Upon the defeat of their leader the two cows and the calf turned instantly--which the ledge at their point was wide enough to permit--and fled back down the trail at a pace which seemed to threaten their own destruction. The bear followed more prudently, with no apparent thought of trying to overtake them. And Pedler kept on behind him, taking care, however, after this exhibition of his champion's prowess, not to press him too closely. The fleeing herd soon disappeared from view. It seemed to have effectually cleared the trail before it, for the curious procession of the bear and Peddler encountered no further obstacles. After about an hour the lower slopes of the mountain were reached. The ledge widened and presently broke up, with trails leading off here and there among the foothills. At the first of these that appeared to offer concealment the bear turned aside and vanished into a dense grove of spruce with a haste which seemed to Peddler highly amusing in a beast of such capacity and courage. He was well content, however, to be so easily quit of his dangerous advance guard. "A durn good thing for me," he mused, "that that there b'ar never got up the nerve to call my bluff, or I might 'a' been layin' now where that onlucky old bull-moose is layin', with a lot o' flies crawlin' over me!" And as he trudged along the now easy and ordinary trail, he registered two discreet resolutions--first, that never again would he cross Old Bald Face without his gun and his axe; and, second, that never again would he cross Old Bald Face at all, unless he jolly well had to. II THE EAGLE The Eagle He sat upon the very topmost perch under the open-work dome of his spacious and lofty cage. This perch was one of three or four lopped limbs jutting from a dead tree-trunk erected in the centre of the cage--a perch far other than that great branch of thunder-blasted pine, out-thrust from the seaward-facing cliff, whereon he had been wont to sit in his own land across the ocean.