The morning fishing was over. A couple of grilse, beautiful four-pound fish, fresh from the sea, lay snug together in my fish basket—enough for the day and to spare. So I gave up—with an effort, I must confess—the big salmon that had plunged twice at my Jock Scott, and sat down on a stranded log to enjoy myself, as the wood folk were doing all about me.

The river rippled past with strong, even sweep. Below was the deep pool, with smiles and glintings of light on its dark face, where the salmon, after their long run from the sea, rested awhile before taking up their positions in the swift water, in which they love to lie, balancing themselves against the rush and tremor of the current. Above were the riffles, making white foam patches of the water, as if they were having a soap-bubble party all to themselves. The big white bubbles would come dancing, swinging down to the eddies behind the rocks, where a playful young grilse would shoot up through them, scattering them merrily, and adding a dozen more bubbles and wimples to the running troop as he fell back into his eddy with a musical splash that set all the warblers on the bank to whistling. Now and then a big white patch would escape all this and enter sedately the swift run of water along the great ledge on the farther shore. My big salmon lived there; and just as the foam patch dipped sharply into the quiet water below, he would swirl under it and knock it into smithereens with a blow of his tail.

So the play went on, while I sat watching it—watching the shadows, watching the dabs and pencilings of light and the changing reflections, watching the foam bubbles with special delight and anticipation, betting with myself how far they would run, whether to the second eddy or to the rim of the pool, before the salmon would smash them in their play. Then a shadow fell on the water, and I looked up to watch the great eagle breasting, balancing, playing with the mighty air currents above, as the fishes played in the swift rush of water below.

He set his wings square to the wind at first and slanted swiftly up, like a well hung kite. But that was too fast for leisure hours. He had only dropped down to the pool in idle curiosity to see what was doing. Then, watching his wing tips keenly through my glass, I saw the quills turn ever so slightly, so as to spill the wind from their underside, as a skipper slacks sheets to deaden his boat's headway, and the wonderful upward spiral flight began.

Just how he does it only the eagle himself knows; and with him it is largely a matter of slow learning. The young birds make a sad bungle of it when they try it for the first time, following the mother eagle, who swings just above and in front of them to show them how it is done.

Over me sweeps my eagle in slow, majestic circles; ever returning upon his course, yet ever higher than his last wheel, like a life with a great purpose in it; sliding evenly upward on the wind's endless stairway as it slips from under him. Without hurry, without exertion—just a twist of his wide-set wing quills, so slight that my eye can no longer notice it—he swings upward; while the earth spreads wider and wider below him, and rivers flash in the sun, like silver ribbons, across the green forest carpet that spreads away over mountain and valley to the farthest horizon.

Smaller and smaller grow the circles now, till the vast spiral reaches its apex, and he hangs there in the air, looking with quiet, kindling eyes over Isaiah's royal land of "farnesses," like a tiny humming bird poised over the earth's great flower cup. So high is he that one must think he glances over the brim of things, and sees our earth as a great bubble floating in the blue ether, with nothing whatever below it and only himself above. And there he stays, floating, balancing, swaying in the purring currents of air that hold him fast in their soft arms and brush his great wings tenderly with a caress that never grows weary, like a great, strong mother holding her little child.

He had fed; he had drunk to the full from a mountain spring. Now he rested over the world that nourished him and his little ones, with his keen eyes growing sleepy, and never a thought of harm to himself or any creature within his breast. For that is a splendid thing about all great creatures, even the fiercest of them: they are never cruel. They take only what they must to supply their necessities. When their wants are satisfied there is truce which they never break. They live at peace with all things, small and great, and, in their dumb unconscious way, answer to the deep harmony of the world which underlies all its superficial discords, as the music of the sea is never heard till one moves far away from the uproar along the shore.

The little wild things all know this perfectly. When an eagle, or any other bird or beast of prey, is not hunting—which is nine tenths of the time—the timidest and most defenseless creature has no fear of him whatever.

My eyes grow weary, at last, watching the noble bird, so small a speck on the infinite blue background; and they blur suddenly, thinking of the joy of his great free life, and the sadness of our unnatural humanity.

As I seek the pool again, and rest my eyes on the soft, glimmering, color-washed surface, there is a stir in the still water at my feet. Life is here too; and joy belongs, not only to the heavens, but to the earth as well. A long twig from a fallen tree had thrust itself deep into the stream, its outer end swayed, and rose and fell rhythmically in the current. While I was watching the eagle a little turtle found the twig and laid himself across it, one flipper clinched into a knot to hold him steady, the others hanging listlessly and swinging to keep the balance perfect as he teetered up and down, up and down, with the great, purring river to do his work for him and join his silent play. And there he lay for half the morning—as long as I stayed to watch him—swinging, swaying, rising, falling, glad of his little life, which was yet big enough to know pleasure, glad of light and motion, and, for aught I know, glad of a music in the stream below, the faint echo of the rustling, rippling, fluting music that filled the air and the woods all around me.

Life is a glad thing for the wood folk; that is what the great eagle was saying, far overhead; that is what the little turtle said, swaying up and down on his twig at my feet; that is what every singing bird and leaping salmon said, and every piping frog along the shore, and every insect buzzing about my ears in the warm sunshine. I remembered suddenly a curious fact, which till then had never come home to me with its true significance: in all my years of watching the wild things—watching, not to record, or to make a story, but only to see and understand for myself just what they were doing, and what they thought and felt—I had never yet met an unhappy bird or animal. Nor have I ever met one, before or since, in whom the dominant note was not gladness of living. I have met all sorts and conditions of beasts and birds at close quarters; some whose whole nature seemed bent into a question mark, like certain jays and turkeys and deer, and one moose that I could not keep away from my camp for any length of time; some fond, like a certain big green frog that attached himself to me with an affection that denied his cold blood; some foolish, like the fawn that would never follow his leader; some morose and ugly, like the big bull moose that first watched and then tried twice to kill me; but never a one, great or small, among them all, to whom life did not seem to offer a brimming cup, and who did not, even in times of danger and want, rejoice in his powers and live gladly, with an utter absence of that worry and anxiety which make wreck of our human life.

