IV


Dawn found me lying wide awake with my head on a saddle. I slipped out
into the dewy half light.

That was the first time I ever thought about the mountains. They seemed
to be newly created, standing up with streamers of mist torn and
floating across their breasts. The winding cliff-bound lake was like a
gorge of smoke. I felt as if I had reared upon my hind feet, lifting my
face from the ground to discover there was a God. Some of the prayers
our priest had industriously beaten into my head, began to repeat
themselves. In a twinkling I was a child, lonely in the universe,
separated from my dim old life, instinct with growth, yet ignorant of my
own needs.

What Madame de Ferrier and Madame Tank had said influenced me less than
the intense life of my roused activities.

It was mid forenoon by the sun when I reached our lodges, and sat down
fagged outside my father's door, to think longer before I entered.
Hunger was the principal sensation, though we had eaten in the cabin the
night before, and the Indian life inures a man to fasting when he cannot
come by food. I heard Skenedonk talking to my father and mother in our
cabin. The village was empty; children and women, hunters and fishermen
having scattered to woods and waters.