Animal
desires and brute instincts grappled with intellectual convictions and
spiritual aspirations; flesh and blood with mind and spirit; skepticism
with trust; despair with hope.

The old forest had been the theater of many combats. In earth, air and
water, birds, animals and fishes had struggled with each other for
supremacy and existence. Beasts had fought with Indians and Indians with
white men; but no battle had been more significant or tragic than the
one which was taking place in the quiet cabin. There was no noise and no
bloodshed, but it was a struggle to the death. It was no new strife, but
one which has repeated itself in human hearts since they began to beat.
It cannot be avoided by plunging into the crowds of great cities, nor by
fleeing to the solitudes of forests, for we carry our battleground with
us. The inveterate foes encamp upon the fields, and when they are not
fighting they are recuperating their strength for struggles still to
come.

But although neither combatant in this warfare is ever wholly
annihilated, there is in every life a Waterloo. There comes a struggle
in which, if we are not victorious, we at least remain permanent master
of the field. This was the night of David's Waterloo. A true history of
that final conflict in the soul of this hermit would not have disgraced
the confessions of Saint Augustine!

He wrestled to keep his thoughts pure and his faith firm, until the
sweat stood in beads on his forehead. He felt that to yield so much as
the fraction of an inch of ground in his battle against doubt and sin
this night was to be lost! And still the conflict went against him.

It turned upon another of those trivial incidents of which there had
been a series in his life. His attention was arrested by a sound in the
woods which summoned his consciousness from the inner world of thought
and feeling to the great external world of action and endeavor. His
huntsman's ear detected its significance at once, and springing to the
corner of the room he seized his rifle, threw open the cabin door and
stood on the threshold. A full moon shone on the snow and in that white
and ghostly light his quick eye caught sight of a spectacle that made
his pulses leap. A fawn bounded out into the open field and headed for
his cabin, attracted by the firelight gleaming through the window and
door. Behind her and snapping almost at her heels, came a howling pack
of a half dozen wolves whose red, lolling tongue