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 plastered against the wood, he watched with terrified eyes as the falcon shot past and swerved sharply upward to a perch on a dead oak some fifty paces to the right.

If Cloud King, the peregrine, perching on the topmost stick of the oak, saw Red Rogue, his neighbor of Devilhead crag, crouching beside the rock beneath him, the falcon gave no sign. He did not see the logcock in the chestnut near by, for the big woodpecker was careful to keep himself hidden behind the stout limb to which he was clinging. Cloud King must have heard the faint sounds coming at intervals from the shrubbery on the slope of the ridge below the rock, but apparently he paid no attention to them, and seemed to doze on his perch. As a matter of fact, he had come to the dead oak foranap. He had been hunting on the wing nearly all morning, and the oak, thrusting its naked top above the other trees on the ridge, had attracted him as a suitable place for a brief siesta.

Yet sleepy as he seemed and really was, his restless eyes were not content to give themselves as yet to complete inactivity. Now and again at frequent intervals they awoke and shot keen glances here and there; and suddenly, after some ten minutes had passed, they chanced to detect a tiny spot of scarlet on a high limb of a dead chestnut near at hand. For some minutes then, though the hawk

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 himself did not move, those eyes remained wide awake, fiercely and intently alert; and presently they saw this scarlet spot stir slightly, grow larger and then resolve itself into the red crest and black-mustached face of a logcock peering cautiously around the chestnut limb.

What happened then happened in less time than is required to tell it; and it was an odd whim of the woods fates to bring to a crisis at precisely the same moment the little drama of the tree-tops and that other drama which, all the while, had been developing on the ground below.

Suddenly the place where Cloud King had been perching was empty. With the speed of a bullet the peregrine was shooting through the air toward the chestnut limb behind which the logcock was hiding. In that same instant Red Rogue, the fox, saw at last the victim for which he had been waiting, the mysterious maker of those stealthy sounds which for so many minutes had been drawing nearer in the kalmias.

To Red Rogue there had never been the slightest mystery about those sounds. He had known from the beginning exactly what they were; and he was not in the least surprised when a tall wild gobbler stepped out from the shrubbery just beyond the rock.

Red Rogue crouched close to the ground, his slim

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 body tense, his eyes gleaming. The big bronze bird had but to take one more step forward and he would come within reach of the hidden fox's leap.

That step was never taken. A shrill scream almost directly above the turkey, a wild piercing cry of utter terror, shattered the noonday silence of the woods. The gobbler wheeled in his tracks, crouched for a fraction of a second, then launched himself upward and outward from the steep mountainside. Behind him a long tawny shape bounded over the rock and hurled itself through the air; but the distance was too great and the jaws of the fox snapped together a yard or more behind the tip of the gobbler's tail.

The gobbler never saw Red Rogue, never knew how close he had been to death. Nor did he understand at first the meaning of the mad scream of panic which had startled him into sudden flight in the very nick of time. Yet, as he swept out over the valley on wide, swiftly beating wings, that scream seemed for an instant to pursue him, and he recognized it then as the cry of a frightened logcock. Once more it rang out, this time close above him in the air, and almost at the same moment a feathered projectile shot past him, plunging straight down toward the green roof of the kalmia thicket clothing the slope of the ridge. In an instant it

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 had vanished in the kalmias; but immediately the flying turkey was aware of a swish of wings above him, and glacing upward as he flew, he saw a graybacked, long-winged hawk poised in the air, his fierce eyes peering downward.

The gobbler stood in no fear of hawks. Among the winged hunters of the mountains only the great golden eagles were sufficiently large and powerful to threaten his safety. This hawk that had appeared so suddenly in the air above him was not of the eagle kind. It was much smaller than those arrogant monarchs of the sky spaces—in spite of its wide spread of wing, a mere pygmy compared with the gobbler himself; and, savage though its aspect was, he felt no dread of it.

He swept serenely onward over the deep gorgelike valley, high above the tree-tops on the slope below. In spite of his bulk and weight, his powerful wings bore him easily and swiftly, and, his momentary fright forgotten, he exulted in their strength. It was good to ride the air. As a rule, his flights were short; but now, instead of swinging in toward the ridge he had just left and seeking a roost in some tree-top there, he headed straight outward across the valley. A mile or so away rose the forested slope of Devilhead ridge, his favorite feeding ground. He turned his bill toward a shoulder of that ridge where he had fed the previous day and

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 where he knew that he would find abundant provender.

For a few moments the gobbler, as he swept on across the valley, forgot the long-winged falcon which he had glimpsed above him. The gobbler's flight was a long and very gradual descent. The hawk, on the other hand, had mounted somewhat higher and had dropped a little behind, so that the turkey no longer saw him. Nevertheless, it was evident that he was following the turkey, for when the latter changed his course slightly, the falcon turned also and maintained his position a hundred feet above the larger bird and an equal distance behind him. Yet even if the gobbler had realized that he was being pursued, he would have felt no alarm. He could not know that a series of events that morning had fanned into utterly reckless fury the savage and fearless spirit of Cloud King, the peregrine falcon of Devilhead Peak.

All that day ill luck had dogged Cloud King. Beginning with the incident in the wheat field, where Red Rogue, the fox, had robbed him of the grouse which he had struck down, he had suffered one disappointment after another in his hunting. Three times during the forenoon he had stooped at prey only to miss it by an inch through no fault of his own. Finally, by an even narrower margin, he had missed the logcock whose scarlet-crested face

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 he had seen peering around the chestnut limb. This was the most exasperating mishap of all, not only because of the other failures which had preceded it, but also because the falcon had felt very sure of his game. Though they were fairly fast flyers, logcocks were not adepts in aërial strategy; and this one, detected in an exposed place, should have fallen an easy victim to the superbly swift and marvelously agile peregrine.

Perhaps this logcock was wilier than most. Perhape it was mainly luck, combined with overconfidence on the falcon's part, which caused Cloud King to miss once more. At any rate, the big woodpecker, after uttering that first shriek of terror which had startled the gobbler into flight, had done the one thing that could save him.

Instead of fleeing at top speed, in which case he would have been overtaken in a few seconds, he had dived almost straight downward and, narrowly missing the flying gobbler in his descent, had plunged headforemost into the dense cover of the kalmia thicket clothing the slope of the ridge. Cloud King, whizzing through the air like a rifle bullet, had clutched at him with curved needle-pointed talons just as he began his plunge; but the logcock's unexpected dive had saved him, and the falcon, nonplused for an instant, had seen his hoped-for

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 victim drop like a plummet into the impenetrable kalmias some fifty feet below.

It was then that Cloud King, poising in the air above the spot where the logcock had vanished, saw the great gobbler shooting past beneath him; and it was then that his pent-up fury, intensified no doubt by hunger and by the excitement of his assault on the logcock, impelled him to attempt the most spectacular exploit of his strenuous career.

Ordinarily the peregrine would never have attacked so large a bird as a twenty-pound wild gobbler. It was not that he lacked courage for such an enterprise, but simply that the instinct of his race, fixed through countless generations, would not have suggested the wild turkey as prey. The peregrine, or duck hawk, among the swiftest and most courageous of all the hawk kind, lives chiefly on wild ducks and other water fowl, where these are to be found; but in the high mountain country, where such game was rare, Cloud King, the peregrine of Devilhead Peak, levied tribute on such upland wild folk as grouse, quail, rabbits, doves and various forest birds. It had never occurred to him to seek a victim among the wild turkeys which still frequented certain parts of the mountain woods. In fact, because turkeys were rather rare and in general kept pretty carefully under cover, he had seen

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 very little of them during his life in the mountains and knew next to nothing about their ways.

Now, however, his fierce and venturesome spirit, roused by the irritating mishaps of that morning and in particular by the failure of his attempt upon the logcock, Cloud King determined to match his speed and daring against the weight of an antagonist larger than any other that he had ever attacked.

This great bronze-winged gobbler, appearing suddenly beneath him at the very moment when the logcock vanished in the kalmias, was a tempting target. For an instant the peregrine, hanging motionless in the air on swiftly beating pinions, was on the point of launching his assault then and there.

But even in his fury he was wise with the inherited wisdom of his race. He hung at that instant not more than a score of feet above the gobbler, and he realized instinctively that this was an insufficient height—that in attacking so huge an opponent he must plunge upon it from a much greater altitude. Hence for the moment he restrained his ardor. Instead of darting down at once upon his intended victim, he began to mount higher above it and at the same time slackened his pace slightly to let the turkey draw somewhat ahead.

There was plenty of time. The gobbler was flying straight out across the valley, evidently aiming for the ridge on the other side. Cloud King

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 mounted higher and higher, his fierce eyes fixed upon his prey. The bulky body of the turkey was driving forward at high speed; but Cloud King kept pace with him easily, his long tapering wings fanning the air with deliberate, measured strokes. Seemingly his fury had passed. Cool, skillful, unhurried, a perfect master of aërial warfare, he would launch his assault when the right time came and not an instant before.

On the wooded slope of Devilhead ridge, across the valley, Dan Alexander sat at the foot of a big chestnut oak and gazed out across the gorge. He was tired and disappointed. For hours he had tramped the woods on the western shoulder of the ridge, searching for the great wild gobbler which for several mornings had been feeding there. He had found many old "scratches"—places where the big bird had been feeding on previous days—but he had discovered no fresh sign. Dan gave up the quest at last, and before beginning the long homeward tramp, sat down to rest in a shady spot on the steep mountain side whence he could look out across the valley.

