Up and up he climbed, stopping every now and then in the midst of his struggles to call to the sheep if he saw them wandering too far. He had only to call them by name to bring them nibbling back again. "Not a man in the mountains," wrote one of those who watched him in that interesting sketch of Mr. Conwell's life, "Scaling the Eagle's Nest," "would have thought it possible to do anything else but shoot, that nest down. When we first saw him he was half way up the great tree, and was tugging away to get up by a broken limb which was swinging loosely about the trunk. For a long time he tried to break it off, but his little hand was too weak. Then he came down from knot to knot like a squirrel, jumped to the ground, ran to his little jacket and took his jack-knife out of the pocket. Slowly he clambered up again. When he reached the limb, he clung to another with his left hand, threw one leg over a splintered knot and with the right hand hacked away with his knife. "'He will give it up,' we both said. "But he did not. He chipped away until at last the limb fell to the ground. Then he pocketed his knife, and bravely strove to get up higher. It was a dizzy height even for a grown hunter, but the boy never looked down. He went on until he came to a place about ten feet below the nest, where there was a long, bare space on the trunk, with no limbs or knots to cling to. He was baffled then. He looked up at the nest many times, tried to find some place to catch hold of the rough bark and sought closely for some rest higher up to put his foot on. But there was none. An eagle's nest was a rare thing to him, and he hugged the tree and thought. Suddenly he began to descend again hastily, and soon dropped to the ground. Away he ran down through the ravines, leaped the little streams and disappeared toward his home. In a few minutes the torn straw hat and blue shirt came flitting back among the rocks and bushes. He called the sheep to him, talked to them, and shook his finger at them, then he clambered up the tree again, dragging after him a long piece of his mother's clothes line. At one end of it, he had tied a large stone, which hindered his progress, for it caught in the limbs and splinters. The wind blew his torn straw hat away down a side cliff, and one side of his trousers was soon torn to strips. But he went on. When he got to the smooth place on the tree again, he fastened one end of the rope about his wrist, and then taking the stone which was fastened to the other end, he tried to throw it up over the nest. It was an awkward and dangerous position, and the stone did not reach the top. Six or seven times he threw that stone up, and it fell short or went to one side, and nearly dragged him down as it fell.