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 rose a few yards into the air on heavy wings; while his victorious mate flapped onward to the beach half carrying her prey, half dragging it through the water. With a mighty effort she threw it clear up on the silver sand. Then she dropped it and alighted beside it, with one foot firmly clutching it in sign of victory. Her mate promptly landed beside her; whereupon she withdrew her grip in acknowledgment that the kill was truly his.

After a few minutes' rest, during which the male bird shook and preened his ruffled plumage into order, the pair fell to at their feast, tearing oft great fragments of their prey and devouring them hastily lest the eagle should return, or the eagle's yet more savage mate, and snatch the booty from them. Their object was to reduce it to a size that could be carried home conveniently to the nest. In this they were making swifl progress, when the banquet was interrupted. A long-limbed woodsman in grey homespun, with a grizzled beard and twinkling, grey-blue eyes, and a rifle over his shoulder, came suddenly into close view around a bend of the shore.

The two ospreys left their feast and flapped up into the top of a near-by pine tree. They knew the man, and knew him unoffending as far as they were concerned. He had been a near neighbor