He had been sitting there for perhaps five minutes, his mind busy with plans for the new campaign which he intended to wage against Cloud King and Red Rogue, the marauders of Devilhead Peak, when

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 his gray eyes brightened suddenly. For a moment he gazed intently at some distant object straight ahead of him. Then with a low exclamation he jumped to his feet, his eyes still fixed upon the strange thing which had attracted his attention.

It was an amazing sight indeed. Far out over the valley, almost on a level with the spot where he stood, the young woodsman saw a great wide-winged bird flying straight toward him—a bird which he recognized at once. It was the wild gobbler which he had been hunting all morning, the gobbler whose scratches he had found on Devilhead ridge. But it was not solely the sight of his quarry which kindled a glow of excitement in Dan's eyes.

The gobbler was not alone. Above him, as he came on, flew another and much smaller bird—a bird whose long pointed wings, fanning the air rather slowly and yet with masterful certainty and power, marked him at once as the peregrine of Devilhead crag. The falcon was flying about a hundred feet above the turkey, and immediately Dan realized with the intuitive insight of the born woodsman that Cloud King's presence there was not accidental. Moments before the climax came the young mountaineer sensed what was to happen.

Suddenly he saw Cloud King close his wings and plunge. It seemed to Dan that the falcon did not merely fall upon his prey, but that he drove himself

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 downward with wings and tail at well-nigh incredible speed. More sensitive and more imaginative than most mountain woodsmen, a keen and sympathetic student of the wild things which he loved in his own fashion even while he hunted them, Dan felt his pulse quicken at the spectacle of that superbly reckless attack.

For the moment he forgot his hatred of Cloud King in admiration of the falcon's swiftness and daring; and as the winged thunderbolt struck the gobbler squarely on the back where neck and body joined, a thrill of fierce joy shot through the young mountaineer—the tribute of one good hunter to another who has proved himself master of his craft. Breathlessly, Dan awaited the next act in the drama.

It was not what he expected. A bare fraction of a second before the peregrine struck his prey the thought had flashed through Dan's mind that the falcon could not possibly kill his huge adversary at a single blow. Cloud King would strike again and again, the mountaineer expected, forcing the turkey down with repeated blows and finally stunning him or tearing open his throat. The next moment revealed the woodsman's mistake. That one blow had been enough. The gobbler was falling, shooting down at a steep slant, his neck outstretched, his wings rigidly extended.

Dan knew at a glance that the life had all but

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 gone out of the big bird, that he either was dying or else was stunned. Eagerly the mountaineer watched as the gobbler shot downward, expecting each instant to see the triumphant peregrine disengage himself from his victim. Faster and faster fell the turkey, his wings half closed now, his neck still stretched to its utmost length; and for an instant Dan believed that he distinguished the form of the hawk clinging to the larger bird's back.

To the very last he looked to see Cloud King leap from the feathered steed he was riding. Not until gobbler and falcon had crashed together into the tree-tops a hundred yards or so down the slope did the woodsman realize that in this game of life and death which he had witnessed something had gone amiss. He marked the spot where the birds had fallen close to a gigantic tulip poplar overtopping the other trees on the mountainside. Then, snatching up his rifle, he hurried down the slope.

Within ten minutes he found them. The gobbler lay dead, his wings spread wide, his neck twisted under him. He had either been killed in the air by the impact of the falcon's hard muscular body or else he had killed himself when he crashed stunned and helpless into the branches of the trees.

Upon the bronze body of his victim stood Cloud King. The peregrine swayed weakly, turning his head from side to side and peering uncertainly about

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 him; and Dan knew that for the moment at least the hawk was incapable of flight. Plainly the breath had been knocked out of him, and probably for a few minutes before Dan's arrival he had lain unconscious.

Quickly the woodsman leaned his rifle against a sapling and slipped off his coat. The gleam of excitement in his eyes had given way now to a twinkle of gratification. The gobbler was his, after all; and, better even than that, Cloud King, the buccaneer of Devilhead, the murderer of grouse and quail, was in his power at last. He could have shot the falcon as he perched dazed and impotent on the turkey's carcass. But why waste powder and bullet when it was just as easy to wring the rascal's neck?

Holding his coat in his hand, Dan approached cautiously. It was the work of a moment to throw the coat over the hawk so as to prevent him from using bill or claws. Then, folding his captive in the coat, Dan tried to lift him, only to find that the hawk's talons were still embedded in the turkey's back just above and beside the neck. He understood then why Cloud King, after delivering his blow, had ridden his victim down into the bristling tree-tops through which the turkey had fallen.

With some difficulty Dan worked the long curved claws loose from the tough muscle and sinew into which they had been driven. Then, sitting on a

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 rock close to the turkey's body, and gripping the falcon's legs above the talons to hold him upright, he lifted the coat carefully and looked at his prisoner.

For some minutes the young woodsman sat in silence, gazing fixedly at the peregrine. The light had returned to Cloud King's eyes. They were no longer dazed and dull. On the contrary, all their accustomed fierceness and alertness had come back to them; and it seemed to Dan that never before had he looked into eyes so proud and fearless as these.

Cloud King made no attempt to free himself. As the minutes passed, it was evident that his strength was returning rapidly. Yet he did not flutter or struggle, and although Dan had now removed the coat altogether, the peregrine did not try to strike with his strong hooked bill. He simply held himself erect in the grip of his captor and awaited, with no visible trace of fear, the doom which was surely at hand.

After long minutes Dan rose to his feet. His gray eyes were shining, but the light in them was not fierce.

"Cloud King," he said, "you're game; you're game clean through. I was going to wring your neck, but I've changed my mind."

With a quick motion of his arm, he tossed the

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 hawk into the air. Cloud King's long wings opened, and swiftly, buoyantly he circled upward, then shot away over the valley. Dan watched him thoughtfully for a few minutes as he sped northward toward Devilhead Peak. Then the young mountaineer turned to examine the great bronze gobbler which had so strangely become his prize.

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N THE thick woods of chestnut and oak at the foot of Slanting Pasture, wood thrushes, rose-breasted grosbeaks and blue headed vireos were singing, each heedless of all the rest. Abruptly their music lulled. A low humming sound, which seemed to come from all directions at once, filled the air. Low as the sound was, thrush, grosbeak and vireo fell silent. A sudden stillness hung over the high upland pasture, sparkling with dew and starred with innumerable daisies—a hush heavy with expectation, laden with peril.

Possibly some finer sense than that of hearing had warmed the singing birds along the forest's edge. Not until the bird chorus had lulled did the bearded, blue-shirted mountaineer, hidden in a coppice of alder near the middle of the pasture, detect that vibrant hum. At the same moment a bunch of twenty sheep grazing fifty yards to the right of the coppice caught the sound and huddled. One of their number left the flock, ran forward a few paces, then stopped, staring stupidly.

In the brief interval which had elapsed the hum ming sound had sharpened to a hiss. A great dark

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 shape was falling from the sky like a huge arrowhead—a big brown bird, its wings half closed, its curved beak pointing downward, its feathered legs, armed with long hooked talons, thrust straight beneath it. The hiss became a loud rustling noise like the rushing of wind; and in another half-second the golden eagle, suddenly checking her descent in a smother of buffeting wings, struck her grappling hooks into her prey.

The blue-shirted mountaineer in the alder coppice swore vehemently as he jumped to his feet. Of the three young lambs in Slanting Pasture, the eagle had chosen the one farthest from the hunter's ambush and least conveniently placed for his present purpose, which was, briefly stated, to kill the daring freebooter that had been raiding his flock. For an hour he had been awaiting his chance, and now that it had come it was not so sure a thing as he had hoped for, since the raider had selected a victim behind the alder thicket and not in front of it, and was thus hidden from him at the moment most favorable for a shot. It took the man only a fraction of a minute to dart around the edge of the thicket; yet by that time the eagle, alarmed by a movement of the alders, had already risen forty feet above the ground.

High above Slanting Pasture, a black speck moved across the pale-blue face of the sky. For

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 ten minutes this speck had been swinging there, describing wide circles and long ellipses; and for seven minutes of that ten it had looked down upon another bird of the same species soaring and circling at a lesser altitude. Then, of a sudden, the lower bird had plunged, rushing down through the hissing air straight for the green surface of Slanting Pasture, where, as usual, a flock of white sheep were grazing.

The male eagle knew that his mate had spotted her victim. Instantly he half closed his wings and slid swiftly down a steep incline, descending several hundred feet before he checked his fall with a sudden stiffening of widely extended pinions. With fierce, eager eyes he watched the familiar drama—a drama which these two tyrants of the air had reenacted again and again in this same spot during the past several weeks. Even at that great height his eyes could distinguish every detail of the scene spread beneath him. Before his mate fell upon it, he saw the lamb at which she was aiming and knew that its fate was sealed.

Suddenly his gaze shifted to an alder thicket near the middle of the pasture. A man had emerged from this thicket arid was darting around its rim. The soaring eagle's muscles tightened; his head swung lower as his dark eyes, fiercer than ever now, measured the distance between his mate, just rising

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 from the ground, and the unlooked-for intruder who had burst from his ambush in the alders.

The big bird knew what was coming, knew the menace of the rifle which the man had whipped to his shoulder, knew that another moment would decide the outcome. He saw the flash of the rifle, saw his mate collapse in the air and pitch heavily downward. For ten minutes after the man had carried her body away toward his cabin below the pasture the male eagle continued to sail round and round in great circles. Then he turned his bill northward toward the high summits of the Smokies, and, driving forward swiftly with powerful beats of his pinions, vanished behind a dense white cloud drifting down the long valley from the upper peaks.

