"Next morning," continued the Poker, "when I waked up I was cold and stiff, and when I opened my eyes to look about me I found myself seated on a great ledge of rock on the side of a mountain. Far below me were tops of the trees in a forest I never remembered to have seen before, while above me a hard black wall of rock rose straight up for a thousand feet. To climb upward was impossible; to climb down, equally so.
"'What on earth does this mean?' thought I; and then, in attempting to walk, I found that I had but two legs, where the night before I had fallen asleep with four.
"'Am I a boy again?' I cried with delight.
"'No,' said a voice from way below me in the trees. 'You are now an eagle and I hope you will be happy.'
"You never were an eagle, were you, Dormy?" said the Poker, gazing earnestly into Tom's face.
"No," said Tom, "never. I've never been any kind of bird."
"Well, don't you ever be one," said the Poker, with a knowing shake of the head. "It's all very beautiful to think about, but being an eagle is entirely different from what thinking about it is. I was that eagle for one whole month, and the life of a Scotch terrier is bliss alongside of it. In the first place it was fight, fight, fight for food. It was lots of fun at first jumping off the crag down a thousand feet into the valley, but flying back there to get out of the way of the huntsmen was worse than pulling a sled with rusty runners up a hill a mile long. Then, when storms came up I had to sit up there on that mountain side and take 'em all as they came. I hadn't any umbrella—eagles never have—to keep off the rain; and no walls except on one side, to keep off the wind, and no shutters to close up so that I couldn't see the lightning. It was terrible. All I got to eat in the whole month was a small goat and a chicken hawk, and those I had to swallow wool, feathers and all. Then I got into fights with other eagles, and finally while I was looking for lunch in the forest I fell into a trap and was caught by some men who put me in a cage so that people could come to see me."
"Ever been shut up in a cage?" queried the Poker at this point.
"No," said Tom, "only in a dark closet."