As the years went on trouble loneliness and heartache made him more gentle and sympathetic. He became as it were the patron saint of the animals. One thing he could not endure man's cruelty to creatures that run or creep or crawl. One day he found a wounded squirrel creeping painfully toward its tree. An Indian's arrow had pierced its leg and broken it and the maimed paw refused to hold the nut. A hundred times the squirrel foreseeing the fall of frost and snow started to carry the nut up the side of the tree and as many times it failed, and the nut dropped back. Forgetting all else, the squirrel's friend went to a hickory tree and gathering there a bag of nuts he climbed up into the tree and emptied the full store into the nest hidden in the darkness.