on the subject of my attraction to the
Blue Mountain. My daemon appeared remote and made no responses. It seemed
as if, knowing my resolution to stay alone there, it had resolved to be
silent until I was without any cause for interruption of our colloquies.
Save the consciousness of its remote attendance, I felt no recurrence of
my past experience, until, having seen my friends on the road to
civilization again, I left Martin's with Steve and Carlo for my quarters
on the Raquette. We hurried back up the river as fast as four strong
arms could propel our light boat, and resting, the second night, at
Wilbur's, on Raquette Lake, I the next morning selected a site for a
camp, where we built a neat little bark-house, proof against all
discomforts of an elemental character, and that night I rested under my
own roof, squatter though I was. The daemon seemed in no haste to renew
our former intimate intercourse,--for what reason I could not divine;
but a few days after my settling, days spent in exploring and planning,
it resumed suddenly its functions. It came to me out on the lake, where
I had paddled to enjoy the starlight in the delicious evening, when the
sky was filled with luminous vapor, through which the stars struggled
dimly, and in which the landscape was almost as clearly visible as by
moonlight.

"Well!" said I, familiarly, as I felt it take its place by my side, "you
have come back."

"_Come back!_" it replied; "will you never get beyond your miserable
ideas of space, and learn that there is no separation but that of
feeling, no nearness but that of sympathy? If you had cared enough for
us, we should have been with you constantly."

I was anxious to get to the subject of present interest, and did not
stop to discuss a point which, in one, and the highest sense, I
admitted.

"What," I asked, "was that impulse which urged me to go to the Blue
Mountain? Shall I find there anything supernatural?"

"_Anything supernatural?_ What is there above Nature, or outside of it?"

"But nothing is without cause; and for an emotion so strong as I
experienced, on the sight of those mountains, there must have been one."

"Very likely! if you go after it, you will find it. You probably expect
to find some beautiful enchantress keeping her court on the
mountain-top, and a suite of fairies."

I started, for, absurd as it may seem, that very idea, half-formed,
undeveloped from very shame at my superstition, had rested in my mind