At last Akka conquered her repugnance and alighted on the edge of the nest, at the same time glancing about her anxiously in every direction, for each second she expected to see the old eagles coming back.

“It is well that some one has come at last,” cried the baby eagle.  “Fetch me some food at once!”

“Well, well, don’t be in such haste,” said Akka.  “Tell me first where your father and mother are.”

“That’s what I should like to know myself.  They went off yesterday morning and left me a lemming to live upon while they were away.  You can believe that was eaten long ago.  It’s a shame for mother to let me starve in this way!”

Akka began to think that the eagles had really been shot, and she reasoned that if she were to let the eaglet starve she might perhaps be rid of the whole robber tribe for all time.  But it went very much against her not to succour a deserted young one so far as she could.

“Why do you sit there and stare?” snapped the eaglet.  “Didn’t you hear me say I want food?”

Akka spread her wings and sank down to the little lake in the glen.  A moment later she returned to the eagles’ nest with a salmon trout in her bill.

The eaglet flew into a temper when she dropped the fish in front of him.

“Do you think I can eat such stuff?” he shrieked, pushing it aside, and trying to strike Akka with his bill.  “Fetch me a willow grouse or a lemming, do you hear?”

Akka stretched her head forward, and gave the eaglet a sharp nip in the neck.  “Let me say to you,” remarked the old goose, “that if I’m to procure food for you, you must be satisfied with what I give you.  Your father and mother are dead, and from them you can get no help; but if you want to lie here and starve to death while you wait for grouse and lemming, I shall not hinder you.”

When Akka had spoken her mind she promptly retired, and did not show her face in the eagles’ nest again for some time.  But when she did return, the eaglet had eaten the fish, and when she dropped another in front of him he swallowed it at once, although it was plain that he found it very distasteful.

Akka had imposed upon herself a tedious task.  The old eagles never appeared again, and she alone had to procure for the eaglet all the food he needed.  She gave him fish and frogs and he did not seem to fare badly on this diet, but grew big and strong.  He soon forgot his parents, the eagles, and fancied that Akka was his real mother.  Akka, in turn, loved him as if he had been her own child.  She tried to give him a good bringing up, and to cure him of his wildness and overbearing ways.

After a fortnight Akka observed that the time was approaching for her to moult and put on a new feather dress so as to be ready to fly.  For a whole moon she would be unable to carry food to the baby eaglet, and he might starve to death.

So Akka said to him one day:  “Gorgo, I can’t come to you any more with fish.  Everything depends now upon your pluck—­which means can you dare to venture into the glen, so I can continue to procure food for you?  You must choose between starvation and flying down to the glen, but that, too, may cost you your life.”