While waiting for this happy time to come he had learned to do
other things, among them to throw stones. It was necessary,
however, to be careful what was aimed at. The birds made tempting
marks; but song-birds were sacred things, and temptation had to be
resisted.
One day while he played in the yard with his little sister,
resentment having turned to devotion, a wren flew down to the wood
pile and began its song. It happened at that very moment he had a
stone in his hand. He didn't quite have time to think before the
stone was gone and the bird dropped dead. Dumb with horror the two
gazed at each other. Beyond doubt all he could now expect was to
go straight to torment. After one long look they turned and walked
silently away in opposite directions. Never afterwards did they
mention the incident to each other.
A new life began for him with his trapping. He learned to fish as
well, for besides being a hunter, his father was an angler of
State-wide reputation. The days on which his father accompanied
him along the banks of the St. Joe, or to some more distant stream,
were very specially happy ones. His cup was quite filled full
when, on the day he was twelve years old, a rifle all his own was
placed in his hands. Father and son then hunted together.
While thus growing intimate with the living things of the woods and
streams, his question was not so much "What?" as "Why?" As reading
came to take a larger part in life and interest to reach out to
human beings, again his question was "Why?" So when other heroes
took their places beside his father for their share of homage, they
were loved and honoured for that which prompted their achievements
more than for the deeds themselves.
Passionately fond of history, with its natural accompaniment
geography, he revelled, as does every normal boy, in stories of the
wars, Indian stories and tales of travel and adventure. His
imagination kindled by what he had read, and the oft-repeated tales
of frontier life in which the courage, endurance, and high honour
of his own pioneer forefathers stood out strong and clear, it was
but natural that the boy under the apple trees should feel romance
in every bit of forest, every stream; that his thoughts should be
reaching towards the out-of-the-way places of the earth where life
was still that of the pioneer with the untamed wilderness lying
across his path, and on into the wilderness itself.
Though born with all the instincts of the hunter, he was born also
with an exquisitely tender and sympathetic nature, which made him
do strange things for a boy.
One day a toad hopped into the beeyard and his father was about to
kill it. The boy petitioned for its life and carried it away.