Some two weeks later, an hour after sunrise, a bald eagle passed over a saddle of the highest ridge of the Smokies, traveling eastward. Though of full size, he was evidently a young bird, for he wore the uniform dark-gray livery characteristic of the bald eagle in its second year, before the head and tail have acquired the white plumage which denotes maturity. A squirrel hunter, resting for a few minutes on a flat sunny rock near the summit of the ridge, saw the big bird pass over well beyond rifle range and shook his fist at it. In the dark plumage of youth the bald eagle is virtually indistinguish-

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 able from the golden eagle at a little distance. The squirrel hunter took this bird to be one of the pair of golden eagles which for many years had nested somewhere amid the high peaks of the Smokies and had levied tribute not only upon the wild creatures of the upland forests but also upon the little flocks and herds of the mountain farms.

Keener eyes than those of the squirrel hunter were deceived. A male golden eagle, sunning himself on a narrow ledge of a southward-facing precipice, suddenly dropped off into the abyss. For twenty feet or so he dropped, his wings half open. Then, spreading his pinions to the utmost, he planed outward from the face of the cliff, shot upward with the impetus thus gained, and swinging around a half circle, set a straight and slightly ascending course to the eastward. A mile or more away, and perhaps a hundred yards higher, the bald eagle which had just passed over the ridge between the peaks pursued his journey, his long, wide wings steadily and strongly smiting the air. On that dark form, cleaving the thin atmosphere high above the wooded ridges and valleys slanting down from the upper Smokies, the deep-set eyes of the golden eagle were fixed with an eagemess almost terrible in its intensity.

If the bald eagle was aware from the outset of the grim pursuer speeding in his wake, he gave no

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 sign of apprehension or even of interest. He, too, was a king in his own right; and, young though he was, he knew his own powers and acknowledged no overlord among all the tribes of the air. With the other eagles of his own kind he had lived in peace. The big, booted, ring-tailed eagles of the mountain country he had never happened to meet.

Late that spring, seized by the wanderlust which sometimes attacks young bald eagles that have not yet chosen mates, he had left the barrier islands of the Low Country coast, the ancient home and hunting ground of his race, and had traveled far inland, crossing the middle country and the hill country and even passing beyond the highest ranges of the Blue Ridge. There, for a while, he had maintained a difficult existence in a region of high forested mountains and green cultivated valleys—a region of strange and unfamiliar aspect, ill suited to his needs. Now, his wanderlust gone, he was on his way back to the Low Country which was his proper home, a country where swamps, marshes and barrier islands abounded with game, and where sounds, creeks and rivers teemed with fish.

With that shining goal before him, the bald eagle was traveling not at the highest speed of which he was capable, but at a steady gait which he could maintain without fatigue for hours at a time. The golden eagle, on the other hand, having no long

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 journey in view and intent only upon overtaking the big bird ahead of him, was exerting his powers to the utmost. In less than half an hour he had drawn up to within a hundred yards of the other and at the same time had mounted to approximately the same level. Not until then did the bald eagle betray knowledge of his pursuer's approach; possibly not until then was he aware that he was being pursued. Suddenly he swerved from his straight course, swinging to the right in a wide circle and spiraling upward, at the same moment uttering a fierce, cackling scream.

For several seconds the golden eagle held his onward way. Then he, too, swung to the right and circled upward. But he did not answer the other's challenge, and he did not, as a human onlooker might have expected, hurl himself at once upon the stalwart stranger whose piercing eyes, no less arrogant than his own, denoted a spirit by no means averse to a battle in the air. For a few minutes the two regal birds, equals in size and martial bearing, circled and sailed in close proximity, each watching the other narrowly and each evidently prepared for any hostile move that the other might make. Then the bald eagle swung sharply to the left and, passing within ten feet of the golden eagle, resumed his journey.

Yet as though not quite sure that he would not

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 have to enforce his right of passage through the territory ruled by this tawny-headed monarch of the peaks, the wide-winged traveler kept a watchful eye on the air road behind him; and presently he saw that the tawny-headed one had ceased soaring and circling and was trailing him again at a distance of four or five hundred yards. He saw also, however, that his pursuer was no longer rushing forward at full speed as though bent upon attacking him. The golden eagle's wings fanned the air no more rapidly than those of the bald eagle, and the distance between the two birds was not diminishing. The bald eagle, watchful and unafraid, but too intent upon reaching his far-off home to pick a fight by the way, held his straight eastward course.

Hour after hour the two great birds traveled thus in company, the bald eagle leading, the golden eagle following in the other's wake. All that forenoon they sped on, high above gunshot range, mile after mile, league after league, until they no longer saw mountains or even hills beneath them, but a rolling, undulating country dotted with farms and with towns. Their course was now decidedly south of east, and gradually the land under them was growing flatter and the wooded areas more extensive.

When, in late afternoon, the leader turned off at right angles from the winding sluggish river which for several hours he had been following as a guide,

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 the cleared spaces had grown fewer and smaller, the farms were more widely scattered, and forest covered most of the face of the land. Down to this forest the bald eagle slanted toward dusk, coming to rest in the top of a tall cypress surrounded by other cypresses, black gums and magnolias; and after him the golden eagle swung down also to a perch in another great moss-bearded tree near by.

In this way the golden eagle of the high Smokies came to the Low Country of the coastal plain after the death of his mate. Probably loneliness more than anything else was responsible for the whim which had caused him to follow for hundreds of miles the big dark-gray stranger whom he had at first mistaken for his lost consort. The eagle, when he chooses a mate, is wedded to her for life. For fifteen years these golden eagles of the Smokies had lived together, and when on that morning in Slanting Pasture their long comradeship came to an end, there had begun for the survivor a period of incessant restlessness and gnawing discontent.

Somehow he knew what had happened, knew that his mate was lost to him. Yet, incapable of comprehending the significance of death, day after day he had looked for her, ranging far and wide over the ridges and valleys. In all the blue and purple wilderness of mountain and sky, he was alone. No other golden eagle lived within fifty miles of his

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 aerie; for he and his consort had kept their kingdom against all corners, and year after year the two young eagles which they reared each spring were no sooner able to shift for themselves than their jealous sire gave them to understand that their presence was no longer desired.

Hence when his mate was killed he had found no other of his own kind to keep him company. For two weeks he had patrolled his familiar hunting ground, winging restlessly from peak to peak, killing his prey where he found it, his eyes ceaselessly searching the mountain-rimmed horizons and the blue emptiness of the upper air. Then came the morning when, as he dozed at one of his favorite lookout stations near the summit of a towering peak, he roused suddenly to see a great royal bird, of somber plumage and as wide of wing as his mate, journeying eastward a mile or so away. For a brief interval he had believed that his long quest was over.

The disillusionment which doubtless came to him long before he had overtaken the newcomer could not dispel altogether the impulse which had sent him instantly in swift and eager pursuit; and even after he had found the dark-gray stranger to be a male bird of another species bold enough to challenge him to battle, the loneliness which oppressed him caused him not only to ignore the challenge but even to follow where the other led. This was not the com-

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 panionship which he desired without understanding that he desired it. But it was companionship of a sort; and mile after mile slipped past beneath him, and before he realized it he had traveled beyond the frontiers of his own domain.

Having journeyed so far, it was perhaps only natural that he should follow his new comrade throughout the rest of that day. Hence when dusk fell and the bald eagle, still some forty miles short of the barrier island which was his ultimate goal, sought a lodging for the night in a great swamp well within the bounds of the Low Country, the wanderer from the Smokies found himself, a few minutes later, at rest in a dense wood of tall straight-stemmed trees not utterly unlike the familiar balsams of his mountains.

If the feathery-foliaged cypresses, in spite of their ghostly draperies of gray Spanish moss, faintly recalled the fir forests of his upland home, all else was new and strange. Darkness quickly shut the surrounding woods from his view; but these woods were full of night noises such as he had never heard before; noises which oppressed even his bold spirit with a sense of vague disquiet. The noises—sometimes low and guttural, sometimes hoarse and loud—came from tall trees fifty yards to his left, where the dry floor of the swamp sloped gently down to the edge of a small lagoon; and the eagle did not

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 know that those trees held the bulky nests of a company of great blue herons which still used the spot as a roosting place, although the breeding season was long past.

The intermittent clamor of the herons waked him at frequent intervals during the night; and being thus wakeful, he heard other sounds also, only a few of which he recognized. Some of these came from tree-tops near at hand; others floated up from the blackness directly beneath him—faint rustlings as of large animals moving through brush or reeds, occasionally a stamping as of hoofs on hard ground, once a shrill scream followed by a short scuffle amid leaves or rushes.

Dawn found him alert and eager, his strong muscles rested, his appetite keen. Amid the distractions of his new surroundings he had forgotten his fellow voyager. It did not occur to him to look for the bald eagle in the neighboring tree-top, and he did not see the latter leave his perch shortly after dawn and head away to the southward on the last lap of his journey. More interesting sights engaged the attention of the mountain-bred golden eagle, looking about him for the first time in the big Low Country swamp.

While the light was yet faint he heard the swish of wide wings above him and saw a dim shape sail overhead in the gloom. Presently came another and

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 another, until the air seemed alive with the sound of wings; for the tall blue herons in the roost at the eagle's left were early risers and most of them were off for their fishing grounds in the river marshes and the wet rice fields before day had fairly come. A little later, a whitetail buck followed by two does walked slowly along a winding trail through a bed of reeds almost directly beneath the eagle's perch, and he knew then the meaning of the faint rustling sounds which he had heard in the night. A barred owl, returning from his hunting, winged silently past. Two wood ducks shot by like bullets, heading for the lagoon beside the heron roost. Many squirrels, some of which were much larger and of a darker gray than those of the mountain woods, moved about in the trees on every side. These big iron-gray, white-nosed squirrels he watched with especial interest. He had never seen their like before, but he knew that they were savory meat, and his hunger was growing more and more insistent. Motionless on his perch near the top of the cypress, he awaited his chance.

