Marjorie L. C. Pickthall

“ To have one more day of lazy freedom! One more day of the wood-running in which his soul delighted! One more day with no will but his own to follow, with no cares, no work, no restraint! One more day of the deep silent undergrowth and the stately uplands, of the clear chill skies and the keen cold wind! One more day of the wilderness that was dearer and fairer to him than the farm and the fruitful fields! To wander for one more day, with no master but his own pleasure, no one calling to sterner labour ”

“ It was the third week of the stormy season, and Loch was soaked in fever; the ju-ju war had tired him in body and soul. He looked at the sky, and as he looked the moon showed like a plunging white disk amid driving steam; he thought how often he had seen it so, above the northern lakes of his boyhood, when the first snow came down from the north and the wild-geese had flown south. But Huron’s cold surf was far from the station at Gondoko. And the glimmer of light shone only on the nameless uplands, the drenched scrub of the north ”

“ The little owls, the great wood-peckers, the tiny songsters of the reeds and bushes, he looked upon as his brethren. He felt no return of the desolate ache at his heart he had experienced on the night of Peter's struggle with the lynx. His was that joyous fellowship with nature that knows no weariness, and he troubled himself as little as possible about Stephanie. Not yet had his awakening come.
Straight northwest they went, through all the brief splendour of the northern summer; and the weeks passed in golden dreams of freedom and of beauty. ”

“ That sea was not trackless to Garry. His young eyes, weather-wrinkled at the lids like an old man’s, picked up this mark and that; the wrinkle in the vast white plain that was a river-bed, and the low hills like a rampart, the wedge of spruce that drove to meet them like the vanguard of an army fronting the implacable north. He knew it, was at home here, soul and body. But now he felt a sudden pang of desolation at the thought of the trodden snow about the shack; that ahead was untouched, unmarked. The north receives no impress from man but a few foot-prints in the ever-changing, eternal snow. ”

“ The thought of her in illness or trouble became as a spur to goad him on, and Peter marvelled at the pace. Dick was still Dick, and his penitence was always deep in proportion to its tardiness.
So the year went on. The wild asters showed their buds, and presently opened into golden-hearted stars, filling the forest glades with a mist of delicate purple. Farther and farther south they went, while the wild sunflowers bloomed and faded, and the fair green growth became lifeless and sere with the sinking of the sap. And every day's journey brought Dick so many miles nearer to Stephanie. ”

“ Then the great Buck, who was the South-west Wind, rose and came round the fire, and the stars in his antlers were like fish in a net. “You are swift, Brother,” he said to the Bear, “but you are not so swift as I. I will take Mit-kah home.” His voice was soft as running water when the rivers break free, and Mit-kah looked into his eyes, and the flame of Love that she carried in her hands was reflected in his eyes like two more stars.
“Go with the Wind, little Mit-kah,” said the Bear, drowsily. “He is swifter than I, but he does not love you so well. Do not forget me, little Mit-kah.” ”

“ It recalled to his memory all those days of cold and hardship, all the roughness, the poverty, the privation of their lives in the dreaded winter-time. But it recalled also his past freedom, his wood-running, his neglected skill in shot and snare. The very note of the howl suggested the idea of untiring, relentless speed; and he suddenly remembered all the old delight of those long snow-shoe runs he had been wont to take whenever it so pleased him—over the crackling snow, beneath the black pine branches and the dazzling winter stars. ”

“ He flung two handfuls of sand in the air, and began to dance on the starved grass. He was small and slight, and he moved, in his wild fit, like an elf of the woods, a leaf in the wind. All the steps he ever knew he wove into a medley, beautiful because of the speed and grace of his little flinging body. Then, dancing fast and faster, he lost them, and there was nothing but young life leaping in the air, as the blood in the heart, the wave on the sea. “This is how the little faun dances,” he cried, shrilly. And in a moment Lucia had swept up her trailing skirts, and was dancing too. ”

“ The weary weeks of cold passed slowly. At the end of March the change came, and the prairies suddenly leapt into life. The skies were softer, and full of great white clouds which sailed grandly before the wind. The long, low earthen billows were covered with grass and all the radiant flowers of spring. Every depression of the soil was a slough full of green water, covered with battalions of mallards and other wild-fowl. The poplars put forth shiny leaves which glittered restlessly in the sunshine, and the meadow-larks filled the whole world with music.
Then Dick spoke to Peter Many-Names. ”

“ M’Cabe has shown him to me—just a glimpse—stout, bearded, with pale eyes, running round and round the island. M’Cabe thinks he must have chased him; he’d come out of his blank fits to fear the man would fall in and get the coat wet. ‘And how to dry it then,’ said M’Cabe, ‘I didn’t see.’ The other man never left off the coat; he clung to those mangy old fox-skins literally as you’d cling to life. You see him always, furred to his pale eyes, running clumsily among a white flutter of birds, and M’Cabe pursuing him, a man in a dream—a dream of warmth. ”

“ And the log-cabin and its clearing were picturesque enough to the eye of an artist, though speaking of all lack of skill and thrift and industry to the eye of a farmer. Even the garden in front of the cabin was being slowly and surely swallowed up into the wilderness again. The sunflowers flourished and bloomed and seeded, forming food-stores for multitudes of birds; and the squirrels would flicker down the tree-trunks and feast upon the seeds which the birds dropped, spitting the hard shells deftly to right and left through their whiskers. ”

“ It was all there in a bag—raw gold, pure gold, the food of joy. At the weight of it in his rough palm, Desmond chattered and chuckled with delight. He had sat there talking and laughing for hours, while the glow of the stove grew darker and the cold crept in. Little blots of snow from the snow-shoes, first melting, had turned again to dark ice on the floor; the red light clung to them until each little circle seemed to be one of blood. Outside the world trembled under the shafts of the bitter stars; but Desmond, with the very fuel of life in his hand, was warm. ”

“ Roger's a good fellow, and I should be a selfish brute if I let my moping ways sadden her, God bless her!" Even this little thought showed how great a change had taken place in Dick's character.
His thoughts turned to the limitless prairies of richest soil, to the untouched forests, to the wide beauty of lake and river, to all those fair pictures of the wilderness graven upon his heart. He thought of the clear skies, of the stinging cold, of the splendour of summer, of the fulfilment of the fall. ”