A few dips of the paddle took him out of sight and sound of the hotel; but the dull, indignant passion remained in his heart, finding outward vent in the violence with which he sent the canoe bounding northward beneath the starlight.  For the moment it was a blind, objectless passion, directed against nothing and no one in particular.  He was not skilled in the analysis of feeling, or in tracing effect to cause.  For an hour or two his wrath was the rage of the infuriated animal roaring out its pain, regardless of the hand that has inflicted it.  Other rowing-parties came within hearing distance, but he paid them no attention; lake steamers hove in sight, but he had learned how to avoid them; little towns, dotted at intervals of a few miles apart, lit up the banks with the lights of homes, but their shining domesticity seemed to mock him.  The birth of a new creature was a painful process; and yet, through all his confused sensations and obscure elemental suffering, he kept the conviction that a new creature was somehow claiming its right to live.

Peace of mind came to him gradually, as the little towns put out their lights, and the lake steamers laid up in tiny ports, and the rowing-parties went home to bed.  In the smooth, dark level of the lake and in the stars there was a soothing quality to which he responded before he was aware of doing so.  The spacious solitude of the summer night brought with it a large calmness of outlook, in which his spirit took a measure of comfort.  There was a certain bodily pleasure, too, in the regular monotony of paddling, while his mental faculties were kept alert by the necessity of finding points by which to steer, and fixing his attention upon them.  So, by degrees, his limited reasoning powers found themselves at work, fumbling, with the helplessness of a man whose strong points are physical activity and concentration of purpose, for some light on the wild course on which he was embarked.

Perhaps his first reflection that had the nature of a conclusion or a deduction was on the subject of “old Wayne.”  Up to the present he had regarded him with special ill will, owing to the fact that Wayne, while inclining to a belief of his innocence, had nevertheless lent himself to the full working of the law.  It came to Ford now in the light of a discovery that, after all, it was not Wayne’s fault.  Wayne was in the grip of forces that deprived him to a large extent of the power of voluntary action.  He could scarcely be blamed if he fulfilled the duties he was appointed to perform The real responsibility was elsewhere.  With whom did it lie?  For a primitive mind like Ford’s the question was not an easy one to answer.