Close to the foot of a big black gum a long, thickbodied, black-and-red snake emerged from a hole under a root. One of the smaller gray squirrels saw it and ran chattering down the trunk of the gum, lying there head downward, scolding excitedly. Presently, as the snake glided slowly on, the squir-

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 rel leaped to the ground, to be joined there by three others which came running from as many directions. The eagle waited and watched. But the big white-nosed squirrels upon which he had set his heart kept to the trees; and the eagle, more adept at striking his prey on the ground, finally picked one of the smaller grays as his target and poised himself for the plunge.

In the nick of time fate intervened to save the furry busybody. A twig cracked behind a tangle of grapevine and smilax and the squirrels scampered in all directions, each making for the nearest tree. The eagle, his neck stretched downward, his wings half opened, saw a tall bronze bird step into view from behind the vine tangle and recognized it instantly—a wild turkey gobbler, taller and bigger than any that he had ever seen among his native mountains.

Without a sound he dropped from his perch, fell like a plummet half-way to the ground, then, half opening his wings, slid swiftly down a steep incline, his body slanting sideways, his claws open beneath him. Next moment the wild gobbler's big wings were beating the grass in the death agony.

The eagle, busily plucking the great bronze carcass, did not know that delicate pointed ears, alert to catch all woods sounds, had heard the convulsive threshing of those powerful wings. A hundred

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 yards down the wind two gray foxes, hunting together, halted abruptly at that strange, sudden commotion, listened eagerly and wonderingly, then trotted forward, sniffing the air. From behind a fringe of low canes they surveyed the situation. Then in some subtle, soundless way known only to foxes, they agreed upon the strategy which the problem demanded.

The male trotted boldly forward, heading straight for the spot where the eagle stood upon the turkey's body. The female circled to the left and approached the eagle from that side. Two minutes later the big bird, his hooked bill full of turkey feathers, saw two foxes—not rusty-red like those of the mountains, but gray with white and russet markings—leaping toward him with bared fangs. One fox he might have defied, but with one assailant in his front and another at his flank the odds were too heavy. With a scream of anger he rose and, circling upward, left his prey to the wily schemers of the swamp woods who had schemed their way to a feast.

One taste of juicy flesh, torn from the breast of his victim just before the foxes had appeared, served only to sharpen his hunger. As he spiraled upward above the woods his eyes searched the tree-tops and the sky and swept the distant level horizon. To the eagle of the Smokies, all that they saw was

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 bewilderingly strange; for here was no tumbled terrain of ridge and valley, but a flat expanse clothed for the most part with pine forest. Athwart this pine forest lay the cypress and gum swamp where he had spent the night, a green belt four or five miles wide and many miles long; while scattered here and there were houses and cultivated clearings and larger areas, of vivid green bordered and blotched with olive, which he took to be pastures, but which were really wet prairies of tall rushes and abandoned rice fields. In a dozen places he saw the glint and glimmer of water; and far away to the southward a river wound like a gigantic glittering serpent through sunny verdant flats walled in by luxuriant woods of oak, hickory, magnolia and other broad-leaved trees.

But the strangeness of the panorama, so utterly unlike his mountain home, engaged the eagle's attention only momentarily, if indeed he was really conscious of it all. He was hungry, and what chiefly interested him was the life which he saw around him in the air. Whereas in his mountains the air was nearly always empty except perhaps for a solitary buzzard, hawk or raven, here in this new hunting ground the golden eagle saw big birds soaring on every side or flying at lower levels with measured, deliberate wing strokes.

Some of these birds were turkey vultures pre-

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 cisely like those that he had always known. Others, though he had never seen them before, he recognized as belonging to the vulture kind, and to these he paid little attention. But circling higher than any of the vultures were three long-necked, long-tailed birds which he watched with lively interest; while at frequent intervals other large wide-winged wayfarers, some of them snowy white, others gray-blue and white and reddish-purple, passed back and forth beneath him.

Perhaps a little bewildered by so great an abundance of life, the eagle continued for nearly half an hour to sail idly in great circles. Then he seemed suddenly to reach a decision. For no definite reason, he followed the course of the river, winding between wet rice fields overgrown with lotus, cattails and other water plants, and flanked with woods. In the rice fields scores of herons were feeding, while many gallinules floated on little ponds and creeks bordered with wampee and reeds. About midday he killed a wood duck; then, when he had eaten it, he rested for a while in a tall pine beside the river, and in mid-afternoon resumed his journey, still traveling southward. In that direction lay the salt marshes of the coast, the long wooded barrier islands, and beyond this chain of islands the sea. In sight of the ocean, he turned northeastward, flying up the coast high above the marshes; and he

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 slept that night in a stunted live oak in a dense junglelike island forest, with the thunder of the Atlantic rollers booming in his ears.

About five o'clock of a sultry August afternoon, Capt. Mat Norman, daydreaming at the wheel of his little motor freighter, was roused suddenly by the swish of many wings. Kicking over the stool upon which he had been sitting just aft of the low cabin, he reared his stocky body to its full height, muttering an exclamation of surprise. At the same moment a red Irish terrier, which had been sleeping on top of the cabin, scrambled to his feet and began to bark. With a brief command Norman quieted the dog.

Then he stooped and called through the open door of the cabin, "Look here, York, if you want to see something."

A tall negro in grease-stained blue overalls emerged, glanced quickly around and ahead, then plunged into the cabin again. In a moment he reappeared, a rusty single-barreled shotgun in his hand. Norman spoke sharply, peremptorily:

"Nothing doing, York. In the first place, I don't like it, and in the second place, it's against the law. You can shoot plover and curlew now and then, but you can't shoot those."

The negro grinned sheepishly, accepting the in-

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 evitable, and for a few moments the two men stood in silence, watching.

What they saw was a sight familiar enough to both of them, yet in certain respects unusual. At a bend of the winding creek, brimful with the rising tide, a flock of more than a hundred wood ibises had risen from the marsh directly ahead of the boat and hardly more than fifty feet from her bow. The air ahead and above was full of great birds as big as geese, their wide, white, black-edged wings laboring mightily, their long, curved bills and slender necks outstretched, their slim legs dangling grotesquely or trailing behind. Norman, a lover of birds, watched them eagerly. He knew the wood ibises well. From June to October they abounded on the salt marches, and every summer he saw them almost daily as he plied the marsh creeks in his launch. But it was rare good luck to get so close to a flock, and this flock was larger than most. Norman tried to count the birds as they sailed and drifted about in the air, rising higher and higher, then floating lazily toward the woods on the barrier island a mile to the eastward. York Hawley, his newly hired deck hand, interrupted his calculations.

"Look yonder, Cap'n," said the negro, pointing to the west. "Dat eagle comin' mighty fast."

Norman, looking where York pointed, watched the eagle come on, noting with a thrill of admira-

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 tion the speed at which it was driving through the air. Yet for some moments he did not suspect the big bird's design. The bald eagles of the coast lived at peace with most of the feathered tribes. They killed some ducks in winter, and in the country of the mainland they often dined on coots; but on the salt marshes and about the barrier islands they subsisted mainly on fish. The birds of the marsh creeks and the island inlets—ibises, herons, egrets, terns, skimmers, curlews and pelicans—they seldom molested. Norman never guessed that this eagle—which he took to be a one-year or two-year-old bird, since it lacked the white head and tail of the fully adult bald eagle—was about to show him something that he had never seen before.

Most of the wood ibises were flying in loose array toward the barrier island woods. Three of them, however, had left the main flock and were sailing in circles about three hundred feet above the marsh. The eagle, perhaps a hundred feet higher in the air, was heading toward these three; and suddenly, when he was almost but not directly over the highest of them, he half closed his wings and plunged, his body tilting forward, his tail spread like a fan, his hooked bill and widespread talons thrust downward. Mat Norman, wide-eyed and breathless, saw him strike the ibis with terrific force on the back where neck and body joined, grapple with his prey

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 for a brief instant, then release it. The ibis dropped like astone. The eagle swung down in a wide spiral to the spot where his victim had fallen into the tall marsh grass.

Mat Norman, a thoughtful man like many of his kind, brooded long over what he had seen. He had witnessed what to him was almost a miracle. He had seen a law of the wild reversed, a rule of Nature broken. All his life he had known the eagles of the coast and never had he seen one of them do what this eagle had done. For two hours, as he steered his launch along the sinuous placid marsh creeks, he turned the problem over in his mind, and gradually a suspicion which had dawned in him took more and more tangible form as affording the only possible solution.

He determined to keep an especially sharp lookout for a big dark eagle which at a distance appeared to be a bald eagle in the somber plumage of youth, but which, upon closer examination, might prove to be something else—something so rare on the Low Country coast as to be practically unknown there. And although he was not in the habit of killing eagles, he decided to conduct this search with a gun.

