Pete was silent. He studied the ground. There was a sullen look on his face, and his tightened mouth deepened the odd, incongruous dimple.
“Well, perhaps you’re right. I promise.” He flashed up a blue desperation of young eyes as he asked: “How long will it last, Hugh?”
“Not long. Not long. Surely not long.”
“I promise.”
“Give me your hand.”
They came back down from the hill.
CHAPTER XIII
Pete looked forward with white-hot impatience to the day of his trip to the trading-station; twelve hours of relief, it would mean, from the worst pressure of his torment—twelve hours of merciful solitude in the old, voiceful friendliness of his forest trail. He started early, at the break of a sweet, singing dawn. The earth was elastic under his feet, the air tingling and mellow with a taste of growth; the flooded river chattered loudly like a creature half beside itself with joy. Pete came out of the dark and silent cabin in which he had made his tiptoe preparations, and lifted his face, letting the light, soft fingers of the wind, cooler and softer even than Sylvie’s, smooth out the knots of suffering from his tired brain. He shook his shoulders before settling them under the load of pelts. He would, he swore, just for this day, be a boy again. He sprang lightly up from the hollow and strode forward with long, swift steps, swinging a companionable stick in his free hand.
Loneliness and the dawn and love had made a poet of the young man, so that he had the release of poetry and forgot reality in its translation into a tale that is told. He thought of Sylvie, but he thought of her as a man thinks of a lovely memory. He went through the wood with his chin lifted, half smiling, almost happy, an integral part of the wild, glad, wistful spring.