constant attrition with the boards of her extemporized cage. Covering my
face with my arm--for she could take one's eye out by a stroke of her
beak--I also retreated. She then dashed against the window with such force
that she bent the wood-work and broke every pane of glass. She seemed so
wild for freedom that I gave it to her, but the foolish creature, instead
of sailing far away, lingered on a bluff near the river, and soon boys and
men were out after her with shot-guns. I determined that they should not
mangle her to no purpose, and so, with the aid of my rifle, I added her
also to my collection of specimens."

"Have you ever found one of their nests?" Webb asked.

"Yes. They are rather curious affairs, and are sometimes five feet in
diameter each way, and quite flat at the top. They use for the substratum
of the domicile quite respectable cord-wood sticks, thicker than one's
wrist. The mother-bird must be laying her eggs at this season, cold as it
is. But they don't mind the cold, for they nest above the Arctic Circle."

"I don't see how it is possible for them to protect their eggs and young
in such severe weather," Mrs. Clifford remarked.

"Nature takes care of her own in her own way," replied the doctor, with a
slight shrug. "One of the birds always remains on the nest."

"Well," said Squire Bartley, who had listened rather impatiently to so
much talk about an unprofitable bird, "I wish my hens were laying now.
Seems to me that Nature does better by eagles and crows than by any fowls
I ever had. Good-night, friends."

With a wistful glance at Amy's pure young face, and a sigh so low. that