Understanding himself thus well, his purpose became clearer.  Like the ant or the beaver that has seen its fabric destroyed, he must set patiently to work to reconstruct it.  He suspected a poor-spirited element in this sort of courage; but his instinct forced him within his limitations.  By dint of keeping there and toiling there he felt sure of his ability to get back to the top of the tower in such a way that no one would think he lacked the right to be on it.

But he himself would know it.  He shrank from that fact with the repugnance of an honest nature for what is not straightforward; but the matter was past helping.  He should be obliged to play the impostor everywhere and with every one.  He would mingle with men, shake their hands, share their friendships, eat their bread, and accept their favors—­and deceive them under their very noses.  Life would become one long trick, one daily feat of skill.  Any possible success he could win would lack stability, would lack reality, because there would be neither truth nor fact behind it.

From the argument that he was innocent he got little comfort.  He had forfeited his right to make use of that fact any longer.  Had he stayed where he was he could have shouted it out till they gagged him in the death-chair.  Now he must be dumb on the subject forevermore.  In his disappearance there was an acceptation of guilt which he must remain powerless to explain away.

Many minutes of dull pain passed in dwelling on that point.  He could work neither back from it nor forward.  His mind could only dwell on it with an aching admission of its justice, while he searched the sky for the dawn.

In spite of the crowing of the cock he saw no sign of it—­unless it was that the mountains on the New York shore detached themselves more distinctly from the sky of which they had seemed to form a part.  On the Vermont side there was nothing but a heaped-up darkness, night piled on night, till the eye reached the upper heavens and the stars.

He paddled on, steadily, rhythmically, having no sense of hunger or fatigue, while he groped for the clew that was to guide him when he stepped on land.  He felt the need of a moral programme, of some pillar of cloud and fire that would show him a way he should be justified in taking.  He expressed it to himself by a kind of aspiration which he kept repeating, sometimes half aloud: 

“O Lord, O Holy One!  I want to be a man!”

Suddenly he struck the water with so violent a dash that the canoe swerved and headed landward.

“By God!” he muttered, under his breath, “I’ve got it....  It isn’t my fault....  It’s theirs....  They’ve put me in this fix....  They’ve brought this dodging, and shifting, and squirming upon me....  The subterfuge isn’t mine; it’s theirs....  They’ve taken the responsibility from me....  When they strip me of rights they strip me of duties....  They’ve forced me where right and wrong don’t exist for me any more....  They’ve pitched me out of their Organized Society, and I’ve had to go....  Now I’m free ... and I shall profit by my freedom.”