I stood by a runway in the big woods one morning, watching for a deer that dogs were driving. From the lake I had listened to the whole story,—the first eager, sniffing yelps, the sharp, clear note that meant a fresh track, and then the deep-lunged, savage chorus sweeping up the ridge, which told of a deer afoot and running for his life. I knew something of the deer's habits in that region; knew also that the hunters were over the ridge, watching by a lake that the deer had deserted weeks ago; and so I headed for a favorite runway, to let the deer slip by me and to club the dogs away as they came on. For deer hounding and deer coursing are detestable sports, whether the law allow them or not, and whether the dogs be mongrel curs that follow their noses or imported greyhounds with a pedigree that run by sight, followed by a field of thoroughbreds.

On the way to the runway a curious thing happened. A big hawk swooped into some berry bushes ahead of me with strong, even slant, and rose in a moment with the unmistakable air of disappointment showing all over him, from beak to tail tip. I stole up to the bushes cautiously to find out what he was after, and to match my eyes with his. There I saw, first one, then five or six well-grown young partridges crouched in their hiding places among the brown leaves, rejoicing apparently in the wonderful coloring which Nature gave them, and in their own power, learned from their mother, to lie still and so be safe till danger passed. There was no fear manifest whatever; no shadow of anxiety for any foolish youngster who might turn his head and so let the hawk see him. In a moment they were all gliding away with soft, inquisitive kwit-kwits, turning their heads to eye me curiously, and anon picking up the dried berries that lay about plentifully. Among them all there was no trace of a thought for the hawk that had just swooped. And why should there be? Had they not just fooled him perfectly, and were not their eyes as keen to do it again when the need should come?

I was thinking about it, wondering at this strange kind of fear that is merely watchful, with no trace of our terror or anxiety for the future in it, when twigs began to crackle and a big buck came bounding down the runway.

Near me he stopped and turned to listen, shaking his antlers indignantly, and stamping his fore foot hard at such an uproar in his quiet woods. He trotted past me, his great muscles working like well oiled machinery under his velvet coat; then, instead of keeping on to water, he leaped over a windfall—a magnificent exhibition of power, taken as gracefully as if he were but playing—and dashed away through the swamp, to kill the scent of his flying feet.

An hour or two later I saw him enter the lake quietly from another runway and swim across with deep, powerful strokes. On the farther shore he stopped a moment to shake himself and to listen to the far-away cry of the hounds. He had run as much as he wished, to stretch his big muscles, and was indisposed now to run farther and tire himself, when he could so easily get rid of the noisy pack. But there was no terror in the shake of his antlers, nor in the angry stamp of his fore foot, and no sense save that of conscious power and ability to take care of himself in the mighty bounds that lifted him like a bird over the windfalls into the shelter and silence of the big woods.

At times, I know, it happens differently, when a deer is fairly run down and killed by dogs or wolves; but though I have seen them dog-driven many times, and once when the great gray timber wolves were running their trail, I have never yet seen a deer lose his perfect confidence in himself, and his splendid sense of superiority over those that follow him. Once, in deep snow, I saved a deer's life just as the dogs were closing in on him; but up to the moment when he gave his last bound and laid his head down quietly on the crust to rest, I saw no evidence whatever of the wild terrors and frightful excitement that we have attributed to driven creatures.

The same is true of foxes, and even of rabbits. The weak and foolish die young, under the talon or paw of stronger creatures. The rest have escaped so often, played and run so systematically till every nerve and muscle is trained to its perfect work, that they seem to have no thought whatever that the last danger may have its triumph.

Watch the dogs yonder, driving a fox through the winter woods. Their feet, cut by briers and crust, leave red trails over the snow; their tails have all bloody stumps, where the ends have been whipped off in frantic wagging. You cannot call, you can scarcely club them from the trail. They seem half crazy, half hypnotized by the scent in their noses. Their wild cry, especially if you be near them, is almost painful in its intensity as they run blindly through the woods. And it makes no difference to them, apparently, whether they get their fox or not. If he is shot before them, they sniff the body, wondering for a moment; then they roll in the snow and go off to find another trail. If the fox runs all day, as usual, they follow till footsore and weary; then sleep awhile, and come limping home in the morning.

Now cut ahead of the dogs to the runway and watch for the fox. Here is the hunted creature. He comes loping along, light as a wind-blown feather, his brush floating out like a great plume behind him. He stops to listen to his heavy-footed pursuers, capers a bit in self-satisfaction, chases his tail if he is a young fox, makes a crisscross of tracks, trots to the brook and jumps from stone to stone; then he makes his way thoughtfully over dry places, which hold no scent, to the top of the ridge, where he can locate the danger perfectly, and curls himself up on a warm rock and takes a nap. When the cry comes too near he slips down on the other side of the ridge, where the breeze seems to blow him away to the next hill.

There are exceptions here too; exceptions that only prove the great rule of gladness in animal life, even when we would expect wild terrors. Of scores of foxes that have passed under my eyes, with a savage hunting cry behind them, I have never seen but one that did not give the impression of getting far more fun out of it than the dogs that were driving him. And that is why he so rarely takes to earth, where he could so easily and simply escape it all, if he chose. When the weather is fine he keeps to his legs all day; but when the going is heavy, or his tail gets wet in mushy snow, he runs awhile to stretch his muscles, then slips into a den and lies down in peace. Let dogs bark; the ground is frozen, and they cannot scratch him out.