“Not at all,” answered McLean. “She knew nothing of the kind, and none of us did. How did she know but the young eagles were big enough to tear the child to pieces? How did she know he would not toss about and roll over the cliff?
“No, the thing was to get him out of the nest, and to do that they had to climb a crag that nobody had ever gone up, not the best man in the settlement. And they wouldn’t have done it then, if it hadn’t been for old Dave. I was one that helped the men carry the ladders and the ropes to the foot of the crag. I saw them climb as far as they could get a foothold and then set a ladder up into a gnarled oak that grew out of the rocks above. Dave climbed to the oak, pulled up the ladder and set it still farther up, lashing it to the oak-tree, while Shadwell—the baby’s father, you know—clambered after him on another ladder the men had brought. He followed Dave till they found a part of the cliff where they could climb without ladders, and then, holding on by tough shrubs that grew here and there, they dragged themselves up to the top of the crag.
“But then, you see, they were too high up and old Dave had to rope the father and lower him down to the nest which was built on a kind of rocky platform below.”
“Oh, the poor mother!” sighed Mrs. McLean, “not knowing all that time whether the child was alive or dead!”
“They very soon knew,” said her husband, “for when the father found the child alive and unhurt, he held it up for us all to see, and then, what a shout went up from the valley!”
“But how did they get the baby down?” questioned Ronald.
“Much the same way as Stumpy got you down from the rock the other day; they roped him and lowered him into the arms of the men who were waiting at the foot of the first ladder and there were plenty of arms and good, strong ones too.
“Oh, it was a wonderful sight. I never shall forget it, though I haven’t thought of it for years, and shouldn’t have now, if your mother hadn’t read that story in the ‘Chronicle.’”
“Do you think,” Lesley asked her mother wistfully, “if the little sister had been watching the baby, that maybe the eagle wouldn’t have carried it off?”
“That I can’t say,” answered her mother, briskly; “an eagle is a good-sized bird to fight, but I can say that it’s past time for you two to be in bed!”