ight-hawk go by on a lonely mission, a
beaver slide from a log into the water, and the delicate humming of
the pine needles was a drowsy music, through which broke by-and-bye the
strange crying of a loon from the water below. I was neither asleep nor
awake, but steeped in this wide awe of night, the sweet smell of earth
and running water in my nostrils. Once, too, in a slight breeze, the
scent of some wild animal's nest near by came past, and I found it good.
I lifted up a handful of loose earth and powdered leaves, and held it to
my nose--a good, brave smell--all in a sort of drowsing.

While I mused, Doltaire's face passed before me as it was in life, and
I heard him say again of the peasants, "These shall save the earth some
day, for they are of it, and live close to it, and are kin to it."

Suddenly there rushed before me that scene in the convent, when all
the devil in him broke loose upon the woman I loved. But, turning on my
homely bed, I looked up and saw the deep quiet of the skies, the stable
peace of the stars, and I was a son of the good Earth again, a sojourner
in the tents of Home. I did not doubt that Alixe was alive or that I
should find her. There was assurance in this benignant night. In that
thought, dreaming that her cheek lay close to mine, her arm around
my neck, I fell asleep. I waked to bear the squirrels stirring in the
trees, the whir of the partridge, and the first unvarying note of the
oriole. Turning on my dry, leafy bed, I looked down, and saw in the dark
haze of dawn the beavers at their house-building.

I was at the beginning of a deep gorge or valley, on one side of which
was a steep sloping hill of grass and trees, and on the other a huge
escarpment of mossed and jagged rocks. Then, farther up, the valley
seemed to end in a huge promontory. On this great wedge grim shapes
loomed in the mist, uncouth and shadowy and unnatural--a lonely,
mysterious Brocken, impossible to human tenantry. Yet as I watched the
mist slowly rise, there grew in me the feeling that there lay the end
of my quest. I came down to the brook, bathed my face and hands, ate my
frugal breakfast of bread, with berries picked from the hillside, and,
as the yellow light of the rising sun broke over the promontory, I saw
the Tall Calvary upon a knoll, strange comrade to the huge rocks and
monoliths--as it were vast playthings of the Mighty Men, the fabled
ancestors of the Indian races of the land.

I started up the valle