--so resilient and adaptable a thing is the human
mind--see himself engaged upon material enterprises, years passing,
his boy growing up, life assuming a fullness, a proportion, an orderly
progression that two hours earlier would have seemed to him only a
futile dream.

He wondered if this would endure. He looked down at his wife leaning
upon his knee, her face thoughtful and content. He looked out over the
valley once more, at those high, sentinel peaks thrusting up their
white cones, one behind the other. He heard the river. He saw the
foxglove swaying in the wind, the red flare of the poppies at his
door. He smelled the fragrance of wild honeysuckle, the sharp, sweet
smells blown out of the forest that drowsed in the summer heat.

It was all good. He rested in that pleasant security like a man who
has fought his way through desperate perils to some haven of safety
and sits down there to rest in peace. He did not know what the future
held for him. He had no apprehension of the future. He was not even
curious. He had firm hold of the present, and that was enough. He
wondered a little that he should suddenly feel so strong a conviction
that life was good. But he had that feeling at last. The road opened
before him clear and straight. If there were crooks in it, pitfalls by
the way, perils to be faced, pains to be suffered, he was very sure in
that hour that somehow he would find courage to meet them open-eyed
and unafraid.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's The Hidden Places, by Bertrand W. Sinclair

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