"Maxica," he whispered, not understanding the Cree's last question, "they call this the new world; but don't you think it really is the very old, old world, just as God made it? No one has touched it in all these ages."
Yes, it was a favourite nook of Maxica's, beautiful, he thought, as the happy hunting-grounds beyond the sunset—the Indian's heaven. Could he exchange the free range of his native wilds, with all their majestic beauty, for a settler's hut? the trap and the bow for the plough and the spade, and tie himself down to one small corner? The earth was free to all. Wilfred had but to take his share, and roam its plains and forests, as the red man roamed.
But Wilfred knew better than to think he could really live their savage life, with its dark alternations of hunger and cold.
"Could I get back to Hungry Hall in time to travel with Mr. De Brunier?" he asked his swarthy friend.
"Yes; that other place," repeated Maxica, "where is that?"
Wilfred could hardly tell him, he remembered so little of the road.
"Which way did the wind blow and the snow drift past as you stood at the friendly gates?" asked Maxica. "On which cheek did the wind cut keenest when you rode into the hunters' camp at nightfall?"
Wilfred tried to recollect.
"A two days' journey," reflected Maxica, "with the storm-wind in our faces."
He felt the edge of his hatchet, climbed the steep ascent, and struck a gash in the stem of the nearest poplar. His quick sense of touch told him at which edge of the cut the bark grew thickest. That was the north. He found it with the unerring precision of the mariner's compass. Although he had no names for the cardinal points, he knew them all.