“No, I must not eat them now,” he told himself.  “I shall need them for supper and breakfast.  The Lord only knows when I shall get anything more.”

The mention of the Lord brought back to him the picture of The Good Shepherd rescuing the lost sheep.  “Strange, very strange,” he mused, as he picked up the eggs and continued his climb.  “Can it be possible that the Lord had anything to do with that eagle coming here just when I was about all in, and ready to drop from hunger and thirst?  I am not ashamed, anyway, to confess my gratitude, even though I disliked the idea of praying.”

A few minutes later he stood on the top of the hill, a bleak, desolate spot, rocky, and devoid of the least sign of vegetation.  But this mattered nothing to him now, for his eyes rested almost immediately upon a silver gleam away to the left.  It was water, and a river at that!  An exclamation of joy leaped from his lips, as from that lonely peak he viewed the river of his salvation.  Where it led, he did not know, but surely along that stream he would find human beings, able and willing to succor him.

Forgotten now was his weariness, and a new hope possessed his soul.  He could not expect to reach the river that afternoon, for several valleys and small hills intervened.  But he could go part of the way and on the morrow complete the journey.  Carefully guarding his two precious eggs, he hurried down the opposite side of the hill as fast as it was possible, and night found him by the side of a small wood-enshrouded lake.  Here he stopped, drank of the cool refreshing water, and built a small fire.  Finding a smooth stone, he washed it clean, and heating it thoroughly, he was enabled to fry one of the eggs upon the surface.  In the morning the other was treated in a similar manner, and thus strengthened, but his hunger not appeased, he sped onward.

This last lap of his journey to the river was a trying one.  Reynolds made it more difficult by his feverish impatience, and when about the middle of the afternoon he heard the ripple of water, and caught the first gleam through the trees of its sparkling surface, he was completely exhausted, and had only sufficient strength to drag his weary form to the river’s bank.  A refreshing drink of the ice-cold water and a rest of a few minutes revived him.  The stream was swift, far swifter than he had anticipated.  But this encouraged him, for if once launched upon its surface it would bear him speedily out of that desolate wilderness.

A craft of some kind was necessary, so searching around, he found several good-sized trees, stripped and bare, which had been brought down stream by the spring floods, and left stranded upon the bank.  With considerable difficulty he managed to fashion these into a rude raft, binding all together with strong, pliable willow withes.  As a boy he had often made rafts, and the knowledge acquired then served him in good stead now.