He came and went, solitary and self-contained, proud, cold, and revengeful.
But this indifference was caused by sensitiveness and the feeling that he had been slighted.

The dark lines relaxed, and his face wore a kindly glow whenever his teacher went to his desk--if the split-log bench for a book-rest might be so called.

"I would give my life for Gretchen and you," he said one day to Mr.Mann; and added: "I would save them all for you." There was a cluster of gigantic trees close by the school-house, nearly two hundred feet high.

The trees, which were fir, had only dry stumps of limbs for a distance of nearly one hundred feet from the ground.

At the top, or near the top, the green leaves or needles and dead boughs had matted together and formed a kind of shelf or eyrie, and on this a pair of fishing eagles had made their nest.
The nest had been there many years, and the eagles had come back to it during the breeding season and reared their young.
For a time after the opening of the school none of the pupils seemed to give any special attention to this high nest.