, and has even confounded friends with foes by not knowing the metamorphic phases through which insects pass. Connected officially with the Royal Horticultural Society, to whose scientific committees questions respecting damage to crops are often referred, Mr. Murray was so impressed with the general ignorance of insect life that he made suggestions to the Privy Council which led to the formation of a collection of economic entomology, under the direction of the Science and Art Department. This collection, now for


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 had reached the woods-edge where he had left the big roan, had vaulted upon his back and, riding as swiftly as was prudent through the tall grass and beds of maiden cane, had struck the trail of the three wild horses near the spot where they had passed from the meadow at its lower end into the woods.

The trail was plain to the eye. The scent was strong where the wild horses had brushed through the rank grass. From that moment Manito-Kinibic knew what game it was that his rider hunted; and in that moment all the strange smouldering hatred of his nature was focused upon the wild stallion which, as his nose told him, had passed that way with one or two mares.

Manito-Kinibic leaped forward with long bounds, his nostrils dilated, his ears flattened against his head. Corane the Raven, smiling grimly, let him go. It might be true, as the Choctaws believed, that the wild stallion was sprung from the mighty horse of the Prince Soto himself. But surely this huge implacable horse that now followed on the wild one's trail must have in his veins the blood of the great black steed which the Evil Spirit bestrode when he stood, wrapped in cloud, on the bare summit of Younaguska peak and hurled those awful arrows of his that flashed like lightning.

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 Northwind, the chestnut stallion, had passed within sight of Younaguska, highest of the Balsams, which men in these days call Caney Fork Bald; but that sombre mountain lay far behind him now, for he had crossed both the main ranges of the mountain bulwark and had begun to descend the eastern slope of the second and lesser range. From Long Meadow he led his mares southeastward at a steady gait, following in general the trend of the valleys and the downward-sloping ridges. The injured mare, though her haunch was raw and bloody where the bear's claws had raked it, kept pace with her companions; and the three traveled fast, pausing only once or twice to drink at some cold, clear, hemlock-shaded stream.

For the most part their course carried them through a virgin forest of oak, chestnut, hickory and other broad-leaved trees, clothing the ridges, the slopes and most of the valleys. Occasionally the stallion chose his own way, though as a rule he followed the narrow trails made by the deer; but when in the early forenoon he found a broader path through the woods, well-marked and evidently often used, he turned into it unhesitatingly and followed it without swerving. The wild horse of the southwestern savannahs recognized this path at once. It was one of the highways of the buffalo herds, a road

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 trodden deep and hard through many centuries by thousands of hoofs.

The buffalo were far less abundant now on the eastern side of the mountains. Although the white men's settlements were still confined to a strip along the coast, white hunters sometimes penetrated the foothills and white traders encouraged the taking of pelts. The deer still abounded in almost incredible numbers, but the eastern buffalo herds were withdrawing gradually across the Appalachians. Small droves, however, still ranged the eastern foothills and kept open the deep-worn paths; and the main buffalo roads across the mountain barrier, wider than the narrow buffalo ruts of the western plains, were still highways for wild creatures of many kinds. It was one of these main roads that the chestnut stallion and his mares were following; a road which would lead them with many windings down from the mountains into the hills and through the hills to the broad belt of rolling lands beyond which lay the swamps and savannahs of the Atlantic plain.

All that forenoon the Raven trailed his quarry. Both to the roan stallion and to his rider the trail was a plain one; and when the tracks of the wild horses turned into the buffalo path, the Raven knew that he had only to follow that highway through the woods. With a guttural word he re-

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 strained Manito-Kinibic's savage eagerness. So long as the wild horses kept to the buffalo road the task of following them would be simple. The Raven preferred that for the present the chestnut stallion should not know that he was pursued.

Half a bowshot ahead of the young warrior a troop of crossed the path, following a deer trail leading down the slope to a laurel-bordered stream. Once, at a greater distance, he saw a puma come out of the woods into the path, sit for a moment on its haunches, then vanish at a bound into the forest on the other side. Again and again wild turkeys ran into the woods on either hand, seldom taking wing; and with monotonous regularity ruffed grouse rose a few paces in front of him and whirred swiftly away.

About noon he killed a cock grouse in the path, pinning the bird to the ground with a light cane arrow tipped with bone; and he had scarcely remounted when around a curve of the path appeared the shaggy bulk of a huge buffalo bull. A moment the great beast stood motionless, blinking in astonishment, his massive head hanging low. Then, with surprising nimbleness, he turned and darted around the bend of the trail.

