s that he, Norrie
Ford, could never have a home at all--that there was scarcely a spot
within the borders of civilized mankind where the law would not hunt him
out.

This view of his situation was so apparent and yet so new that it held him
stock-still, gazing into space. He was free--but free only to crawl back
into the jungle and lie down in it, like a wild beast.

"But I'm not a wild beast," he protested, inwardly. "I'm a man--with
human rights. By God, I'll never let them go!"

He wheeled round again, toward the lower lands and the lake. The lights
glowed more brightly as the darkness deepened, each lamp shining from some
little nest, where men and women were busied with the small tasks and
interests that made life. This was liberty! This was what he had a claim
upon! All his instincts were civilized, domestic. He would not go back to
the forest, to herd with wild nature, when he had a right to lie down
among his kind. He had slept in the open hundreds of times; but it had
been from choice. There had been pleasure then, in waking to the smell of
balsam and opening his eyes upon the stars. But to do the same thing from
compulsion, because men had closed up their ranks and ejected him from
their midst, was an outrage he would not accept. In the darkness his head
went up, while his eyes burned with a fire more intense than that of any
of the mild beacons from the towns below, as he strode back to the old
root-hedge and leaped it.

He felt the imprudence, not to say the uselessness, of the movement, as he
made it; and yet he kept on, finding himself in a field in which cows and
horses were startled from their munching by his footstep. It was another
degree nearer to the organized life in which he was entitled to a place.
Shielded by a shrubbery of sleeping goldenrod, he stole down the slope,
making his way to the lane along which the beasts went out to pasture and
came home. Following the trail, he passed a meadow, a potato-field, and a
patch of Indian corn, till the scent of flowers told him he was coming on
a garden. A minute later, low, velvety domes of clipped yew rose in the
foreground, and he knew himself to be in touch with the civilization that
clung, like a hardy vine, to the coves and promontories of the lake, while
its tendrils withered as soon as they were flung up toward the mountains.
Only a few steps more, and, between the yews, he saw the light streaming
from the open doors and windows of a house.