Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/162

 mattress of the nest. He would run no risk of letting even one ray of light touch the Eagle Stone and thus weaken or destroy its magic. When he again withdrew his hand the dark-blue handkerchief was wrapped around it and around the object which it enclosed; and as quickly as possible he thrust the treasure, still wrapped in the handkerchief, into his trousers pocket.

Jen was a practical soul. Credulous and superstitious he was, like most of the dusky marshmen and woodsmen of the Low Country, a believer in "hants" and incantations and spells and in many queer legends and myths about the abundant wild folk of the Low Country woods and marshes. But he knew that there were some who scoffed at the story of the Eagle Stone, and he had started on this quest with a double object in view, so that if he found no talisman in the eagles' nest he still might profit from his undertaking. His own doubts, if he had any, as to the virtue of the talisman had now vanished pretty completely, but this did not prevent him from carrying out also the other part of his design.

First he climbed some distance down the pine and out upon a limb. With a sharp hatchet which he carried in his belt he cut a section of this limb, about four feet in length and weighing perhaps ten pounds, and lashed it to the pine trunk below the