mysterious and hostile, in the growing darkness. Even the sky, from which
it seemed impossible for the daylight ever to depart, now had an angry red
glare in it.

He took a step or two toward the forest, and paused again, still staring
upward. Where was he going? Where _could_ he go? The question presented
itself with an odd pertinence that drew his set, beardless lips into a
kind of smile. When he had first made his rush outward the one thing that
seemed to him essential was to be free; but now he was forced to ask
himself: For what purpose? Of what use was it to be as free as wind if he
was to be as homeless? It was not merely that he was homeless for the
moment; that was nothing; the overwhelming reflection was that he, Norrie
Ford, could never have a home at all--that there was scarcely a spot
within the borders of civilized mankind where the law would not hunt him
out.

This view of his situation was so apparent and yet so new that it held him
stock-still, gazing into space. He was free--but free only to crawl back
into the jungle and lie down in it, like a wild beast.

"But I'm not a wild beast," he protested, inwardly. "I'm a man--with
human rights. By God, I'll never let them go!"

He wheeled round again, toward the lower lands and the lake. The lights
glowed more brightly as the darkness deepened, each lamp shining from some
little nest, where men and women were busied with the small tasks and
interests that made life. This was liberty! This was what he had a claim
upon! All his instincts were civilized, domestic. He would not go back to
the forest, to herd with wild nature, when he had a right to lie down
among his kind. He had slept in the open hundreds of times; but it had