had paused an instant. Then the earth
giving way under its tons of weight, it had plowed a deep furrow right
down the mountain side, dislodging rocks, uprooting trees, until with
a mighty crash, it struck the borders of the stream where it stands to
this day, a monument to boyish ingenuity and perseverance.

But of all the mischievous pranks of these childish days, the one that
had perhaps the greatest influence on his life was the capture of
an eagle's nest from the top of a dead hemlock. To the north of the
farmhouse a hill rises abruptly, covered with bare, outcropping rocks,
their fronts sheer and steep. On top clusters a little sombre grove
of hemlock trees, and from the midst of these rose the largest one,
straight, majestic, swaying a little in the wind that swept on from
the distant hills. In the top of this tree, an eagle had built her
nest, and it had long been a secret ambition of the boy to capture
it, the more resolved upon because it seemed impossible. One day in
October he left his sheep, ran to the foot of the hill, and with the
sure-footed agility of a mountain boy climbed the rocks and began the
ascent of the tree. From the top of a high ledge nearby two men hid
and watched him. A fall meant death, and many a time their hearts
stood still, as the intrepid lad placed his foot on a dead branch only
to have it break under him, or reached for a limb to find it give way
at his touch. The tree was nearly fifty feet high and at some time a
stroke of lightning had rent it, splintering the trunk. Only one limb
was left whole, the others had been broken off or shattered by the
storms of winter. In the very crown of the tree swayed the nest, a
rude, uncouth thing of sticks and hay.

Up and up he climbed, stopping every now and then in the midst of his
struggles to call to the sheep if he saw them wandering too far. He
had only to call them by name to bring them nibbling back again.

"Not a man in the mountains," wrote one of those who watched him in
that interesting sketch of Mr. Conwell's life, "Scaling the Eagle's
Nest," "would have thought it possible to do anything else but shoot,
that nest down. When we first saw him he was half way up the great
tree, and was tugging away to get up by a broken limb which was
swinging loosely about the trunk. For a long time he tried to break it
off, but his little hand was too weak. Then he came down from knot to
knot like a squirrel, jumped to the ground, ran to his littl