Heading my way with a slow, labored stroke came one of the fish-hawks.  She was low down and some distance away, so that I got behind a post before she saw me.  The marsh-hen spied her first, and dropped into the grass.  On she came, her white breast and belly glistening, and in her talons a big glistening fish.  It was a magnificent catch.  “Bravo!” I should have shouted—­rather I shouldn’t; but here she was right over me, and the instinct of the boy, of the savage, had me before I knew, and leaping out, I whirled my cap and yelled to wake the marsh.  The startled hawk jerked, keeled, lifted with a violent struggle, and let go her hold.  Down fell the writhing, twisting fish at my feet.  It was a splendid striped bass, weighing at least four pounds, and still live enough to flop.

I felt mean as I picked up the useless thing and looked far away to the great nest with its hungry young.  I was no better than the bald eagle, the lazy robber-baron, who had stolen the dinner of these same young hawks the day before.

Their mother had been fishing up the river and had caught a tremendous eel.  An eel can hold out to wriggle a very long time.  He has no vitals.  Even with talon-tipped claws he is slippery and more than a clawful; so the old hawk took a short cut home across the railroad-track and the corner of the woods where stands the eagle tree.

She could barely clear the tree-tops, and, with the squirming of the eel about her legs, had apparently forgotten that the eagle lived along this road, or else in her struggle to get the prize home she was risking the old dragon’s being away.  He was not away.  I have no doubt that he had been watching her all the time from some high perch, and just as she reached the open of the railroad-track, where the booty would not fall among the trees, he appeared.  His first call, mocking, threatening, commanding, shot the poor hawk through with terror.  She screamed; she tried to rise and escape; but without a second’s parley the great king drove down upon her.  She dropped the fish, dived, and dodged the blow, and the robber, with a rushing swoop that was glorious in its sweep, in its speed and ease, caught the eel within a wing’s reach of me and the track.

I did not know what to do with my spoil.  Somewhat relieved, upon looking around, to find that even the marsh-hen had not been an eye-witness to my knightly deed, I started with the fish and my conscience toward the distant nest, determined to climb into it and leave the catch with the helpless, dinnerless things for whom it was intended.

I am still carrying that fish.  How seldom we are able to restore the bare exaction, to say nothing of the fourfold!  My tree was harder to climb than Zacchaeus’s.  Mine was an ancient white oak, with the nest set directly upon its dead top.  I had stood within this very nest twelve years before; but even with the help of my conscience I could not get into it now.  Not that I had grown older or larger.  Twelve years do not count unless they carry one past forty.  It was the nest that had grown.  Gazing up at it, I readily believed the old farmer in the Zane’s house who said it would take a pair of mules to haul it.  He thought it larger than one that blew down in the marsh the previous winter, which made three cart-loads.