It would be impossible to say by what a narrow squeak he saved himself in this dare-devil maneuver.  His one chance lay in lightning agility.

Yet, first and last, it was an act of fine and desperate recklessness—­the recklessness of a soul possessed and set on one dominating purpose.  This was Hervey Willetts all over.  And because he had a brain and the eagle none or little, he thus used his very enemy to help him accomplish his purpose.

In that very moment when Tom Slade heard with a shudder the appalling sound of that splitting branch, something beside the brown nest was also dangling from the branch which the baffled eagle had suddenly deserted.  Right close to the swaying nest the boy hung, his limbs encircling it, his two hands locked upon it, trusting to it, just trusting to it.  It bent low in a great sweeping curve, the nest swayed and swung from the movement of the swing downward, a little olive-colored, speckled head peeking cautiously out as if to see what all the rumpus was about.

It must have seemed to those little frightened eyes that the familiar geography of the neighborhood was radically changed.  But there was nothing near to strike terror to it now.  There was nothing near but the green, enshrouding foliage, and the brown object hanging almost motionless close by.

This was Hervey Willetts of the patrol of the blue scarf, scout of the first class (if ever there was one) and winner of twenty-one merit badges....

No, not twenty-one.  Twenty and two-thirds.

CHAPTER IX

TO INTRODUCE ORESTES

Hervey moved cautiously in along the limb to a point where he felt sure that it would hold his weight, and as he did so it moved slowly up into place.  What the little householder thought of all this topsy-turvy business it might be amusing to know.  For surely, if the world war changed the map of Europe, the little neighborhood of leaf and branch where this timid denizen of the woods lived and had its being, had been subject to jolts and changes quite as sweeping.  Now and again it poked its downy speckled head out for a kind of disinterested squint at things, apparently unconcerned with mighty upheavals so long as its little home was undisturbed.

Hervey Willetts straddled the branch and calculated the thickness of it.

“You all right?” he heard Tom call from below.

“Yop,” he called back; “did you see his nobs fly away?  Back to the crags for him, hey?  Wait down there a few minutes, I’m going to bring a friend.”

Hervey had now a very nice little calculation to make.  In the first place he must not frighten his new acquaintance by approaching too near again.  Neither must he make any sudden and unnecessary noise or motions.  He knew that a nest of that particular sort was more than a home, it was a comparatively safe refuge, and he knew that its occupant would not emerge and desert it without good cause.  One of those precious twenty badges was evidence of that much knowledge.