CHAPTER FIVE.
HOW MARK EDEN FOUND THE RAVEN'S NEST.
"Ah, there he goes," said Mark, beneath his breath, as he stood motionless, and watched a large raven flapping along, high overhead, in the direction he was taking.

"Perhaps that's the cock bird.

Looks big.
The nest may be where old Master Rayburn says, or up this way, and the bird's going for food." He waited till the raven disappeared, and then went on down-stream, taking to a path higher up, which led him by a pretty cottage, standing in a niche at a bend of the river, so that the place had a good view up and down-stream, and with its pleasant garden, looked the sort of home which might well make its owner content.
But Mark Eden's mind was too full of ravens' nests, to leave room for any contemplation of the old scholar's cottage; and he hurried on by the path, which cut off two or three bends of the river, taking him right away for quite a couple of miles, and bringing him to the water's-edge again, just in front of a mighty cliff, which towered up out of a dense grove of beeches on the other side of the river.
The place was solitary and still in the extreme; and going close down to the water's-edge, Mark Eden seated himself upon a mossy stone, between two great hawthorns, which hid him from anything coming up or down-stream, while brambles, ferns, and clustering hemlock-plants, hid his back and front.
It was a pleasant resting-place, to sit and watch the rapidly running river, which was very shallow here; and from his hiding-place, he could see the shadows of the ripples, and the stony bottom, and also those cast by trout, as they glided here and there, waiting for the unfortunate flies and caterpillars which had fallen from overhanging boughs, to be washed down the stream.
But Mark had but a glance for the fish: his attention was taken up by the mass of precipitous stone before him, so steep, that it was only here and there, in cracks or on ledges, that herb or stunted bush could find a place to root; and as he scanned the precipice, from its foot among the beeches, to its brow, five hundred feet above where he sat, he wondered whether the ravens nested there.
No more likely place could be found for the great birds to rear their young; the cliff looked inaccessible, and days would pass, sometimes weeks, and not a soul come near.
"Old Master Rayburn must be right," thought the lad.

"What eyes he has for everything of this kind.

There are no rooks in the beeches; there isn't a jackdaw about; and I haven't seen a rock-dove; all proof that the ravens are here, for the others would not dare to nest near them.
Only be to hatch young ones for food.