“THE LAST AMERICAN’? 309 
his circles far aloft, widening them slowly till the 
loop carried him a mile or two away, and then, as 
‘he banked and swung back, he saw distinctly 
three men in the open, watching him, and one of 
them holding his dead mate by the feet! They 
thought he was too far away to see them! As he 
came wheeling back, high aloft, they jumped un- 
der the hemlock again, but he did not sink. In- 
stead he passed on, still crying shrilly, and faded 
to a speck against the afternoon sky. The 
hunters gave him up, and started homeward, 
carrying their two kills which had fallen, but 
leaving the baby up in the nest. 
“°Tain’t worth stuffin’,” they said, “ leastways, 
’tain’t when you have ter shin a seventy foot hem- 
lock ter git it.” 
But Baldy, swinging back now, saw them pass- 
ing over the rock whence they had first spied the 
nest, and unseen of them, because he was against 
the sun, dropped down low enough to make quite 
sure it was his mate they carried, her great, 
bedraggled wings trailing the ground. Then he 
shot upward and looped far to the north, to the 
east, to the south, and only as the sun was setting 
