310 ON THE EDGE OF THE WILDERNESS 
came down to the lonely, pitiful nest and looked 
close at his dead baby. 
That night he perched, his head_ on his breast, 
in a tree close by. In the morning he rose and 
called his mate, as if his cries might bring her, 
but no mate came, and no shrieks for food came 
from the great mass of sticks in the hemlock. 
Baldy circled slowly, indeterminately, in the 
upper air, the dawn light rosy on his head and 
neck and tail. Then, as if some impulse had 
suddenly come, he spiraled up and up till the 
cloud around the peak of Greylock was but a 
white mat on the floor of the world, and far off to 
the east, like a silver wire, was the flash of a great 
river. He pointed into the east, and sailed to 
meet the sun. 
All that morning he flew, high at first, and then 
lower, over the great river, save where the smoke 
of cities caused him to shoot aloft again, and in 
the afternoon his ears heard a strange bumbling 
in the air and his eyes saw coming at him, with 
incredible speed, the most astonishing bird he had 
ever beheld. Compared to it, he was as small as 
the tiniest humming bird. And it was above him, 
