That afternoon, when they heard him call, "Cac, cac, cac," they said, "Uncle Sam is laughing." And when his mate answered in her harsh voice, they said, "Aunt Samantha would be happy if she knew we saved their lives."
Busy with the life Nature taught them to live, the twins grew up as Uncle Sam had grown before them.
As they were hunters, there was nothing more interesting to them than seeking their food in wild, free places. They had no guns and dogs, but they caught game in the swamp. They had no cooks to prepare their ducks, so they picked off the feathers themselves. They had no fish-line and tackle, but they caught fish in the lake. And in time they caught fish in the air, too; which was even more thrilling, and a game they came to enjoy when they overtook the ospreys. Many times, too, they sought the fish that had been washed up on the lake shore, and so helped keep things sweet and clean. In this way they were scavengers; and it is always well to remember that a scavenger, whether he be a bird or beast or beetle, does great service in the world for all who need pure air to breathe.
The first year they became bigger than their father, and bigger than they themselves would be when they were old. At first, too, their eyes were brown, and not yellow like their father's and mother's. And for two years their heads and tails were dark, so that they looked much more like "golden eagles" than they did like the old ones of their own kind.
The soldiers at the training-camp caught sight of them now and then, and named them the "Yankee-Doodle Twins." When the twins were three years old, their molting season brought a remarkable change to them. The dark feathers of their heads and necks and tails dropped out, and in their places white feathers grew, so that by this time they looked like their own father and mother, who are what is called "bald eagles," though their heads are not bald at all, but well covered with feathers.
These two birds that were hatched in the home that was more than seventy years old lived to see the end of the war the young soldiers were training for when they took their first flights together near the shore of the same lake. And perhaps they will live to a time when the people of their country learn to deal more and more justly with each other and with the great bird of freedom chosen by their forefathers to be the emblem of their proud land.
Why, indeed, if the boys and girls of the neighborhood keep up a guard for the protection of Uncle Sam and Aunt Samantha, should they not nest again, and yet again, in that tree-top home that has been so well taken care of for more than threescore years and ten; and bring up Yankee-Doodle Twins for their country in days of peace as they did in days of war?