uch an object in his heart as now filled it. He found no
happiness in his investigations, but was appalled at the sights which
met him and the mysteries with which the study of them baffled him.
Death and discord seemed to reign everywhere, and the strong seemed ever
tyrannising over the weak.

Such sights as the following were ever before him. One day, while
sitting near the shore of the lake, where before him the sunlit waters
played with the pebbles at his feet, he saw a beautiful kingfisher hover
in mid-air for an instant, and then suddenly plunge down in the water
and quickly rise up again with a fine fish in his bill. Almost
instantly, from the top of an old dead tree near the shore, he observed
a fierce hawk, whose sharp eye had seen the fish thus captured. With a
scream that rang out sharp and clear, it flew swiftly after the
kingfisher, and so terrified it that it quickly dropped the fish and
hurriedly flew away to a place of safety. Seizing the fish in its bill,
with a scream of triumph, the hawk was about to return to the shore,
when another actor appeared upon the scene. Away up on the side of the
cliff, which rose up a little back from the shore to the height of
several hundred feet, on a projecting ledge of rocks, a pair of eagles
came year after year and built their crude, wild nest. One of these
great birds was watching the transaction going on below. When it heard
the shrill scream of triumph from the fishhawk, it knew that the time
for action had arrived. With both wings closed it shot down from the
eyrie, and ere the hawk, with its stolen plunder, had reached its old,
storm-beaten tree, the king of birds struck it such a blow that, dazed
and terrified, it dropped the fish, and barely succeeded in getting
away. It was not the fishhawk the eagle was after, but fish; and as the
active bird saw the fish drop from the beak of the fishhawk, it flew
down after it and caught it in mid-air ere it reached the water. Then,
in majestic circles, it slowly ascended to its eyrie. This sight under
other circumstances would have been enjoyable; but now, when he was a
seeker in nature for peace and happiness, the greed and rapacity of the
stronger over the weaker only filled him with sadness.

Thus for several weeks he tried to study nature, or to learn lessons
from her, while, far away from all his people, he dwelt in his little
camp, which he had made at the foot of a beautiful birch tree, or
wandered ov