ich you are subject, the result is your
future; the flight of one of your rifle-balls cannot be calculated with
greater certainty."

"But how shall we know those laws?" said I.

"You contain them all, for you are the result of them; and they are
always the same,--not one code for your beginning, and another for your
continuance. Man is the complete embodiment of all the laws thus far
developed, and you have only to know yourself to know the history of
creation."

This I could not gainsay, and my mind, wearied, declined to ask further.
I returned to camp and went to sleep.

Several days passed without any remarkable progress in my knowledge of
this strange being, though I found myself growing more and more
sensitive to the presence of it each day; and at the same time the
incomprehensible sympathy with Nature, for I know not what else to call
it, seemed growing stronger and more startling in the effects it
produced on the landscape. The influence was no longer confined to
twilight, but made noon-day mystical; and I began to hear strange sounds
and words spoken by disembodied voices,--not like that of my daemon, but
unaccompanied by any feeling of personal presence connected therewith.
It seemed as if the vibrations shaped themselves into words, some of
them of singular significance. I heard my name called, and the strangest
laughs on the lake at night. My daemon seemed averse to answering any
questions on the topic of these illusions. The only reply was,--"You
would be wiser, not knowing too much."

Ere many days of this solitary life had passed, I found my whole
existence taken up by my fantasies. I determined to make my excursion to
the Blue Mountain, and, sending Steve down to the post-office, a
three-days' journey, I took the boat, with Carlo and my rifle, and
pushed off. The outlet of the Blue Mountain Lakes is like all the
Adirondack streams, dark and shut in by forest, which scarcely permits
landing anywhere. Now and then a log fallen into the water compels the
voyager to get out and lift his boat over; then a shallow rapid must be
dragged over; and when the stream is clear of obstruction, it is too
narrow for any mode of propulsion but poling or paddling.

I had worked several weary hours, and the sun had passed the meridian,
when I emerged from the forest into a wild, swampy flat,--"wild meadow,"
the guides call it,--through which the stream wound, and around which
was a growth of tall larches backed by p