but, once done, it afforded him relief and a singular realization that
out here it did not matter much. In a crowd of men all looking at him
and judging him by their standards he had been made to suffer. Here,
if he were judged at all, it would be by what he could do, how he
sustained himself and helped others.

He walked far across the valley toward the low bluffs, but they did
not seem to get any closer. And, finally, he stopped beside a stone
and looked around at the strange horizon and up at the heavens. He
did not feel utterly aloof from them, nor alone in a waste, nor a
useless atom amid incomprehensible forces. Something like a loosened
mantle fell from about him, dropping down at his feet; and all at once
he was conscious of freedom. He did not understand in the least why
abasement left him, but it was so. He had come a long way, in
bitterness, in despair, believing himself to be what men had called
him. The desert and the stars and the wind, the silence of the night,
the loneliness of this vast country where there was room for a thousand
cities--these somehow vaguely, yet surely, bade him lift his head.
They withheld their secret, but they made a promise. The thing which
he had been feeling every day and every night was a strange enveloping
comfort. And it was at this moment that Shefford, divining whence his
help was to come, embraced all that wild and speaking nature around
and above him and surrendered himself utterly.

"I am young. I am free. I have my life to live," he said. "I'll be
a man. I'll take what comes. Let me learn here!"

When he had spoken out, settled once and for ever his attitude toward
his future, he seemed to be born again, wonderfully alive to the
influences around him, ready to trust what yet remained a mystery.