what you will, fancy or
delirium. My head was so light that it appeared to spin like a star,
and my feet were so heavy that I dragged the whole earth after me. My
Indians seldom spoke. I never let them drop behind me, for I did not
trust their treacherous natures. But in the end, as it would seem, they
also had but one thought, and that to reach Fort Ungava; for there was
no food left, none at all. We saw no tribes of Indians and no Esquimaux,
for we had not passed in their line of travel or settlement.

"At last I used to dream that birds were singing near me,--a soft,
delicate whirlwind of sound; and then bells all like muffled silver rang
through the aching, sweet air. Bits of prayer and poetry I learned when
a boy flashed through my mind; equations in algebra; the tingling scream
of a great buzz-saw; the breath of a racer as he nears the post under
the crying whip; my own voice dropping loud profanity, heard as a lad
from a blind ferryman; the boom! boom! of a mass of logs as they struck
a house on a flooding river and carried it away....

"One day we reached the end. It was near evening, and we came to the
top of a wooded knoll. My eyes were dancing in my head with fatigue
and weakness, but I could see below us, on the edge of the great bay, a
large hut, Esquimau lodges and Indian tepees near it. It was the Fort,
my cheerless prison-house."

He paused. The dog had been watching him with its flaming eyes; now it
gave a low growl, as though it understood, and pitied. In the interval
of silence the storm without broke. The trees began to quake and cry,
the light snow to beat upon the parchment windows, and the chimney to
splutter and moan. Presently, out on the bay they could hear the young
ice break and come scraping up the shore. Fawdor listened a while, and
then went on, waving his hand to the door as he began: "Think! this,
and like that always: the ungodly strife of nature, and my sick,
disconsolate life."

"Ever since?" asked Pierre. "All the time."

"Why did you not go back?"

"I was to wait for orders, and they never came."

"You were a free man, not a slave."

"The human heart has pride. At first, as when I left the governor at
Lachine, I said, 'I will never speak, I will never ask nor bend the
knee. He has the power to oppress; I can obey without whining, as fine a
man as he.'"

"Did you not hate?"

"At first, as only a banished man can hate. I knew that if all had gone
well I should be a man hi