A month passed before he had an opportunity to test his theory. Meanwhile tales came to him which strengthened his belief in his own reasoning. On two mainland plantations lambs disappeared

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 mysteriously, and the ground showed no tracks of either man or wildcat, while the best hounds could strike no trail. Of greater concern to Norman was the fact that on the marshes wood ibises seemed to be growing shyer and rarer. One morning he saw a flock scatter and break with every evidence of panic as a big, dark, wide-winged bird sailed into view; and some days afterward a negro fisherman told him that he had seen an ibis killed in mid-air. Then another lamb was taken, and this time the owner saw the slayer—an eagle. The word went forth; and Norman knew that the bald eagles, which he admired for their strength and kingly bearing, must now expect sterner persecution at the hands of man. His resentment grew. On his trips along the marsh creeks he watched the sky with increased vigilance, and whenever he visited the wooded barrier islands his double-barreled gun went with him.

Mat Norman made his living by hauling freight in his launch through the maze of tidal waterways threading the wide wastes of marsh between the Low Country mainland and the chain of islands along the edge of the sea. Sometimes when business was slack he landed on one of these islands to fish in the breakers or to search for turtle eggs in the sands; and when, one crisp September morning, York Hawley, the colored marshman who was serving him temporarily as deck hand, suggested that

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 the big channel bass were probably running in the surf, he merely expressed a thought which was already in Norman's mind. A half-hour later the launch lay at anchor in a deep narrow inlet separating two islands of the chain; and Norman, bidding Rusty, his Irish terrier, make himself comfortable in the cabin, went ashore, with York at the oars.

Landing on the steep sandy bank, they walked a quarter of a mile up the inlet strand, heading away from the ocean beach. The first necessity was to catch some mullet for bait, and for this purpose York carried a cast net slung over his shoulder. Norman, in accordance with his custom of the past few weeks, had brought his shotgun, and also, as an afterthought, the field glasses which he kept on the launch. Walking briskly along the inlet shore toward the back beach of the island where a small creek abounding in mullet swung in from the marshes, Norman was a little in the lead. Suddenly he halted, groped for the binoculars hanging from his shoulder by a leather thong and looked long at some object around the curve of the beach.

"York," he said, when his companion had come up, "the bass can wait a while. I think that's our friend the enemy over there." And he pointed to a big dark bird perched in a lone dead oak perhaps a third of a mile away.

The tree stood on the marshy back beach close

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 to the edge of the island woods. It required less than twenty minutes to circle back amid the sand dunes above the inlet beach and then steal silently through the junglelike woods to a point within easy range of the dead oak. Lying behind a myrtle bush on a low dune, Norman again trained his glasses on the big bird in the tree.

Almost at once he gave a grunt of satisfaction. His theory was proved. This was no bald eagle in the dark uniform plumage of immaturity but a splendid adult golden eagle. He could see plainly the great bird's tawny crown and cowl, the dark band at the top of its tail, and, most conclusive of all, the booted legs, feathered clear down to the toes, which distinguish the golden from the bald eagle in any plumage phase.

Norman dropped his glasses and reached for his gun. His quest was over. This slayer of ibises and of lambs, this bloody-clawed wanderer from some distant mountain top, had been run down at last. Norman, fiercely exultant, knew that he could not miss.

York Hawley, lying on the sand beside him, whispered hoarsely, urging haste. The marshman's practiced eye had detected a slight movement of the eagle's head, an almost imperceptible quiver of his folded wings.

Norman, bending his neck to sight along the gun

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 barrel, swore with vexation. The eagle had launched forward from his perch and was flapping directly away from them over the marsh, the trunk and branches of the tree screening him from a wing shot.

Of the two, Hawley, an inveterate hunter, was the better woodsman. He was confident that the eagle had not detected their presence; and knowing the ways of bald eagles, he believed that this eagle, though of a different species, might presently return to the lone dead oak, which was probably one of his regular lookout stations. It was at York's suggestion that the two hunters remained in their ambush for a while and presently saw something which Mat Norman would not have missed for worlds.

The golden eagle of the Smokies did not know, as he spiraled upward over the marsh plain, that he had escaped death by a hair. He had not seen the hunters in the myrtle clump behind him. What he had seen was a dark speck against the bright blue sky bent above the marshes—a dark speck which swung round and round in interweaving circles, gradually drawing nearer.

His keen eyes told him that it was an eagle. Long ago he had learned that these eagles of the coast were not of his kind; yet, urged on by that vague discontent which had troubled him ever since the

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 death of his mate, he seldom saw one of these eagles in the distance without flying close enough to it to make sure of its identity. Possibly, if birds can hope, some dim, half-formed, uncomprehended thought of again finding his mate burned in him. More probably it was simply loneliness which impelled him, a desire for the companionship of his kind.

But always one of two things happened. Either he turned away disappointed when he was yet at a distance from the stranger, or if he approached too near, he was met with an angry scream which was plainly a warning and a defiance. Fearless though he was, and accustomed to rule the air, at first he felt no impulse to fight; as on the occasion of that first meeting above the ridges of the Smokies, the longing for companionship overcame his natural pugnacity. But gradually, though the longing was as strong as ever, something within him began to rebel at these rebuffs. At last, challenged by a young bald eagle in the dark-brown plumage of the first year, sudden rage flamed up in him, and in a short sharp combat five hundred feet above the woods he taught the inexperienced youngster a lesson.

Scarcely three days had passed since that encounter. As he now circled upward, his gaze fixed on the big bird soaring on motionless wings a mile

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 Again it was York Hawley, the marshman, who first realized that something was about to happen. Norman, skeptical of his quarry's return, was dozing on the sand, his head pillowed on his arm; but Hawley had followed the eagle's upward flight and his eyes were fixed upon it when another eagle, whose white head and tail gleamed like silver in the sunlight, sailed into the field of his vision. He saw the tawny-headed bird swing close to the silver-headed one and he heard the latter scream his challenge. York roused Norman just in time for him to see the beginning of the battle.

It was the golden eagle that attacked. From

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 above and behind he shot down upon his foe, his wings half closed, his talons spread. But this time his opponent was no raw novice of untested courage and skill. Quick as light, the bald eagle dodged the blow, poised for a brief instant, then plunged for his assailant, whose swift descent had carried him down some fifty feet. In his turn, the golden eagle swerved as adroitly as his enemy, hung momentarily motionless, dropped like a falling spearhead on his antagonist.

To Norman it seemed that the bald eagle, despite the disadvantage of his position, deliberately awaited this attack—that he threw himself on his back in the air, his talons thrust upward, and met the shock gallantly and squarely. At any rate, the two big birds came together and grappled; but just before the impact, the golden eagle, spreading and flattening his wings, checked the speed of his descent so that the collision was not of stunning force. For a space the combatants fell swiftly, apparently locked in close embrace. Then somehow they righted themselves, and bill to bill and claw to claw, came down rather slowly, lunging and parrying, turning round and round, their pinions churning the air.

Suddenly it seemed to Norman that the wings of one of them—he could not tell which—stiffened, then sagged. Next moment they were falling again.

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 faster and faster, still locked together, madly whirling. They struck on hard sand just where the inlet shore curved around to the marshy back beach—sand packed almost as hard as concrete by the tides. Norman knew before he reached them that both were dead.

Yet he was curious to learn which one of them it was that had died in the air when those battling wings had stiffened and drooped. The bald eagle's curving claws were sunk in his enemy's throat and breast. They must have been entangled in tough sinew or embedded in bone, for it was only with an effort that Norman could release them. They had made a mortal wound. But the great yellow talons of the golden eagle were clasped about his enemy's white head, and one long black claw had struck deep into the brain.

Mat Norman was a man of odd fancies. He would not leave the dead warriors on the sands to become prey for the vultures or for some nocturnal prowler from the island woods. York took the cast net and went after mullet in the creek, for he was keen to feel a big channel bass tug at his bait in the surf. But Norman found a piece of plank washed ashore by the waves, and with it he scooped out a grave on the sunny slope of a dune under a tall tuft of sea oats. These two were chiefs of the air, he said, and deserved an honorable burial.

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INGTAIL, the old gray fox, whose plumy brush was strangely barred with black, sat on his haunches just within the thicket's edge and calmly surveyed the situation. He found it not altogether satisfactory. As usual, twenty or thirty buxom white hens were moving about on the lawn in front of the house. But they were all well out in the open, too far away for the fox to attempt a raid. Moreover, on the front steps of the house stood the boy talking with his father; and the boy, clad in khaki shirt and corduroys, held his shotgun in the hollow of his arm. Evidently he was going hunting this morning and was ready for action.

Ringtail had considerable respect for the boy as a hunter and woodsman. He knew Chad Stanton well, having watched him often in the woods; and possibly he was aware—for a fox is often wise as well as cunning—that Chad knew something about him, too, and would welcome a chance to test the thickness of his hide. It was not a fox hunt that the boy was planning, for Ringtail saw no horse and no dogs. Nevertheless, the old fox decided

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 that he had better move along. Plainly, conditions were not favorable just then for another attack on Chad's big white hens.

Ringtail paused long enough to scratch one blacktipped, rusty-red ear with a hind foot. Then he turned and trotted silently away through the cassena thickets. Before long, his thoughts occupied with other matters of more immediate interest, the fox had forgotten the young hunter roaming somewhere in the woods with his gun.

The boy moved softly, slowly, all his senses alert. In that place and at that hour anything might happen. As yet the morning light had barely begun to filter down through the dense evergreen foliage of the pines; but scattered through the pine wood were other trees—oaks and maples and sweet gums—already almost bare of leaves; and wherever one of these trees stood amid the pines, light was let in to illumine the dim interior of the forest. Chad was grateful for this light, yet found it baffling. Three times he halted suddenly, convinced that he had seen some living thing move on the carpet of brown pinestraw far away amid the trees; and three times he owned that his keen, practiced eyes had been deceived.

