Ezram climbed out and made fast, and so busy was he with his work that he did not glance at Ben, otherwise he might have beheld a phenomenon that would have been of keen interest to the alienist, Forest.  His young charge had suddenly grown quite pale.  Ben himself was neither aware of this nor of the fact that his heart was hammering wildly in his breast and his blood racing, like wild rivers, through his veins:  he was only thrilled and held by a sense of vast, impending developments.  Every nerve tingled and thrilled, and why he did not know.

Ezram began to unload; but now, his blue eyes shining, he began a covert watch of his young companion.  He saw the man from prison suddenly catch his breath in inexpressible awe and his eye kindle with a light of unknown source.  A great question was shaping itself in Ben’s mind, but as yet he could not find the answer.

All at once Ben knew this place.  Here was nothing strange or new:  it was all as he had known it would be in his inmost heart.  All of it spoke to him with familiar voice, seemingly to welcome him as a son is welcomed after long absence.  There was nothing here that had not been known and beloved of old.  Vivid memories, bright as lightning, swept through him.

He had always known this wholesome, sweet breath that swept into his face.  It was merely that of the outdoors, the open places that were his own haunts.  It was wholly fitting and true that the silence should lie over the dark spruce that ringed about him, a silence that, in its infinite harmony with some queer mood of silence in his own heart, was more moving than any voice.  All was as he had secretly known:  the hushed tree aisles, the gray radiance—­soft as a hand upon the brow—­of the afterglow; the all-pervading health and peace of the wilderness.  Except for an old and trusted companion, he was alone with it all, and that too was as it should be.  Just he and the forest, his companion and the gliding river.

He didn’t try to understand, at first, the joy and the wonder that thrilled him, nor could he speak aloud the thoughts that came to him.  Ravished and mystified, he walked softly to the dark, still edge of the forest, penetrated it a distance, then sat down to wait.

For the first time in years, it seemed to him, he was at peace.  A strange sense of self-realization—­lost to him in his years of exile—­climbed like fire through him; and with it the return of a lost virility, a supreme vigor tingling each little nerve; a sense of strength and power that was almost blinding.

He sat still.  He saw the twilight descending, ever heavier, over the forest.  The sharp edges of the individual trees faded and blended, the trunks blurred.  He turned one fleeting glance of infinite, inexpressible gratitude toward Ezram—­the man who had brought him here and who now was busily engaged in unpacking the canoe and making camp—­then looked back to his forests.  The wind brought the wood smells,—­spruce and moldering earth and a thousand more no man could name.  The great, watchful, brooding spirit of the forest went in to him.