Cloud Wings the Ragle. 93 



enthusiasm or confidence. He had chased the same 

 eagle before all one summer, in fact, when a sports- 

 man, whom he was guiding, had offered him twenty 

 dollars for the royal bird's skin. But Old White- 

 head still wore it triumphantly; and Simmo proph- 

 esied for him long life and a natural death. " No 

 use hunt-um dat heagle," he said simply. " I try 

 once an' can't get near him. He see everyt'ing ; and 

 wot he don't see, he hear. 'Sides, he kin feel danger. 

 Das why he build nest way off, long ways, O don' 

 know where." This last with a wave of his arm to 

 include the universe. Cheplahgan, Old Cloud Wings, 

 he proudly called the bird that had defied him in a 

 summer's hunting. 



At first I had hunted him like any other savage ; 

 partly, of course, to get his skin for the curator; 

 partly, perhaps, to save the settler's lambs over on the 

 Madawaska; but chiefly just to kill him, to exult in 

 his death flaps, and to rid the woods of a cruel tyrant. 

 Gradually, however, a change came over me as I 

 hunted ; I sought him less and less for his skin and 

 his life, and more and more for himself, to know all 

 about him. I used to watch him by the hour from 

 my camp on the big lake, sailing quietly over Caribou 

 Point, after he had- eaten with his little ones, and 

 was disposed to let Ismaquehs go on with his fishing 



