"So powerful peart!" he muttered with glistening eyes, as he thought
of her.

The grant was gone, to be sure; but he did not take it. They
accused him--and falsely!

It was something to be free and abroad in the woods. He heard the
wind singing in the pines. Their fine, penetrating aroma pervaded
the air, and the rusty needles, covering the ground, muffled his
tread. Once he paused--was that the bleat of a fawn, away down on
the mountain's slope? He heard no more, and he walked on, looking
about with his old alert interest. He was refreshed, invigorated,
somehow consoled, as he went. O wise mother! he wondered if she
foresaw this when she sent him into the woods.

He had not before noted how the season was advancing. Here and
there, in the midst of the dark green foliage, leaves shone so
vividly yellow that it seemed as if upon them some fascinated
sunbeam had expended all its glamours. In a dusky recess he saw the
crimson sumach flaring. And the distant blue mountains, and the
furthest reaches of the azure sky, and the sombre depths of the
wooded valley, and the sheeny splendors of the afternoon sun, and
every incident of crag or chasm--all appeared through a soft purple
haze that possessed the air, and added an ideal embellishment to the
scene. Down the ravine the "lick" shone with the lustre of a silver
lakelet. He saw the old oak-tree hard by, with the historic
scaffold among its thinning leaves, and further along the slope were
visible vague bobbing figures, which he recognized as the "Griggs
gang," seeking upon the mountain side the gold which he had
discovered.