It seemed to him that in some mysterious way he was beginning his life
all over again,--that life which his reason, with cold, inexorable
logic, had classified as a hopeless ruin. He could not see wherein the
ruin was lessened by embarking upon this lone adventure into the
outlying places. Nevertheless, something about it had given a fillip
to his spirits. He felt that he would better not inquire too closely
into this; that too keen self-analysis was the evil from which he had
suffered and which he should avoid. But he said to himself that if he
could get pleasure out of so simple a thing as a canoe trip in a
lonely region, there was hope for him yet. And in the same breath he
wondered how long he could be sustained by that illusion.

He had a blue-print of the area covering the Big Bend. That timber
limit which he had lightly purchased long ago, and which
unaccountably went begging a purchaser, lay south and a bit west from
where he set up his camp. He satisfied himself of that by the
blue-print and the staking description. The northeast corner stake
should stand not a great way back from the river bank.

He had to find a certain particularly described cedar tree, thence
make his way south to a low cliff, at one extreme of which he should
find a rock cairn with a squared post in its center. From that he
could run his boundary lines with a pocket compass, until he located
the three remaining corners.

Hollister found cedars enough, but none that pointed the way to a low
cliff and a rock cairn. He ranged here and there, and at last went up
the hillside which rose here so steeply as to be stiff climbing. It
bore here and there a massive tree, rough-barked pillars rising to a
branchy head two hundred feet in the air. But for the most part the