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 plastered against the wood, he watched with terrified eyes as the falcon shot past and swerved sharply upward to a perch on a dead oak some fifty paces to the right.

If Cloud King, the peregrine, perching on the topmost stick of the oak, saw Red Rogue, his neighbor of Devilhead crag, crouching beside the rock beneath him, the falcon gave no sign. He did not see the logcock in the chestnut near by, for the big woodpecker was careful to keep himself hidden behind the stout limb to which he was clinging. Cloud King must have heard the faint sounds coming at intervals from the shrubbery on the slope of the ridge below the rock, but apparently he paid no attention to them, and seemed to doze on his perch. As a matter of fact, he had come to the dead oak foranap. He had been hunting on the wing nearly all morning, and the oak, thrusting its naked top above the other trees on the ridge, had attracted him as a suitable place for a brief siesta.

Yet sleepy as he seemed and really was, his restless eyes were not content to give themselves as yet to complete inactivity. Now and again at frequent intervals they awoke and shot keen glances here and there; and suddenly, after some ten minutes had passed, they chanced to detect a tiny spot of scarlet on a high limb of a dead chestnut near at hand. For some minutes then, though the hawk