body forward. Already she had crept within leaping distance of the eagle; and the big bird, conscious of his inability to use his pinions, stiffened his muscles for the onset. But the sudden assault which he expected did not come. The fox, perceiving that she had been discovered, abandoned her effort to approach unseen. But she did not leap to the attack; she did not circle the eagle swiftly and lightly to get within his guard and frighten him into abandoning his prey. She advanced more rapidly than before; but it was a slow, pitiful advance, painful and laborious; for behind her, as she dragged herself onward, her hind legs trailed limp and useless.
The paths of the bald eagle and the gray fox do not cross. They inhabit separate kingdoms: the eagle, the kingdom of the air, the marshes, the lonely sea-island beaches; the fox, the kingdom of the woods, the thicket-grown broom-grass fields, the moss-curtained swamps. Never before had this fox of Half-Acre Island attacked an eagle, nor would she have done so single-handed under ordinary circumstances. Never before had the wounded eagle which had sought Half-Acre as a refuge found himself confronted by an enemy like the one that faced him now. His was the bolder, more arrogant spirit; his, too, perhaps, the more formidable armament. But in this encounter the decisive factor was the