The thing that he hoped to see was a wild turkey. A visitor, a friend of his father's, was expected at

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 the plantation, and to Chad had fallen the duty of securing a turkey for the occasion. His father would have preferred a pair of wood ducks—summer ducks, as they were called in the plantation country—but a closed period of several years had been granted these birds by law, and Captain Stanton was too good a sportsman to be a law-breaker. Hence, although in the plantation country, with its many rivers and lagoons, wood ducks were still abundant all the year round, the old planter had regretfully reminded his son that they were taboo.

"Try for a turkey," he told the boy, as they stood talking on the front steps early that morning. "The Judge likes summer ducks better and is probably counting on them. But he can't have them this time; and a turkey's the next best thing."

Chad knew even better than his father the places which were most likely to yield the game that he sought. Yet poor luck had attended him so far, and now the early morning, the most favorable time for turkey hunting, had passed. Nevertheless, his hopes were high as he stole with infinite caution and hair-trigger alertness amid the trunks of the great trees deep in the Otter Woods as he called them because once he had watched an otter there for over an hour.

He knew that several turkeys, including one big

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 gobbler, sometimes came to these woods in the early forenoon for a midday siesta. Twice he had startled this gobbler from the same tall pine. He planned now to post himself in ambush near the foot of this pine and wait for the gobbler to come in for its noontide nap; and meanwhile, as he approached the place, he scanned the wood's vistas keenly because more than once he had found amid the pinestraw scratches which proved that turkeys occasionally came there to feed.

Presently, when the gobbler's big tree loomed close in front of him, he found a spot which suited his purpose. Sitting on the pinestraw, his back against the trunk of a young water oak at the edge of a small thicket of gallberry which partly encircled him, he was almost invisible in his dun corduroy and khaki—a soundless, inconspicuous figure, motionless as a stump. Probably a long wait lay ahead of him, but he looked forward to it with satisfaction, even with pleasure.

He knew that the woods, lonely and empty though they seemed, were alive. Softly as he had moved, he was aware that keen ears had heard him, though he could not tell what ears. Keenly as he had scanned the ground and the branches, he was sure that sharp eyes which he had not been able to see had studied him as he made his way amid the tree trunks.

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 He knew also that the woods' folk as a rule have short memories and that it is movement which attracts and holds their attention. After he had remained for a little while motionless and silent in his ambush, he would be forgotten by some, ignored by others of the lesser forest creatures; and while most of the larger woods' dwellers moved about mainly at night, there was always a chance that some venturesome or unusually hungry prowler would pass nearby.

For a while he saw and heard only the smaller people of the woods—inquisitive ruby-crowned kinglets scolding peevishly and peering at him with round, beady, little eyes; acrobatic tufted tits swinging head downward amid the higher branches; blue-gray, white-breasted nuthatches traveling up and down the tree trunks like deliberate feathered mice and talking incessantly to one another in nasal, unvarying tones. Soon, however, a big, white-nosed, iron-gray fox squirrel showed himself near the top of a pine; and presently, from a small, steep-sided stream which wound through the wood fifty feet in front of his ambush, came a subdued splash which told the boy that some large bird or mammal had moved in the water. He wondered whether another otter had taken up its abode in the Otter Woods, and for some minutes he considered the advisability of creeping forward cautiously to a point whence

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 he could see the surface of the brook. Suddenly, however, a slight movement to his right drove this plan out of his mind.

Crouching close to the ground, a big male gray fox was creeping slowly across the pinestraw carpet. Chad's eyes gleamed as his lips silently framed two words. "Old Ringtail," he whispered under his breath and his hand tightened on the barrel of his gun. Yet, though the fox was within easy range, the boy made no further move.

He owed old Ringtail a grudge. The big gray fox, with the strangely barred tail which was unlike the tail of any other gray fox ever seen in that region, had raided the plantation poultry flock on at least two occasions and had carried off at least two fine hens. But to Chad, Ringtail had long been a sort of hero because of the almost incredible skill which he had shown in baffling the best fox hunters and the best fox dogs of the neighborhood. Many stories were told of his cunning, and at least some of them were true; and the boy, though he himself was an ardent hunter, found a keen pleasure in these accounts of Ringtail's prowess and was conscious of a certain sympathy for the old dog fox who had proved himself more than a match for the finest hunting packs. True, when he had satisfied himself by an examination of certain tell-tale tracks that it was Ringtail who had stolen his hens, Chad had

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 vowed to have revenge. Yet, now that the chance had come, he held his hand.

He waited because he was a woodsman before he was a gunner—because his interest in the ways of the wild folk was stronger than his desire for revenge; and he realized at once that the old fox was planning something, that he was even then preparing some exploit which would be worth watching. Ringtail's whole attitude, his every movement showed that he was deeply absorbed in some important and pressing piece of business; and Chad's eyes searched the woods in front, striving to determine the fox's purpose.

Plainly he had scented game. As he crept forward, very slowly and cautiously, his delicate feet making no sound, at times his pointed nose was raised high, moving from side to side. He was creeping straight toward the little creek winding through the forest behind steep banks which hid the water from view; and Chad, realizing that the wind blew from the creek toward the fox, suddenly remembered the splashing sound which he had heard in the brook a few minutes before.

He watched the fox eagerly, convinced that he had found the key to old Ringtail's strategy, though he was still in the dark as to what creature it was that had made that splash. He reflected, however, that Ringtail knew what he was about; that he was

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 relying not upon sound alone but upon an even surer guide than sound; that his wonderful nose told him precisely what it was that lurked in the creek-bed or on the surface of the water. And, as had happened often in the past, the human hunter felt a thrill of envy as he considered that marvelous power of scent which is of greater value to the four-footed hunters than either sight or hearing—of greater value, even, than strength or speed.

The minutes passed. Still the old fox crept forward, moving more and more slowly as he neared the creek-bank, sometimes almost crawling on the ground; and still Chad waited, tense and motionless, forgetful of the gobbler in search of which he had come to the Otter Woods. Twice Ringtail had changed his direction slightly; and although he had heard no sound from the creek-bed, the boy knew that the creature lurking there had twice moved a little farther up the stream. At last the fox crouched upon the very brink of the bank, just behind a small tuft of yellow, half-dead weeds. There he remained, still as a graven image, ears flattened, head raised an inch or two above the ground and pointing down the stream.

Minute followed minute until it seemed to Chad that fully a quarter of an hour must have passed. Then, just as a dark shadow swept across the ground and a great wide-winged bird swung in above the

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 tree-tops and came to rest in the tallest pine, the boy realized that Ringtail had tightened his muscles for the leap.

Chad made his decision instantly. The big gobbler had come. He stood on the high limb upon which he had just alighted, peering all around him with bright, suspicious eyes. This was the moment for a shot—a shot which would surely bring him down. Again Chad's hand tightened on his gun—and again it rested there inactive, motionless.

Once more the woodsman in him had triumphed over the gunner. The gobbler could wait. Above all else Chad was determined to watch to the end the little drama of the woods which Ringtail was about to bring to a climax.

A moment he saw the fox poise himself on the creek-bank, his ears cocked forward now, his body half-raised on his slim, wiry legs, his furry, faintly barred tail twisted a little to the side. Then, like a flash, he bounded over the rim of the bank and vanished.

Chad heard no splash of water as he had expected. Instead came a whirring tumult of wings, as three wood ducks catapulted upward from the creek and sped away through the trees, crying shrilly. Simultaneously Chad leaped to his feet and whipped his gun to his shoulder, the muzzle

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 pointing upward toward the lofty limb where the gobbler had been perching.

He was too late by a fraction of a second. At the first flurry of the wood ducks' pinions, the gobbler had launched himself from his perch. Chad caught one glimpse of a great wide-winged shape sailing swiftly away amid the tree-tops. Then he lowered his eyes to see Ringtail the fox standing on the creek-bank gazing at him calmly, a male wood duck hanging from his jaws.

For perhaps five seconds the boy and the fox stared at each other without moving. Then, with a sudden swing of his body, Chad leveled his gun. He had watched the woods' drama through to its end; it was now time for action. Ringtail had cost him a fine gobbler. Moreover, wood ducks were favorites of his, and he had learned with angry surprise that among their many enemies was numbered at least one fox.

Chad had never known a fox to prey on wood ducks before; but evidently old Ringtail knew how to catch them, without even getting his feet wet, by stalking them along this narrow woods' creek and pouncing on them when they came out on the sandy margin below the bank. It was time to end the career of this murderer of precious wild fowl and costly thoroughbred hens.

Quickly as these thoughts flashed through the

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 boy's brain, they were no quicker than the old fox whom they so vitally concerned. Suddenly, mysteriously, Ringtail vanished like a ghost, bounding with the swiftness of light down the steep bank just behind him. Chad ran forward, holding his gun ready; but Ringtail had gone, carrying his duck with him.

For at least three years and probably four, Ringtail had lived in the neighborhood of the plantation. Yet Chad, though he spent much time in the woods, had seen him only three times. In his extreme secretiveness the old dog fox was unlike many others of his kind. Sometimes the gray fox seems to take a certain joy in showing himself to man provided the man carries no gun, but old Ringtail was much too wise to indulge in such dangerous foolishness. He had been hunted too often to take chances; for his unusual size and, especially, his unique brush made him the particular object of many a fox hunter's ambition. Having had but three glimpses of the fox in the course of as many years, Chad would have laughed at the notion that he might encounter Ringtail again that very day. Yet so the forest Fates willed it.

