other.
Wolves, now, are not particularly deer-killers. They live off elk an'
anythin' they can catch. So will lions, for that matter. But I mean
lions follow the deer to an' fro from winter to summer feedin'-grounds.
Where there's no deer you will find no lions. Well, now, if left alone
deer would multiply very fast. In a few years there would be hundreds
where now there's only one. An' in time, as the generations passed,
they'd lose the fear, the alertness, the speed an' strength, the
eternal vigilance that is love of life--they'd lose that an' begin
to deteriorate, an' disease would carry them off. I saw one season of
black-tongue among deer. It killed them off, an' I believe that is one
of the diseases of over-production. The lions, now, are forever on the
trail of the deer. They have learned. Wariness is an instinct born in
the fawn. It makes him keen, quick, active, fearful, an' so he grows up
strong an' healthy to become the smooth, sleek, beautiful, soft-eyed,
an' wild-lookin' deer you girls love to watch. But if it wasn't for
the lions, the deer would not thrive. Only the strongest an' swiftest
survive. That is the meanin' of nature. There is always a perfect
balance kept by nature. It may vary in different years, but on the
whole, in the long years, it averages an even balance."

"How wonderfully you put it!" exclaimed Bo, with all her impulsiveness.
"Oh, I'm glad I didn't kill the lion."

"What you say somehow hurts me," said Helen, wistfully, to the hunter.
"I see--I feel how true--how inevitable it is. But it changes my--my
feelings. Almost I'd rather not acquire such knowledge as yours. This
balance of nature--how tragic--how sad!"

"But why?" asked Dale. "You love birds, an' birds are the greatest
killers in the forest."

"Don't tell me that--don't prove it," implored Helen. "It is not so much
the love of life in a deer or any creature, and the terrible clinging to
life, that gives me distress. It is suffering. I can't bear to see pain.
I can STAND pain myself, but I can't BEAR to see or think of it."

"Well," replied. Dale, thoughtfully, "There you stump me again. I've
lived long in the forest an' when a man's alone he does a heap of
thinkin'. An' always I couldn't understand a reason or a meanin'
for pain. Of all the bafflin' things of life, that is the hardest to
understand an' to forgive--pain!"

That evening, as they sat in restful places round the camp-fire, with
the still twilight fading i