Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/161

 grass. Testing the structure of the nest, Jen found that the sticks forming its outer walls were so firmly interlaced that, by putting most of his weight on a convenient branch just within reach of his hand, he could make his way to the summit. This he proceeded to do; then, kneeling on the top of the nest, amid the fragments of fish and other refuse that he found there, he began his search, thrusting his hand through and under the moss and grass.

Almost at once he uttered an exclamation of delight. Six inches under the moss his hand had closed upon something round and hard, a little larger than a hen's egg. A matter-of-fact man who had never heard of the Eagle Stone which had power to open money vaults and treasure chests, might have supposed that this hard round thing deep under the loose bedding of the nest was a waterworn bit of limestone, a spherical piece of bone or a nodule of black marsh mud compressed in the course of time to the hardness of rock and brought up to the nest in the sods which formed part of the structure. But Jen, all aquiver with exultant joy, knew that he had found the precious object of his quest.

He knelt for a moment, shaking like a man with fever, his hand still under the moss. Then he withdrew it empty, fished a big blue cotton handkerchief out of his pocket and worked it under the mossy