By then it was mid-afternoon. Tired, disappointed and a little angry with himself, Chad was making his way homeward. But for his desire to

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 watch Ringtail stalk a victim, he would have bagged the big gobbler which his father expected or at least hoped for. He was deeply chagrined at his failure, which he felt was his own fault; and for some hours after the affair in the Otter Woods he had hunted diligently, hoping that he might still have the luck to "walk up" a feeding or roosting turkey. His search, however, had been fruitless. He had seen no game which would serve his purpose, though once at long range he had glimpsed the white flag of a fine buck which leaped from its bed in the green top of a fallen pine tree. Finally, he had given up his quest, and turned homeward.

A deer path brought him to the woods' edge, and for some distance he followed the margin of the forest. To his left stretched a wide expanse of abandoned ricefield, thickly grown with tall cattails, reeds and water-grasses, yellow and sere now that autumn had come. Beyond the ricefields wound a river; and beyond the river lay a wilderness of marsh and low thick jungle, stretching for miles, an almost impenetrable fastness, the home of many deer and even a few black bear.

Chad watched the open spaces to his left rather than the woods to his right. In the woods, little visible life was stirring; but above the ricefields, above the river and above the jungly wilderness beyond, the air was full of movement. Small platoons

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 of swift-flying mallards winged their way here and there, passing from one ricefield canal to another. Innumerable companies of blackbirds wheeled and maneuvered in the air. Now and again, a flock of doves passed well out of range, their long, pointed wings driving them at high speed. The graceful white herons which abounded on the ricefields in summer had vanished with the advent of cool weather; but in their place had come other birds less beautiful perhaps, but not less interesting—long-tailed marsh harriers quartering the grassy plains; big redtailed hawks, wide-winged and stately; a pair of white-headed eagles soaring grandly in the upper air.

Chad was watching one of the circling redtails when, at a much lower height, three swift-flying birds shot across the field of his vision. He recognized them at once as wood ducks which had come out of the woods to his right; and, following their course, he saw them swing around in a half circle, and then slant down to a spot in the ricefield not far from the woods' edge and perhaps a quarter of a mile ahead. Chad knew that spot well. A pool lay there, just at the head of a small canal—a placid, tiny pond which seemed always to be teeming with life. The wood ducks, he knew, were dabbling about the shallow reed-grown margins of this pond; and he thought with regret of the law which

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 protected them and of his father's warning to leave them alone. But for that law, he might yet carry home some game worth having—indeed, the finest game that the plantation country afforded.

As he neared the pool, he decided that just for the fun of it, he would stalk the ducks; not in order to shoot them, of course, but simply to see how close he could get to them without being discovered. To carry out this purpose, he turned and made his way across the wet ricefield to a low bank thickly grown with reeds, then walked along the bank in the direction of the pool. Close to the little pond this bank joined at right-angles another and larger bank which extended from the woods clear across the ricefield to the river shore; and just at the junction of these two banks, Chad saw a surprising thing.

He saw Ringtail, the fox, standing in the path on the larger bank; and he saw with interest, too, that Ringtail held the body of a male wood duck in his jaws, evidently the same duck that the fox had captured in the Otter Woods that morning. Plainly Ringtail was hot hungry and was saving his game until his appetite returned. But what was he up to now, the boy wondered. Why was he standing motionless on the ricefield bank, his head held high, his sensitive nose testing the air?

Chad, screened by the reeds, stood still as a

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 statue, his gun ready, his eyes studying the fox. Again an odd stroke of fortune had placed Ringtail at his mercy; yet, again, he found himself loath to fire the shot which would end the career of this furry brigand, this wild hunter whose wits had kept him safe so long amid so many dangers. Chad could not help admiring the beauty of the fox as he stood at attention, keenly alert, vividly alive, his thick coat of silver-gray, russet and black shining in the sun. The young woodsman hesitated. Once more he felt sure that Ringtail was planning something, and again he was conscious of a consuming curiosity to learn what that plan was, to watch the execution of the fox's design.

Presently, as the boy waited, Ringtail dropped the dead duck hanging from his jaws, lifted his head still higher and carefully sniffed the breeze, waving his nose from side to side. In a flash, Chad realized the fox's purpose. Evidently he had scented the wood ducks in the pool a little ahead of him up the wind, and although he already had one duck, he was going to try for another.

For a moment Chad, angry at the thought of a second raid on the ducks, was on the point of throwing his gun to his shoulder. Then suddenly an idea came to him. His tightened muscles relaxed; but more eagerly than ever he watched the fox, awaiting his next move.

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 That move was exactly what Chad expected. After a moment or two, Ringtail seemed completely satisfied with what his nose told him. Leaving his duck lying on the ground, he walked slowly forward along the bank in the direction of the pool, passing out of sight amid the tall reeds and cattails. Chad waited some minutes, then very slowly and cautiously stole forward almost to the intersection of the two paths. There he halted and stood motionless, straining to catch some sound from the direction of the pool.

He could not see the pool, for the reeds hid it from view. But he could imagine what was taking place there—the three wood ducks dabbling in the shallows close to the margin, idling and feeding amid the succulent green water-growths along the edges; the lithe gray hunter creeping nearer and nearer amid the reeds, skilfully utilizing every scrap of cover to screen his slow approach. Chad knew the spot well. He could see it and its surroundings clearly in his mind's eye; and he figured the chances rapidly, deciding that, on the whole, the odds were against the gray hunter. The dry leaves of the frost-killed cattails would crackle at the slightest touch. It seemed to Chad impossible that Ringtail could make his way through them so noiselessly as to get within leaping distance of his prey.

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Rh same time will give the reader an idea of the Middle High German language in which the poem is written:

Uns íst in álten máerèn wúnders víl geséit von héleden lóbebáerèn, von grô′zer árebéit, von fröúde und hô′chgezî′tèn, von wé′inen únd von klágen, von küéner récken strî′tèn muget ír nu wúnder hóeren ságen.

Ez wúochs in Búrgóndèn ein édel mágedî′n, dáz in állen lándèn niht schóeners móhte sî′n, Kr′iemhílt gehéizèn; si wárt ein scóene wî′p, dârúmbe múosen dégenè víl verlíesèn den lî′p.

Der mínneclî′chen méidè tríuten wól gezám, ir muótten küéne réckèn, niémen wás ir grám, â′ne mâ′zen schóenè sô wás ir édel lî′p; der iúnevroúwen túgendè zíerten ánde′riu wî′p.

Ir pflâ′gen drîé kü′negè édel únde rî′ch, Gúnther únde Gê′rnôtˋ, die récken lóbelî′ch, und Gî′selhér der iúngè, ein û′z erwélter dégen, diu fróuwe wás ir swéstèr, die fü′rsten hê′tens ín ir pflégen.

Die hê′rren wáren míltè, von árde hôh′ẹ erbórn, mit kráft unmâ′zen küénè, die récken û′z erkórn. dâ′zen Búrgóndèn sô wás ir lá′nt genánt, si frúmden stárkiu wúndèr sî′t in Ètzélen lánt.

Ze Wórmze bî′ dem Rî′nè si wónden mít ir kráft, in diénde vón ir lándèn stólziu ríttersc′aft mit lóbelî′chen ê′rèn unz án ir éndes zî′t, sî′t stúrben si iaémerlî′che von zwéier édelen fróuwen nî′t.

Some of the final rhymes with proper names, such as Hagene : degene (str. 84) or Hagene : tragene (str. 300) appear to be feminine, but it is really the final e that rhymes, and a scansion of the line in question shows that the three accents are not complete


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 gone a complete reversal. Whereas heretofore his sympathies had been all with the ducks and against their would-be slayer, he now found himself earnestly hoping that Ringtail would succeed. In part, this change of sentiment was due to the admiration which he had conceived for the old fox's sagacity and skill—the admiration which one good woodsman feels for another who has demonstrated his proficiency in the exacting arts of the woods. But in still larger part, the change was due to the idea, the plan, which had been born in Chad's mind a few minutes before. For the success of that plan depended on the outcome of Ringtail's undertaking.

The slow minutes passed. Chad waited as patiently as he could, knowing that the old fox was a careful worker and that this time he had need of especial caution. Yet the boy's patience was almost exhausted when at last he heard the sound for which he had been waiting—a sudden loud splashing, a violent whirring of swiftly-beating wings, followed immediately by the plaintive, discordant cry of a wood duck startled into flight. Chad craned his neck trying to see how many ducks rose from the pool; but the frightened birds flew in the opposite direction, partly hidden by the tall reeds, and he could not make sure whether they were two or three in number.

That, however, mattered little. In a minute or

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 two, he would know. He waited, tense, expectant, his gun half-raised to his shoulder, his eyes fixed on the open space just ahead of him at the intersection of the two paths. Whether Ringtail had failed or succeeded, he would return to get the duck that he had left on the bank. Chad, standing behind the screen of reeds just around the corner where the two paths came together, would not be able to see Ringtail until the fox had reached the opening where he had left the duck. That would be the critical moment. Chad awaited it, every muscle taut, his finger on the trigger.

It burst upon him unexpectedly, seconds sooner than he expected. He had heard not the faintest sound: but, all at once, there in the opening where the two paths joined stood Ringtail, his tall ears pricked, his plumy, faintly-barred brush waving slowly from side to side. He had not failed. In his jaws he held another wood duck, a fine drake; and with a playful flourish of his head, as though rejoicing over his triumph, he dropped this second trophy of his skill beside the other duck lying in the path.

Next moment, as the old fox raised his head, he saw Chad standing not twenty feet from him in the other path, his gun leveled.

For half a second the two looked into each other's

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 eyes. Then the crashing roar of the shotgun shattered the silence.

