from the ground, and the unlooked-for intruder who had burst from his ambush in the alders.
The big bird knew what was coming, knew the menace of the rifle which the man had whipped to his shoulder, knew that another moment would decide the outcome. He saw the flash of the rifle, saw his mate collapse in the air and pitch heavily downward. For ten minutes after the man had carried her body away toward his cabin below the pasture the male eagle continued to sail round and round in great circles. Then he turned his bill northward toward the high summits of the Smokies, and, driving forward swiftly with powerful beats of his pinions, vanished behind a dense white cloud drifting down the long valley from the upper peaks.
Some two weeks later, an hour after sunrise, a bald eagle passed over a saddle of the highest ridge of the Smokies, traveling eastward. Though of full size, he was evidently a young bird, for he wore the uniform dark-gray livery characteristic of the bald eagle in its second year, before the head and tail have acquired the white plumage which denotes maturity. A squirrel hunter, resting for a few minutes on a flat sunny rock near the summit of the ridge, saw the big bird pass over well beyond rifle range and shook his fist at it. In the dark plumage of youth the bald eagle is virtually indistinguish-
