dering albatross. To-day we shall breathe the warm, spicy breath of
the tropic islands, and to-morrow we shall sight the white gleam of the
polar ice-pack. When the storm gathers we shall mount above it, and
looking down we shall see the lightning leap from cloud to cloud, and
the rattling thunder will come upward, not downward, to our ears. When
the world below is steeped in the shadows of coming night, we shall
still watch the sunset trailing its glories over the western woods
and mountains; and when morning breaks we shall be the first to welcome
the sunrise as it comes rushing up from the east a thousand miles an
hour. The wind of the upper heavens will be pure and keen and strong,
and not even a sleigh-ride on a winter's night can set the live blood
dancing as it will dance and tingle up there above the clouds. And
riding on the air, alone with the roaring engines that have become for
the time a part of ourselves, we shall know at last what our earth is
really like, for we shall see it as the loons see it--yes, as God and
His angels see it--this old earth, on which we have lived for so many
thousand years, and yet have never seen.

But, after all, the upper heavens will not be home; and some day, as we
shoot northward, or southward, or eastward, or westward, we shall see
beneath us the spot that is to be for us the best and dearest place in
all the world, and dropping down out of the blue we shall find something
that is even better than riding on the wings of the wind. That was what
happened to Mahng and his wife, for one spring evening, as they came
rushing over the pine-tops and the maples and birches, they saw the
Glimmerglass just ahead. The water lay like polished steel in the fading
light, and the brown ranks of the still leafless trees stood dark and
silent around the shores. It was very quiet, and very, very lonely; and
the lake and the woods seemed waiting and watching for something. And
into that stillness and silence the loons came with shouting and
laughter, sweeping down on a long slant, and hitting the water with a
splash. The echoes awoke and the Glimmerglass was alive, and summer had
come to the northland.

They chose a place where the shore was low and marshy, and there, only
two or three yards from the water's edge, they built a rude nest of
grass and weeds and lily-pads. Two large greenish eggs, blotched with
dark-brown, lay in its hollow; and the wife sat upon them week after
week, and covered