Chad walked forward briskly, breeching the gun and slipping in another cartridge. His tanned face wore a broad grin. He would never forget the expression on Ringtail's countenance the moment before he had pulled trigger, and he wondered gleefully what the old fox was thinking now. One thing he was sure of: Ringtail was still running and he would continue running for quite a while.

Chad stooped and examined the two wood ducks lying on the ground where Ringtail had placed them. They were in perfect condition, unbruised and showing only a few traces of blood. Then he glanced at the cattails beyond the bank, riddled and torn by the charge of turkey shot which he had fired five feet over the fox's head. Finally, grinning more broadly than ever, he picked up the ducks and started homeward.

Presently he laughed aloud.

"So," he chuckled, "the Judge is counting on summer ducks for dinner to-morrow, is he? Well, he'll have them, and without breaking any law either. But he ought to propose a rising vote of thanks to a certain old friend of mine who goes by the name of Ringtail in these parts."

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HE sunlight, streaming straight down through wide rifts in the scant foliage of the tall, short-branched sweet gums, smote fiercely upon the stagnant pool, blotching its opaque, wine-colored surface with numberless sharply defined patches of translucent amber. The pool was of oval shape and of small area. A slender gum, uprooted years before by some irresistible equinoctial blast, had fallen clear across it, and, stretching from shore to shore like a causeway or a half-submerged bridge, divided it into two completely dissevered parts. Close around its soft, soggy edge crowded the trees—a few lofty, moss-bearded cypresses, spared by the lumbermen because of some saving defect of shape, straight sweet gums of every age and size, some of them taller than the tallest of the cypresses but dead or dying at their tops. Their column-like trunks soared upward out of a dense thicket of scrubby, close-growing bushes whose small leaves were of so pale a shade of green as to appear almost silver where the light fell obliquely upon them. In front of this solid wall of frondage and springing from the dark, scum-

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 laden shallows along its base, irregular ranks of slim, plumed reeds formed an unbroken ring around the margin of the pool.

About the pool on three sides the ground was low and spongy and carpeted with a thick growth of short, broad-bladed, moisture-loving plants; but on the fourth side it sloped sharply upward, forming a miniature plateau a foot or more above the level of the water. From this higher ground rose the stalwart gray trunk of a large magnolia whose branches, reaching far out above the pool, cast so sombre a shade that here the water seemed of an inky blackness. The sandy ground immediately beneath the tree was also in dark shadow except a single almost circular patch of sunlight, about two yards in diameter, midway between the base of the trunk and the rim of the pool.

To this spot a ray penetrated through some hidden tunnel in the dome of lustrous foliage above; and upon this white disc of light, his five feet of velvet length disposed in a loose coil and his flat, triangular head pillowed upon the warm sand, lay motionless a male diamond rattlesnake.

The snake, despite his deathlike immobility, was neither dead nor asleep. His small eyes glinted with changing metallic flashes of black and green, like beads of half-transparent obsidian, and seemed fixed in an intent and baleful stare upon the sun

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 splashed surface of the pool in front of him. There was something inexpressibly menacing in the cold glitter of those bead-like eyes; and yet, terrible as was his aspect, the snake was undeniably a creature of real and almost marvelous beauty.

A splendid specimen of his race, though not as large as the diamond rattler sometimes becomes, he measured, from the tip of his sharp-nosed, arrow-shaped head to the last of his ten rattles, an inch more than five feet, while the girth of his massive trunk at its thickest part was fully eight inches. The ground-color of his body was a lustrous, almost iridescent grayish-green, and along his broad, arched back a chain of black-brown, diamond-shaped patches stretched from the base of the head, merging finally with the dusky olive of the thick, black-ringed tail. In the coloration of his mailed body there was a richness of tint which could not fail to compel admiration; yet all sense and realization of this beauty of color and pattern were obliterated instantly by a single glance at the wide, flat head and face. These seemed instinct with wickedness and cruelty—hideous, revolting, utterly beyond description.

It was not due to accident that the rattlesnakewas lying framed in the queer white disc which formed the only spot of sunlight beneath the big magnolia. He had chosen the spot purposely be-

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 cause he enjoyed the warmth of the sun and because, being absolutely fearless, he cared not a whit how conspicuous his position might render him or how many pairs of eyes might spy upon him. Presently, when the sun had passed its zenith and the circle of light had shifted a little to the eastward, so that part of his body lay in shadow, the flat head reared itself six inches from the ground, the loose coils slid strangely in opposite directions upon one another, and, when the movement ceased and the head sank again upon the sand, his whole body was once more immersed in light.

For another half-hour he lay utterly still, seem'ing scarcely to breathe. Then he uncoiled slowly and languidly, swung his slim neck across his stout, olive-colored tail, forming a great loop, and, straightening to his full length, went forth to his hunting.

The snake headed diagonally away from the pool, keeping to the dry ground and avoiding as far as possible the swampy, reed-choked places. He moved a little more slowly perhaps than a man ordinarily walks and his passage was almost noiseless. His body seemed to flow along over the leaves and grass, as though propelled by some mysterious and unseen force. There was a certain dignity about his going—an utter lack of the furtiveness which marks the movements of all the four-footed

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 forest-dwellers. His spear-shaped head pointed always directly forward, and he passed boldly and indifferently through dense thickets that hid him completely from view and across bare, sunlit places where the brilliant colors of his splendid body flashed and sparkled in the light.

Once, although the snake knew nothing of it and would have cared nothing had he known, a drowsy squirrel, idling away the lazy hot hours on a shady limb of a large oak, saw a wide, gray-green ribbon, braided with black, yellow-bordered, rhomboidal markings, slide smoothly and slowly across an open grassy space far below and vanish in a tangle of smilax beyond—and the squirrel shivered slightly before dozing off again, although his fear must have been wholly instinctive, since never in his short life had he been close enough to that gray-green ribbon to feel the paralyzing power of its glittering eyes. Once, too, a rabbit, stretched comfortably in her soft bed beneath a cassena bush, saw the big snake emerging from a clump of weeds six feet in front of her and, galvanized into instant action, bounded away to the right, making a reckless clatter among the crisp, dead leaves. Except these two, however, none of the keen-eyed woods creatures knew of the rattlesnake's passage across a mile or more of the flat floor of the forest so noiselessly did he glide through shadowed thickets and across sun-bathed,

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 open spaces alike until he arrived at the border of the hunting ground whither he had all this time been traveling—an extensive clearing on the edge of the woods which years before had been a cornfield, and where countless meadow-mice scurried night and day along their winding, tunnel-like runways through the wilderness of tall broom grass that now covered its furrowed surface.

These foolish and incessantly busy little people of the broom grass were easy and succulent game; and it was for the purpose of hunting them that the rattlesnake had journeyed from the reed-bordered pool a mile back in the woods—an unusual proceeding, since he seldom traveled far at any time and his wanderings, such as they were, generally took place at night.

Along the fringe of the wood, separated from the broom grass field by a dry, shallow ditch and a low bank clothed with a dense tangle of wild-rose vines, ran a shady, grass-carpeted road, apparently seldom used by man since here and there it was almost obliterated by clumps of tall, prickly-stemmed weeds. A fox, coming upon the road, would have tested the wind carefully and looked keenly to right and left before venturing to cross it; but the rattlesnake, of too crude a cunning to recognize the road as different in any important particular from one of the open forest spaces where he was accustomed to show

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 himself so boldly, paused not an instant. He was half-way across when suddenly and in a fraction of an instant, his big body gathered itself into a close, symmetrical coil, the slim neck bent back like an S, the evil head drawn within the circle of the body, the black-ringed tail, tipped with its ten rattles, pointing straight upward and vibrating so rapidly as to seem a mere indistinct blur.

Thirty yards away down the road a small brindled cur and, some distance behind him, a ragged negro boy of twelve or thirteen years were approaching at headlong speed. The dog was barking excitedly as he ran and looking up into the liveoaks bordering the road at a squirrel leaping nimbly from branch to branch. For some moments the snake could not see them because of an intervening clump of weeds. Possessing no external ears, he heard only faintly, if at all, the sharp yelping of the dog and the shrill shouts of the boy. It was the vibration of the ground which had thrown him upon guard, and had he wished to do so, he might easily have gained the shelter of the vine-clad bank beyond the road.

The snake, however, did not even consider a retreat. He was hungry and consequently in an evil mood, and the tremor of the soil under his sensitive scales inspired him with a terrible fury. He remained coiled in the middle of the road, his eyes

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 flickering like gems, his whirring rattle rasping its thin, incessant defiance.

The dog did not see the danger and, being young in years and woodcraft, failed to understand the monotonous note of warning. His attention absorbed by the fleeing squirrel, he came bounding along, head in air, careless of the ground in front of him. He leaped clear over the snake; and as he passed, the bent neck straightened like a spring and the javelin-like head, its jaws gaping hugely, lunged upward, seeming to touch the dog gently on the throat where it joined the chest.

The dog did not see what it was that had pricked his skin and at the moment paid no attention to the slight pain. He galloped on, his eager eyes still fixed upon the squirrel, and had passed far down the road beyond the snake before the deadly fluid in his veins began to work. Then he staggered and his excited barking gave place to piercing, agonized yelps. The end came with merciful rapidity. He fell over on his side, lurched once more to his feet, and in a minute or so went down again, his piercing cries reduced to scarcely audible gasps. For a while his limbs twitched and quivered convulsively. Then his gasping ceased and he lay still.

The boy, meanwhile, being more careful of where he placed his bare feet and, moreover, having heard before this the ominous rolling of the kettledrum

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