The rock had fallen, traversing a mile, in its downward rush to the river bed.  Flushed and triumphant the boys returned, and the neighbors who had heard the noise, when it was explained to them, went to see the wreckage.  It had dropped first a fall of fifteen feet, where it had paused an instant.  Then the earth giving way under its tons of weight, it had plowed a deep furrow right down the mountain side, dislodging rocks, uprooting trees, until with a mighty crash, it struck the borders of the stream where it stands to this day, a monument to boyish ingenuity and perseverance.

But of all the mischievous pranks of these childish days, the one that had perhaps the greatest influence on his life was the capture of an eagle’s nest from the top of a dead hemlock.  To the north of the farmhouse a hill rises abruptly, covered with bare, outcropping rocks, their fronts sheer and steep.  On top clusters a little sombre grove of hemlock trees, and from the midst of these rose the largest one, straight, majestic, swaying a little in the wind that swept on from the distant hills.  In the top of this tree, an eagle had built her nest, and it had long been a secret ambition of the boy to capture it, the more resolved upon because it seemed impossible.  One day in October he left his sheep, ran to the foot of the hill, and with the sure-footed agility of a mountain boy climbed the rocks and began the ascent of the tree.  From the top of a high ledge nearby two men hid and watched him.  A fall meant death, and many a time their hearts stood still, as the intrepid lad placed his foot on a dead branch only to have it break under him, or reached for a limb to find it give way at his touch.  The tree was nearly fifty feet high and at some time a stroke of lightning had rent it, splintering the trunk.  Only one limb was left whole, the others had been broken off or shattered by the storms of winter.  In the very crown of the tree swayed the nest, a rude, uncouth thing of sticks and hay.

Up and up he climbed, stopping every now and then in the midst of his struggles to call to the sheep if he saw them wandering too far.  He had only to call them by name to bring them nibbling back again.

“Not a man in the mountains,” wrote one of those who watched him in that interesting sketch of Mr. Conwell’s life, “Scaling the Eagle’s Nest,” “would have thought it possible to do anything else but shoot, that nest down.  When we first saw him he was half way up the great tree, and was tugging away to get up by a broken limb which was swinging loosely about the trunk.  For a long time he tried to break it off, but his little hand was too weak.  Then he came down from knot to knot like a squirrel, jumped to the ground, ran to his little jacket and took his jack-knife out of the pocket.  Slowly he clambered up again.  When he reached the limb, he clung to another with his left hand, threw one leg over a splintered knot and with the right hand hacked away with his knife.