have gone clean through! How are we going to
disarm him?"

"Watch me!" said the elder, as he snatched up his coat from the canoe.
This effective weapon he threw over the bird's head; and in a few
moments the captive was so securely trussed up that he could do nothing
but eye his captors with implacable and indomitable hate. The cruel trap
was removed from his toes, and their bruises carefully washed. Then very
respectfully he was deposited in the bottom of the canoe, and in high
elation the boys paddled off.

They had not gone far, however, when a thought struck them both at the
same time, and both stopped paddling. They looked at each other with
misgivings.

"Well, what is it?" asked the younger, reluctantly.

"I'm afraid," answered the elder, "it's a blame mean trick we're playing
on the old bird, at this season! Eh? What do you think?"

"Perhaps so!" assented the other with a sigh, looking wistfully down at
their prize. "I never thought about the young ones."

Without a word more they proceeded to loose the bonds of their prisoner.
The moment he was free he struck at them savagely; but they had been on
guard against such ingratitude, and got out of the way in time. Then he
sprang into the air and flapped away indignantly; while the boys stared
after him wistfully, half-repenting of their gentleness.

In the Deep of the Silences

I

In the ancient wild there were three great silences that held their
habitations unassailed. They were the silence of the deep of the lake,
the silence of the dark heart of the cedar swamp, and the silence of the
upper air, high above the splintered peak of the mountain.

To this immeasurable quiet of upper air but one of all the earth sounds
could come. That one sound was of such quality that it seemed rather to
intensify the silence than disturb it. It was so absolutely alone, so
naked of all that murmurous background which sustains yet obscures the
individual sounds of earth's surface, that it served merely as an accent
to the silence. It was the fine, vibrant hiss of the smitten air against
the tense feathers of the soaring eagle.

[Illustration: "HIS COURSE TOOK HIM FAR OUT OVER THE SOUNDLESS SPACES."]

Through the immense, unclouded solitude the eagle swung majestically in
a great circle. At one point in the vast, deliberate swing he was
directly above the bald, deep-riven peak of granite upthrust from its
mantling forest of firs,--directly above it, at a height