Later in spring there was plowing, though the farm was so rocky and stony, there was little of that work to do. But here and there, a sunny hilltop field made cultivation worth while, and as he followed the patient oxen along the shining brown furrow, he looked away to the encircling hills so full of mystery and fascination. What was there? What was beyond? Then into the the morning and well into the afternoon they pried and labored. They dug away earth and exerted to the utmost their childish strength. Charles would soon have given up the gigantic task, but Russell was not of the stuff that quits, and so they toiled on. The father and mother at home wondered and searched for the boys. Then as they began truly to get alarmed, from the woods to the south came a crash and roar, the sound of trees snapping and then a shock that made the earth tremble. The rock had fallen, traversing a mile, in its downward rush to the river bed. Flushed and triumphant the boys returned, and the neighbors who had heard the noise, when it was explained to them, went to see the wreckage. It had dropped first a fall of fifteen feet, where it had paused an instant. Then the earth giving way under its tons of weight, it had plowed a deep furrow right down the mountain side, dislodging rocks, uprooting trees, until with a mighty crash, it struck the borders of the stream where it stands to this day, a monument to boyish ingenuity and perseverance. But of all the mischievous pranks of these childish days, the one that had perhaps the greatest influence on his life was the capture of an eagle's nest from the top of a dead hemlock. To the north of the farmhouse a hill rises abruptly, covered with bare, outcropping rocks, their fronts sheer and steep. On top clusters a little sombre grove of hemlock trees, and from the midst of these rose the largest one, straight, majestic, swaying a little in the wind that swept on from the distant hills. In the top of this tree, an eagle had built her nest, and it had long been a secret ambition of the boy to capture it, the more resolved upon because it seemed impossible. One day in October he left his sheep, ran to the foot of the hill, and with the sure-footed agility of a mountain boy climbed the rocks and began the ascent of the tree. From the top of a high ledge nearby two men hid and watched him. A fall meant death, and many a time their hearts stood still, as the intrepid lad placed his foot on a dead branch only to have it break under him, or reached for a limb to find it give way at his touch. The tree was nearly fifty feet high and at some time a stroke of lightning had rent it, splintering the trunk. Only one limb was left whole, the others had been broken off or shattered by the storms of winter. In the very crown of the tree swayed the nest, a rude, uncouth thing of sticks and hay.