of dismay and terror unsurpassed. The rifle fell to his feet. He stood
motionless an instant, listening as it were with his whole body, then
staggered back against the nearest tree for support, disorganized
hopelessly in mind and spirit. To him, in that moment, it seemed the
most shattering and dislocating experience he had ever known, so that
his heart emptied itself of all feeling whatsoever as by a sudden
draught.

"Oh! oh! This fiery height! Oh, my feet of fire! My burning feet of
fire ...!" ran in far, beseeching accents of indescribable appeal this
voice of anguish down the sky. Once it called--then silence through all
the listening wilderness of trees.

And Simpson, scarcely knowing what he did, presently found himself
running wildly to and fro, searching, calling, tripping over roots and
boulders, and flinging himself in a frenzy of undirected pursuit after
the Caller. Behind the screen of memory and emotion with which
experience veils events, he plunged, distracted and half-deranged,
picking up false lights like a ship at sea, terror in his eyes and
heart and soul. For the Panic of the Wilderness had called to him in
that far voice--the Power of untamed Distance--the Enticement of the
Desolation that destroys. He knew in that moment all the pains of
someone hopelessly and irretrievably lost, suffering the lust and
travail of a soul in the final Loneliness. A vision of Défago, eternally
hunted, driven and pursued across the skiey vastness of those ancient
forests fled like a flame across the dark ruin of his thoughts ...

It seemed ages before he could find anything in the chaos of his
disorganized sensations to which he could anchor himself steady for a
moment, and think ...