It struck him all at once, as he heard Father Roland crunching through
the snow, that he was experiencing an entirely new phase of life--a life
he had read about at times and dreamed of at other times, but which he
had never come physically in contact with. The yapping of the foxes, the
crying of the dogs, those lanterns hurrying down the track, the
blackness of the night, and the strong perfume of balsam in the cold
air--an odour that he breathed deep into his lungs like the fumes of an
exhilarating drink--quickened sharply a pulse that a few hours before he
thought was almost lifeless. He had no time to ask himself whether he
was enjoying these new sensations; he felt only the thrill of them as
Thoreau and the Indian came up out of the night with their lanterns. In
Thoreau himself, as he stood a moment later in the glow of the lanterns,
was embodied the living, breathing spirit of this new world into which
David's leap out of the baggage car had plunged him. He was picturesquely
of the wild; his face was darkly bearded; his ivory-white teeth shining
as he smiled a welcome; his tricoloured, Hudson's Bay coat of wool,
with its frivolous red fringes, thrown open at the throat; the bushy
tail of his fisher-skin cap hanging over a shoulder--and with these
things his voice rattling forth, in French and half Indian, his joy
that Father Roland was not dead but had arrived at last. Behind him
stood the Indian--his face without expression, dark, shrouded--a bronze
sphinx of mystery. But his eyes shone as the Little Missioner greeted
him--shone so darkly and so full of fire that for a moment David was
fascinated by them. Then David was introduced.

"I am happy to meet you, m'sieu," said the Frenchman. His race was
softly polite, even in the forests, and Thoreau's voice, now mildly
subdued, came strangely from the bearded wildness of his face. The grip
of his hand was like Father Roland's--something David had never felt
among his friends back in the city. He winced in the darkness, and for a