Mukoki spoke softly, as though to himself.

"Last winter the snow came, and now it is water. Two moons past, Wolf,
heem tame. Now wild. The Great Spirit say that is right, I guess so."

"He means that it is nature," said Wabi.

For an hour after the others had wrapped themselves in their blankets
Rod sat alone beside the fire, listening, and thinking. And after that
he went to the edge of the plateau, and watched the great spring moon
as it floated slowly over the vast, still wilderness. How wonderful
these solitudes were, how little the teeming millions of civilization
knew about them! Somehow, in those moments, as he watched the
shivering Northern Lights playing far beyond the farthest footstep of
man, there came to Roderick Drew the thought that God must be nearer
to earth here than anywhere else in the world. For the first time his
soul was filled with something that was almost love for the red man's
Great Spirit. And why not? For was not that Great Spirit his own God?
Sad, lonely, silent, mysterious, a whole world lay before him, a world
that was the Indian Bible, that contained for the red man of the North
the teachings and the voice of the Creator of all things. A wind had
risen and was whispering over the plains; he heard the hushed voices
of the quivering poplar boughs, and there came from far below him the
soft, chuckling, mating hoot of an owl. Gradually his eyes closed,
and he leaned more heavily upon the rock against which he had seated
himself. After that he dreamed of what he had looked upon, while
the fire at the camp died away, and Mukoki and Wabigoon slumbered,
oblivious of his absence.