nd
the Stikine rivers, and a little later Kio turned back on his homeward
journey, and David and Baree were alone. This aloneness fell upon them
like a thing that had a pulse and was alive. They crossed the Divide and
were in a great sunlit country of amazing beauty and grandeur, with wide
valleys between the mountains. It was July. From up and down the valley,
from the breaks between the peaks and from the little gullies cleft in
shale and rock that crept up to the snow lines, came a soft and droning
murmur. It was the music of running water. That music was always in the
air, for the rivers, the creeks, and the tiny streams, gushing down from
the snow that lay eternally up near the clouds, were never still. There
were sweet perfumes as well as music in the air. The earth was bursting
with green; the early flowers were turning the sunny slopes into
coloured splashes of red and white and purple--splashes of violets and
forget-me-nots, of wild asters and hyacinths. David looked upon it all,
and his soul drank in its wonders. He made his camp, and he remained in
it all that day, and the next. He was eager to go on, and yet in his
eagerness he hesitated, and waited. It seemed to him that he must become
acquainted with this empty world before venturing farther into
it--alone; that it was necessary for him to understand it a little, and
get his bearings. He could not lose himself. Jacques had assured him of
that, and Kio had pantomimed it, pointing many times at the broad,
shallow stream that ran ahead of him. All he had to do was to follow the
river. In time, many weeks, of course, it would bring him to the white
settlement on the ocean. Long before that he would strike Firepan Creek.
Kio had never been so far; he had never been farther than this junction
of the two streams, Towaskook had informed Jacques. So it was not fear
that held David. It was the _aloneness_. He was taking a long mental
breath. And, meanwhile, he was repairing his boots, and doctoring
Baree's feet, bruised and sore by their travel over the shale of the
mountain tops.

He thought that he had experienced the depths of loneliness after
leaving the Missioner. But here it was a much larger thing. This night,
as he sat under the stars and a great white moon, with Baree at his
feet, it engulfed him; not in a depressing way, but awesomely. It was
not an unpleasant loneliness, and yet he felt that it had no limit, that
it was immeasurable. It was as vast as the