My master told me a few days later that the count decreed Madame de Ferrier must go back to France.  He intended to go with her and push her claim; and his daughter and his daughter’s governess would bear them company.  Doctor Chantry and I contemplated each other, glaring in mutual solemnity.  His eyes were red and watery, and the nose sharpened its cone.

“When are they going?” I inquired.

“As soon as arrangements for comfortable sailing can be made.  I wish I were going back to England.  I shall have to save twenty-five years before I can go, but the fund is started.”

If I saved a hundred and twenty-five years I could not go anywhere; for I had nothing to save.  The worthlessness of civilization rushed over me.  When I was an Indian the boundless world was mine.  I could build a shelter, and take food and clothes by my strength and skill.  My boat or my strong legs carried me to all boundaries.

I did not know what ailed me, but chased by these thoughts to the lake, I determined not to go back again to De Chaumont’s house.  I was sick, and my mother woods opened her arms.  As if to show me what I had thrown away to haunt the cages of men, one of those strange sights which is sometimes seen in that region appeared upon the mountain.  No one can tell who lights the torch.  A thread of fire ran up like an opening seam, broadened, and threw out pink ravelings.  The flame wavered, paled by daylight, but shielding itself with strong smoke, and leaped from ledge to ledge.  I saw mighty pines, standing one moment green, and the next, columns of fire.  So the mass diverged, or ran together until a mountain of fire stood against the sky, and stretched its reflection, a glowing furnace, across the water.

Flecks of ash sifted on me in the boat.  I felt myself a part of it, as I felt myself a part of the many sunsets which had burned out on that lake.  Before night I penetrated to the heart of an island so densely overgrown, even in spring when trees had no curtains, that you were lost as in a thousand mile forest.  I camped there in a dry ravine, with hemlock boughs under and over me, and next day rolled broken logs, and cut poles and evergreens with my knife, to make a lodge.

It was boyish, unmannerly conduct; but the world had broken, to chaos around me; and I set up the rough refuge with skill.  Some books, my fish line and knife, were always in the boat with me, as well as a box of tinder.  I could go to the shore, get a breakfast out of the water, and cook it myself.  Yet all that day I kept my fast, having no appetite.

Perhaps in the bottom of my heart I expected somebody to be sent after me, bearing large inducements to return.  We never can believe we are not valuable to our fellows.  Pierre or Jean, or some other servants in the house, might perforce nose me out.  I resolved to hide if such an envoy approached and to have speech with nobody.  We are more or less ashamed of our secret wounds, and I was not going to have Pierre or Jean report that I sat sulking in the woods on an island.