he was too moderate, too far-sighted
and philosophic to act immediately. It takes an abrupt, coarse-grained
man, or a prophet, to handle a crisis efficiently; your man who is
only endowed just beyond the average sees too far--and not far enough.
The insolent infringement of personality which he had suffered as man
and child from his mother's unwise interference had caused him to
become a chronic hesitator. As usual, in this case as in all others,
he determined to let matters slide, to give circumstance an unfettered
opportunity to evolve its own event. He was content to remain the
spectator of his own career, allowing Chance to be the only doer of
the deeds which went to make up the record of his life. And what would
Chance do next? The Man with the Dead Soul might return at any hour
from his winter's hunt, bringing with him his daughter, in which case
most surely his book of life would commence to write out its latest
chapter of disgrace.

Beorn had cached a canoe at the mouth of the Forbidden River, and
therefore would reach the Point up-stream from the northward. Granger
found excitement in the thought that any minute, looking out from his
window, he might discover the approach of his future wife. The more he
allowed his fancy to dwell upon her, the more pleasant her image
became for him. After all, there is always something of romance, at
first at any rate, in marrying out of your blood heritage. Pizarro
must have felt that when he took to himself Inez Huayllas Nusta, the
Inca princess. The havoc of affection which was being enacted
secretly beneath the shadow of the forest trees urged him on, crying,
"Take your pleasure while it is yours, winter will return. Short views
of life are best." Having listened to that advice for several days, he
allowed himself to be persuaded. It seemed to him, when he remembered
how they had parted, that it would be a gallant and reconciling act to
set forth to meet her. Moreover, though the mind that was in him stood
aside from the project in disdain, the body cried, "Forward! Forward!"
in chorus with the song of the wild-wood.

Early one morning he carried down his canoe to the water's edge,
loaded it with a week's provisions, padlocked his store and set out.
As the prow drove forward down-stream, exultation entered into him. He
was playing at saying good-bye to his long exile; miles ahead lay the
Hudson Bay, and beyond that England. If his boat were not so frail and
his arms were