The Raven heard the stamping and trampling of many hoofs and gave Manito-Kinibic his head. The roan bounded forward and almost in an instant

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 reached the bend of the path. At a word from his rider he halted; and the Raven, quivering with excitement, gazed with shining eyes upon a spectacle which sent the blood leaping through his veins—a herd of twenty buffalo pouring out of the path, crowding and jostling one another as they streamed down the mountainside through the woods, following a deer trail which crossed the buffalo road almost at right angles. Twice the young warrior bent his bow and drew the shaft to the head; and twice he lowered his weapon, unwilling to kill game which he must leave to the wolves.

Afternoon came and still the Raven rode on through the teeming mountain forest, following the deep-worn highway which the migrating herds through unknown centuries had carved across the Overhills. More keenly than ever now his eyes searched the path ahead. The wild stallion and his mares had probably grazed abundantly in Long Meadow before their early morning rest had been interrupted; but by this time they should be hungry again, for since leaving Long Meadow they had not stopped to feed. Wherever the Raven saw the forest open a little ahead of him so that grass grew under the far-spaced trees, he halted and listened carefully. Before long in one of these grassy places he should find the three wild horses grazing, and he wished to avoid frightening them.

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 The path, which heretofore had wound around the mountain shoulders, dipped suddenly into a deep valley at the bottom of which a torrent roared. The forest here was close and dark. The wild horses would not' halt in this valley, for there was no grass to be had; and for a time the Raven relaxed his vigilance, letting his eyes stray from the path ahead.

From a tall hemlock on the mountainside a wild gobbler took wing, sailing obliquely across the valley, and the Raven saw an eagle, which had been perching on a dead tulip poplar, launch himself forward in swift pursuit. The young brave turned on his horse's back, gazing upward over his shoulder, eagerly watching the chase.

Without warning, Manito-Kinibic reared, swerved to the right and plunged forward. His rider, taken utterly by surprise, lurched perilously, yet somehow kept his seat. For an instant, as 'Manito-Kinibic reared again, the Raven saw a sinewy naked arm raised above a hideous grinning face daubed with vermilion and black. Steelfingered hands clutched the Raven's leg; on the other side another hand clawed at his thigh. Out from the thicket into the path ahead leaped three more warriors, feathered and plumed with eagletails and hawk-wings, striped and mottled with the red and black paint of war. More dreadful than

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 the hunting cry of the puma, the shrill war-whoop of the Muskogee split the air.

But for Manito-Kinibic the Rattlesnake, the chase of the chestnut stallion would have ended then. But the Muskogee war-party which waylaid Corane the Raven in the pass, hoping to take him alive for slavery or the torture, failed to reckon with the temper and strength of the mighty roan.

In an instant Manito-Kinibic had become a rearing snorting fury, a raging devil of battering hoofs and gleaming teeth. The Raven saw one Muskogee go down before the plunging roan stallion. He saw another whose shoulder was red with something that was not war paint. He saw the three warriors in the path ahead leap for their lives into the thicket as Manito-Kinibic charged down upon them. Bending low on his horse's neck, he heard an arrow speed over him and, a half-second later, another arrow. Then, remembering that he was the son of a war captain, he rose erect, looked back, and flourishing the hand which still held his bow and spear, hurled at his enemies the Cherokee whoop of triumph.

Thenceforward for a time the Raven watched the path behind rather than the path ahead. The war parties of the Muskogee were often mounted, and the young Cherokee thought it likely that this party had horses concealed in the thickets near the path.

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 They would probably pursue him, but with Manito-Kinibic under him he was safe. Yet for a while he gave the sure-footed roan his head, racing onward: as swiftly as the uneven surface of the trail allowed. So it happened that he was driven by necessity into doing the thing which he had intended to avoid.

A mile beyond the scene of the ambush the valley widened. Here, encircled by forested heights, lay a level, sun-bathed meadow, sweet with clover and wild pea vine. Northwind and his mares had traveled far and fast. Urged on by his restless eagerness to get out of the dark forbidding mountains, perhaps impelled, too, by some mysterious premonition of danger, the great chestnut horse had permitted no halt for food. In this beautiful vivid green oasis in the wilderness of woods he halted at last.

The meadow was dotted with grazing deer. Clearly no enemy lurked there. With a joyful whinny Northwind turned aside from the path and led his consorts to the feast.

A half-hour later, an instant before the wariest of the whitetails had caught the warning sound, the wild stallion raised his head suddenly, listened intently for a moment, then, with a peremptory summons to the mares, trotted slowly with high head and tail towards the lower end of the meadow.

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