on the lily pads, looking very
full, with a suspicious-looking object curling out over his under lip.
I wiggled my finger in the water, and he came from pure sociability,
for he was beyond eating any more. The suspicious-looking object
proved to be a bird's foot, and beside it was a pointed wing tip. That
was too much for my curiosity. I opened his mouth and pulled out the
bird with some difficulty, for Chigwooltz had been engaged some time
in the act of swallowing his game and had it well down. It proved to
be a full-grown male swallow, without a mark anywhere to show how he
had come by his death. Chigwooltz looked at me reproachfully, but
swallowed his game promptly the moment I had finished examining it.

There was small doubt in my mind that he had caught his bird fairly,
by a quick spring as the swallow touched the water almost at his
nose, near one of his numerous lurking places. Still it puzzled me a
good deal till one early morning, when I saw him in broad daylight do
a much more difficult thing than snapping up a swallow.

I was coming down the game path to the shore when a bird, a tree
sparrow I thought, flew to the ground just ahead of me, and hopped to
the water to drink. I watched him a moment curiously, then with
intense interest as I saw a ripple steal out of the lily pads towards
him. The ripple was Chigwooltz.

The sparrow had finished drinking and was absorbed in a morning bath.
Chigwooltz stole nearer and nearer, sinking himself till only his eyes
showed above water. The ripple that flowed away on either side was
gentle as that of a floating leaf. Then, just as the bird had sipped
and lifted its head for a last swallow, Chigwooltz hurled himself out
of water. One snap of his big mouth, and the sparrow was done for.

An hour later, when I came down to my canoe, he was sitting low on the
lily pads, winking sleepily now and then, with eight little sparrow's
toes curling over the rim of his under lip, like a hornpout's
whiskers.

VI. CLOUD WINGS THE EAGLE.

[Illustration: Old Whitehead]

"Here he is again! here's Old Whitehead, robbing the fish-hawk."

I started up from the little _commoosie_ beyond the fire, at Gillie's
excited cry, and ran to join him on the shore. A glance out over
Caribou Point to the big bay, where innumerable whitefish were
shoaling, showed me another chapter in a long but always interesting
story. Ismaquehs, the fish-hawk, had risen from the lake with a big
fish,