As an observant hunter he had ever been a student of nature, but never before with such 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 over the hills or in the forests. But he was no better off, for all the sights that met his eyes were very similar to those we have described. It was cruelty and death and destruction everywhere.