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The Heart of Monadnock

bends the June sky caressingly; to the northwest a pile of rosy cumuli mounts just behind a craggy point, clearcut in outline against the pure translucent blue. Color deep, soft, thrilling. The northern sky looks like a profound ocean of melting depths, through which could one float forever.

And there is the eagle! Soaring in its strange and stately flight with no visible motion of its wide-spread wings, it wheels and mounts and sinks and rises again, as if with the sheer joy of swinging far aloft in the glowing light. The climber again pulled off his soft hat, this time in greeting to his old friend; for years a pair have made their home here on the mountain, out on the Dublin Ridge,—apparently a preëmpted spot for never are others of their kind seen here. The young are evidently sternly driven forth year by year to fare in less picturesque places. Monadnock would not seem quite itself without the floating, majestic flight of those two wheeling sentinels.