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.  It came back.  Again it was carried away.  Again it returned and this time was taken clear to the river.

Once a much loved aunt came to visit at his home bringing the little sister a beautiful, new doll.  That night she trotted off to bed hugging the new treasure close.  The boy did not love dolls; but when he saw the old, rag baby left lonely and forsaken be quietly picked it up and carried it to bed with him.