* The last batch of baking,' he said, ' was not
up to the mark. The yeast gave out, and I
were obliged to get a rise out of a handful of
rub-rub berries. As for the pork, that came
from a pig that was catched.'

' What sort of pig ? '

* Well, sonny, it was this way, You know
the eagles' nest on the old yellow-wood in the
big kloof? I got the pig out of there.'

' Oh, you did, did you ! As far as I re-
member, the tree is a hundred feet high, and the

2X6



ABE AND THE EAGLES

nest quite sixty feet up. The pig climbed up, I
presume ? '^

' You presoom morn's good for you, sonny.
Don't suppose 'cos you bin to the Orange River
you know everything. The pig didn't climb
up ; he jes' dropped in on passin' ; paid a sort
of flying visit. That nest's as big as a cart
wheel, and if you stand below and look up the
trunk it shuts out the sky, while down below
there's bones enough, and of sorts, to build up
the skelingtons of a entire museum. That pair
of eagles used that nest going on for fifteen
years, and each year when the young hatch out
they kill off more dassies and cats and blue
boks than you could eat in a year.'

* You are welcome to the cats, Abe.'

* Yes, sir. Them eagles have buried, I
reckon, as many as two thousand animiles in
that leaf- mould cemingtary below the big tree.
