In a little while she came back again, this time without food, and hovered over the nest, trying every way to induce the little one to leave it.  She succeeded at last, when with a desperate effort he sprang upward and flapped to the ledge above, where I had sat and watched him with Old Whitehead.  Then, after surveying the world gravely from his new place, he flapped back to the nest, and turned a deaf ear to all his mother’s assurances that he could fly just as easily to the tree-tops below, if he only would.

Suddenly, as if discouraged, she rose well above him.  I held my breath, for I knew what was coming.  The little fellow stood on the edge of the nest, looking down at the plunge which he dared not take.  There was a sharp cry from behind, which made him alert, tense as a watch-spring.  The next instant the mother-eagle had swooped, striking the nest at his feet, sending his support of twigs and himself with them out into the air together.

He was afloat now, afloat on the blue air in spite of himself, and flapped lustily for life.  Over him, under him, beside him hovered the mother on tireless wings, calling softly that she was there.  But the awful fear of the depths and the lance tops of the spruces was upon the little one; his flapping grew more wild; he fell faster and faster.  Suddenly—­more in fright, it seemed to me, than because he had spent his strength—­he lost his balance and tipped head downward in the air.  It was all over now, it seemed; he folded his wings to be dashed in pieces among the trees.  Then like a flash the old mother-eagle shot under him; his despairing feet touched her broad shoulders, between her wings.  He righted himself, rested an instant, found his head; then she dropped like a shot from under him, leaving him to come down on his own wings.  A handful of feathers, torn out by his claws, hovered slowly down after them.

It was all the work of an instant before I lost them among the trees far below.  And when I found them again with my glass, the eaglet was in the top of a great pine, and the mother was feeding him.

And then, standing there alone in the great wilderness, it flashed upon me for the first time just what the wise old prophet meant; though he wrote long ago, in a distant land, and another than Cloud Wings had taught her little ones, all unconscious of the kindly eyes that watched out of a thicket:  “As the eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings,—­so the Lord.”

VII.  UPWEEKIS THE SHADOW.

[Illustration:  Upweekis]