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 sign of apprehension or even of interest. He, too, was a king in his own right; and, young though he was, he knew his own powers and acknowledged no overlord among all the tribes of the air. With the other eagles of his own kind he had lived in peace. The big, booted, ring-tailed eagles of the mountain country he had never happened to meet.

Late that spring, seized by the wanderlust which sometimes attacks young bald eagles that have not yet chosen mates, he had left the barrier islands of the Low Country coast, the ancient home and hunting ground of his race, and had traveled far inland, crossing the middle country and the hill country and even passing beyond the highest ranges of the Blue Ridge. There, for a while, he had maintained a difficult existence in a region of high forested mountains and green cultivated valleys—a region of strange and unfamiliar aspect, ill suited to his needs. Now, his wanderlust gone, he was on his way back to the Low Country which was his proper home, a country where swamps, marshes and barrier islands abounded with game, and where sounds, creeks and rivers teemed with fish.

With that shining goal before him, the bald eagle was traveling not at the highest speed of which he was capable, but at a steady gait which he could maintain without fatigue for hours at a time. The golden eagle, on the other hand, having no long