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 at the nest's rim upon which Jen had seen him alight the day before, the king paused there a few moments, turning his snowy head this way and that, glancing keenly about him. Then with a rather awkward hop he passed to the flat, moss-lined and grass-littered interior of the nest within the circle of sticks.

Instantly he leaped upward, his great wings beating desperately, madly, churning the air. Ten feet or so he rose, with the small rusty steel trap with which Jen caught minks gripping two toes of his left foot, crushing them together. A long slender cord of strong fishing line, doubled and twisted, led downward from the trap over the rim of the nest to the section of pine limb lashed to the tree trunk. As the cord tightened, the eagle, his ascent arrested, screamed with rage and swung outward. For a moment he remained stationary in the air, held by the cord, his powerful wings beating more furiously than ever. Suddenly something gave way beneath him. For a quarter of a minute perhaps he held a level course over the roof of the jungle. Then, his wings laboring mightily, he began to slant downward.

Far beneath him, at the end of the cord, dangled the heavy pine clog, which, just as Jen had intended, had pulled loose from the tree trunk as soon as the trapped eagle jerked the cord strongly. Lower and