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 little jacket
and took his jack-knife out of the pocket. Slowly he clambered up
again. When he reached the limb, he clung to another with his left
hand, threw one leg over a splintered knot and with the right hand
hacked away with his knife.

"'He will give it up,' we both said.

"But he did not. He chipped away until at last the limb fell to the
ground. Then he pocketed his knife, and bravely strove to get up
higher. It was a dizzy height even for a grown hunter, but the boy
never looked down. He went on until he came to a place about ten feet
below the nest, where there was a long, bare space on the trunk, with
no limbs or knots to cling to. He was baffled then. He looked up at
the nest many times, tried to find some place to catch hold of the
rough bark and sought closely for some rest higher up to put his foot
on. But there was none. An eagle's nest was a rare thing to him, and
he hugged the tree and thought. Suddenly he began to descend again
hastily, and soon dropped to the ground. Away he ran down through the
ravines, leaped the little streams and disappeared toward his home.