On the summit. Not a whit tired--not a bit fatigued; strong as ten--active as twenty ownselves on the flat--divinely drunk on draughts of ether--happier a thousand times, greater and more glorious, than Jupiter, with all his gods, enthroned on Olympus. BULLER. Moderately speaking. NORTH. In imagination I hear him barking now as he barked then--a sharp, short, savage, angry and hungry bark-- BULLER. What? A dog? A Fox? NORTH. No--no--no. An Eagle--the Golden Eagle from Ben-Slarive, known--no mistaking him--to generations of Shepherds for a hundred years. BULLER. Do you see him? NORTH. Now I do. I see his eyes--for he came--he comes sughing close by me--and there he shoots up in terror a thousand feet into the sky. BULLER. I did not know the Bird was so timid-- NORTH. He is not timid--he is bold; but an Eagle does not like to come all at once within ten yards of an unexpected man--any more than you would like suddenly to face a ghost. BULLER. What brought him there? NORTH. Wings nine feet wide. BULLER. Has he no sense of smell? NORTH. What do you mean, sir? BULLER. No offence. NORTH. He has. But we have not always all our senses about us, Buller, nor our wits either--he had been somewhat scared, a league up Glen Etive, by the Huntsman of Gleno--the scent of powder was in his nostrils; but fury follows fear, and in a minute I heard his bark again--as now I hear it--on the highway to Benlura. BULLER. He must have had enormous talons. NORTH. My hand is none of the smallest-- BULLER. God bless you, my dear sir,--give me a grasp. NORTH. There. BULLER. Oh! thumbikins! NORTH. And one of his son's talons--whom I shot--was twice the length of mine; his yellow knobby loof at least as broad--and his leg like my wrist. He killed a man. Knocked him down a precipice, like a cannon-ball. He had the credit of it all over the country--but I believe his wife did the business, for she was half-again as big as himself; and no devil like a she-devil fighting for her imp. BULLER. Did you ever rob an Eyrie, sir? NORTH. Did you over rob a Lion's den? No, no, Buller. I never--except on duty--placed my life in danger. I have been in many dangerous-looking places among the Mountains, but a cautious activity ruled all my movements--I scanned my cliff before I scaled him--and as for jumping chasms--though I had a spring in me--I looked imaginatively down the abyss, and then sensibly turned its flank where it leaned on the greensward, and the liberated streamlet might be forded, without swimming, by the silly sheep. BULLER. And are all those stories lies? NORTH. All. I have sometimes swam a loch or a river in my clothes--but never except when they lay in my way, or when I was on an angling excursion--and what danger could there possibly be in doing that? BULLER. You might have taken the Cramp, Sir. NORTH.