med as if the great, white-headed eagle was in
some way the uttered word of the mountain and the lake--of the lofty,
solitary, granite-crested peak, and of the deep, solitary water at its
base. As his canoe raced down the last mad rapid, and seemed to snatch
breath again as it floated out upon the still water of the lake, Jim
would rest his paddle across the gunwales and look upward expectantly.
First his keen, far-sighted, gray eyes would sweep the blue arc of
sky, in search of the slow circling of wide, motionless wings. Then,
if the blue was empty of this far shape, his glance would range at
once to a dead pine standing sole on a naked and splintered shoulder
of the mountain which he knew as "Old Baldy." There he was almost sure
to see the great bird sitting, motionless and majestic, staring at the
sun. Floating idly and smoking, resting after his long battle with
the rapids, he would watch, till the immensity and the solitude would
creep in upon his spirit and oppress him. Then, at last, a shrill
yelp, far off and faint, but sinister, would come from the pine-top;
and the eagle, launching himself on open wings from his perch, would
either wheel upward into the blue, or flap away over the serried
fir-tops to some ravine in the cliffs that hid his nest.

One day, when Jim came down the river and stopped, as usual, to look
for the great bird, he scanned in vain both sky and cliff-side. At
last he gave up the search and paddled on down the lake with a sense
of loss. Something had vanished from the splendor of the solitude. But
presently he heard, close overhead, the beat and whistle of vast
wings, and looking up, he saw the eagle passing above him, flying so
low that he could catch the hard, unwinking, tameless stare of its
black and golden eyes as they looked down upon him with a sort of
inscrutable challenge. He noted also a peculiarity which he had never
seen in any other eagle. This one had a streak of almost black
feathers immediately over its left eye, giving it a heavy and sinister
eyebrow. The bird carried in the clutch of its talons a big,
glistening lake trout, probably snatched from the fish-hawk; and Jim
was able to take note of the very set of its pinion-feathers as the
wind hummed in their tense webs. Flying with a massive power quite
unlike the ease of his soaring, the eagle mounted gradually up the
steep, passed the rocky shoulder with its watch-tower pine, and
disappeared over the edge of a ledge which