determined to trample the world under their feet. He awoke next morning
with an unabated purpose and at an early hour set resolutely about its
execution. He bade a brave farewell to Pepeeta, exhorted her to seek
with him that preparation of heart which alone could fit them for the
future, and then with a bag of provisions over his shoulder and an axe
in his hand started forth to carry out a plan which he had formed in the
night.

At the head of the little valley where Pepeeta had built her gypsy fire,
and experienced her great disillusionment, was a piece of timber land
belonging to his mother's estate. He determined to make a clearing there
and establish a home for himself and Pepeeta.

He wisely calculated that the accomplishment of this arduous task would
occupy his mind and strength through the year of expiation which he had
condemned himself to pass.

It is one of the most impressive spectacles of human life to see a man
enter a primeval forest and set himself to subdue nature with no
implement but an axe! Those of us who require so many luxuries and who
know how to maintain existence only by the use of so many curious and
powerful pieces of mechanism would think ourselves helpless indeed in
the center of a wilderness with nothing but an axe or a rifle!

No such apprehensions troubled the heart of the young woodsman, for from
his earliest childhood he had handled that primitive implement and knew
its exhaustless possibilities. He was young and strong, for reckless as
his recent life had been, the real sources of his physical vitality had
not been depleted.

When David had passed out of sight of the house and entered the
precincts of the quiet forest, there surged up from his heart those
mighty impulses and irresistible tides of energy which are the sublime
inheritance of youth. He counted off the months and they seemed to him
like days. Already he heard the monarchs of the forest fall beneath his
blows, already he saw the walls of his log cabin rising in an opening of
the vast wilderness, already he beheld Pepeeta standing in the open
door. The vast panorama of this virgin world began to unroll itself to
his delighted vision. The splendid spectacle of a morning as new and
wonderful as if there had never been another, drew his thoughts away
from himself and his cares. The dew was sparkling on the grass; the
meadow larks were singing from every quarter of the fields through which
he was passing; the great limb