just then of the awful tragedy that had occurred on Mount Cutler the year before.  What if we should find a dead man?  Well, what do you suppose we did find?  I was dumbfounded.  There below us were the dying embers of a log-fire.  The flames had long since died, and now it was just smoldering and smoking.  On either side of the fire lay a man, well-wrapped in his blanket.  A gun that for some reason looked very familiar to me was leaning against the rock near their heads.  We could not see their faces from where we were, but like a flash I remembered the gun by the leather-covered stock.  The two men were Old Ben and a young fellow who often went with him into the mountains.  I never shall forget how they looked when we waked them by dropping small pebbles from above.  As soon as they would stir a little, we would drop back out of sight and listen.  At last the young fellow muttered something and reached for his gun.  Then Old Ben awoke, sat up, and asked what was the trouble.

“‘I’d bet a dollar that rock just dropped on me from above.’  Then he turned his head and looked up into the sky.  ’Great Scott, man, what a place to sleep!  A stone might have tumbled on us any minute.’  Then he scrambled to his feet and cried out, ’Man alive! take a look at that eagle; what an immense bird!’ We boys had forgotten the eagle on finding the men, but we, too, looked upward, and there, not more than a hundred feet in the air, directly over us, was the biggest bird I ever hope to see.  He seemed to be fixed, motionless, in the air, with wings outstretched.  Just then some of the rest of the boys came shouting up to where we were.  Ben heard them and shouted back.  In a few minutes we were all up on the rocks watching the bird.  Ben wanted to shoot, but the other man wouldn’t let him, for he declared he was going to find the nest.  It must have been the smoke from the fire that first attracted the bird, for it seemed to keep circling directly above the column of smoke.  To this day we never told who dropped the stones—­I suppose they think the eagle did it.

“Well, as we sat there watching the eagle, the sun came up.  There never was such a sunrise before, I don’t believe.  There was a layer of fluffy, fuzzy clouds, stretched out over the city as far as we could see.  Then the sun came slowly up—­a great crimson ball of fire, the long, yellow rays lighting up that sea of clouds and the pale-blue sky above, until the scene looked like a great, boiling pot of gold.  Then, far above us, that immense black bird, wings still outstretched, just winging itself round and round in great, even circles.  I’ve seen many a choice bit of mountain scenery, and many a sunrise and sunset, but never one just like that.  It isn’t at all strange to me why the savages were nature worshipers.  How could they help it?