This was the first impression.

Then he fixed his eye on the nest, and watched the old bird, as she sat on a ledge that projected from the box, while she distributed to her younglings the food she had brought.

Thus sat the boy at the moment his mother left the dining-room with the comfortable supper she had prepared for him, and there she would have found him in comparative safety, had she not been prevented from carrying out the kind promptings of her heart.
The longer Andrew gazed at the young birds, the more desirous did he become to get them in his possession.

Over and over again he measured the height and thickness of the pole with his eyes, calculating, all the while, his ability to climb it, and the amount of danger attendant on the adventure.
"I'm sure I could do it," said he, at length rising from the place where he sat and walking with careful step to the edge of the roof, at the point above which the pole projected.

Grasping the pole firmly, he first leaned his body over until he could see in a perpendicular line to the pavement in the yard below, a distance of more than forty feet.