within
view of its owner's watch-tower, Horner now turned his efforts towards
reaching the dead pine. With infinite difficulty, and with a few
bruises to arm and leg, he managed to cross the jagged crevice which
partly separated the jutting rock-pier from the main face of the
cliff. Then, laboriously and doggedly, he dragged himself up the
splintered slope, still being forced around to the right, till there
fell away below him a gulf into which it was not good for the nervous
to look. Feeling that a fate very different from that of Lot's wife
might be his if he should let himself look back too indiscreetly, he
kept his eyes upon the lofty goal and pressed on upwards with a haste
that now grew a trifle feverish. It began to seem to him that the
irony of the eagle's changeless stare might perhaps not be
unjustified.

Not till Horner had conquered the steep and, panting but elated,
gained the very foot of the pine, did the eagle stir. Then, spreading
his wings with a slow disdain, as if not dread but aversion to this
unbidden visitor bade him go, he launched himself on a long, splendid
sweep over the gulf, and then mounted on a spacious spiral to his
inaccessible outlook in the blue. Leaning against the bleached and
scarred trunk of the pine, Horner watched this majestic departure for
some minutes, recovering his breath and drinking deep the cool and
vibrant air. Then he turned and scanned the face of the mountain.

[Illustration: "He launched himself on a long, splendid sweep over the
gulf."]

There it lay, in full view--the nest which he had climbed so far to
find. It was not more than a hundred yards away. Yet, at first sight,
it seemed hopelessly out of reach. The chasm separating the ledge on
which it clung from the outlying rock of the pine was not more than
twenty feet across; but its bottom was apparently somewhere in the
roots of the mountain. There was no way of passing it at this point.
But Horner had a faith that there was a way to be found over or around
every obstacle in the world, if only one kept on looking for it
resolutely enough. To keep on looking for a path to the eagle's nest,
he struggled forward, around the outer slope of the buttress, down a
ragged incline, and across a narrow and dizzy "saddle-back," which
brought him presently upon another angle of the steep, facing
southeast. Clinging with his toes and one hand, while he wiped his
dripping forehead with his sleeve, he looked up--and saw the