able from the golden eagle at a little distance. The squirrel hunter took this bird to be one of the pair of golden eagles which for many years had nested somewhere amid the high peaks of the Smokies and had levied tribute not only upon the wild creatures of the upland forests but also upon the little flocks and herds of the mountain farms.
Keener eyes than those of the squirrel hunter were deceived. A male golden eagle, sunning himself on a narrow ledge of a southward-facing precipice, suddenly dropped off into the abyss. For twenty feet or so he dropped, his wings half open. Then, spreading his pinions to the utmost, he planed outward from the face of the cliff, shot upward with the impetus thus gained, and swinging around a half circle, set a straight and slightly ascending course to the eastward. A mile or more away, and perhaps a hundred yards higher, the bald eagle which had just passed over the ridge between the peaks pursued his journey, his long, wide wings steadily and strongly smiting the air. On that dark form, cleaving the thin atmosphere high above the wooded ridges and valleys slanting down from the upper Smokies, the deep-set eyes of the golden eagle were fixed with an eagemess almost terrible in its intensity.
If the bald eagle was aware from the outset of the grim pursuer speeding in his wake, he gave no
