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 himself with great care in the dense cover of the surrounding cassena thicket.

There he sat patiently for an hour, smoking his corncob pipe and building air castles. He saw the king and his mate return, watched the latter alight on a pine limb near by, while the former, carrying a big catfish carcass in his claws, flew to the nest; and he marked with care the exact spot on the nest on which the eagle alit. Then, when the king and his consort had departed again, perhaps in search of more food to deposit in the nest, which they often used as a storehouse, Jen rose and went his way, well pleased with the results of his scouting. He did not know that there was another King of Odistash who reigned on this jungle-covered barrier isle—a mighty monarch, clad in glittering mail, who ruled with irresistible power and merciless tyranny; and Jen laid his plans for the next day's operations unaware that cold, lidless, unwinking eyes had watched him as he dreamed in his cassena ambush and that for an hour he had sat within twenty feet of death.

By nine o'clock the next morning Jen was back at the edge of the little opening in the jungle beneath the eagles' pine. From the shelter of the thicket he saw the two big birds perching side by