lo THE HOME OF A NATURALIST. 



by the way. In short, he preferred a natural happy 

 mode of life to an artificial one, attended by earthly 

 honour, dogged by earthly care ; and so he remained in 

 the little paradise he had created for himself. 



When a young man, he was a keen sportsman ; but 

 he admitted that even when his love of sport was very 

 great, he always had pangs of conscience after the game 

 was bagged ; and when the hunter's zeal was strongest, 

 he never took the life of bird or beast without a good 

 reason for so doing. In later days, he never used a 

 gun. More than once, he had an old fowling-piece re- 

 paired, or he bought a new one, and hinted to his boys 

 that he meant to show them he could shoot still ; but 

 he never fired a shot. The girl, who was always seek- 

 ing from him the why and the wherefore for things 

 seen and unseen, wondered, when she heard him tell 

 of his youthful exploits with the gun, why he had lost 

 that love of sport. The wondering at last shaped itself 

 into a question ; and she never forgot the look of 

 anguish which swiftly crossed his face as, turning from 

 her, he said : " You'll learn the reason when you are 

 older, my bairn." She had often heard the sorrowful 

 tale of a brother lost when she was little more than a 

 baby. He had died through the carelessness of a com- 

 panion, who had placed a loaded gun across the thwarts 

 of a boat, and some one stepping on the lock, sent the 

 charge through the poor youth's head — a most pro- 

 mising young man, scarcely past his majority. He 

 had all his father's passionate love of natural science, 

 and something more than his father's power of turning 



