ke within him. Then he
whispered, fervently, to his familiar wilds. "And I have come home."

VII

Everything was as it should be, as he and Ezram made the camp. He
himself cut the boughs for their beds, laid them with his remembered
skill, spread the blankets, and kept the fire blazing while Ezram
cooked; afterwards he knew the indescribable peace of a pipe smoke
beside the glowing coals. He saw the moon come up at last, translating
the spruce forest into a fairy land.

Of course he had remembered the moon. How many times had he watched for
its argent gleam on the sky line, the vivid, detailed silhouette of the
spruce against it; and then its slow-spreading glory through the still,
dark forests! The spires of the trees grew ensilvered, as always;
immense nebulous patches lay between the trunks, shadows stole
mysteriously, phantoms met, lingered, and vanished.

This was his own North! The stir and vigor in the very air told him
that. This was the land he had dreamed of, under the moon; the primeval
forests that had tried him, tested him, staked their cruel might against
him, but yet had blessed him with their infinite beneficence and
hospitality. It was ever somber, yet its dusky beauty stirred him more
than any richness he had seen in bright cities. He knew its every mood:
ecstasy in spring; gentleness in summer; brooding melancholy in the gray
days of fall; remorseless, savage, but unspeakably beautiful in the
winter. He felt his old pity for the spring flowers, blossoming so
hopefully in this gentle season. How soon they would be covered with
many feet of snow!

"It's all come clear again," he told Ezram. And the two men talked over,
quietly and happily, old days at Thunder Lake. He remembered now that
Ezram had always been the most intimate friend of his own family: a spry
old godfather to himself and young sister, a boon companion to his once
successful rival, Ben's father. Ben did not wonder, now, at his own
perplexity when Forest had spoken of "Wolf" Darby. That was his own name
known throughout hundreds of square miles of forest and in dozens of
little river hamlets in an Eastern province. Partly the name was in
token of his skill as a woodsman and frontiersman, partly in recognition
of certain traits that his fellow woodsmen had seen and wondered at in
him. It was not an empty nickname, in his case. It was simply that the
name suited him.

"The boys had reason a-plenty for callin' you that," Ezram