The Honor of the Big Snows

That night Jan Thoreau passed for the last time back into the shelter of his forests; and all that night he traveled, and with each mile that he left behind him something larger and bolder grew in his breast until he cracked his whip in the old way, and shouted to the dogs in the old way, and the blood in him sang to the wild spirit of the wilderness. Once more he was home. To him the forest had always been home, filled with the low voice of whispering winds and trees, and to-night it was more his home than ever. Lonely and sick at heart, with no other desire than to bury himself deeper and deeper into it, he felt the life, and sympathy, and love of it creeping into his heart, grieving with him in his grief, warming him with its hope, pledging him again the eternal friendship of its trees, its mountains, and all of the wild that it held therein.

And from above him the stars looked down like a billion tiny fires kindled by loving hands to light his way -- the stars that had given him music, peace, since he could remember, and that had taught him more of the silent power of God than the lips of man could ever tell. From this time forth Jan Thoreau knew that these things would be his life, his god. A thousand times in fanciful play he had given life and form to the star-shadows about him, to the shadows of the tall spruce, the twisted shrub, the rocks and even the mountains. And now it was no longer play. With each hour that passed this night, and with each day and night that followed, they became more real to him, and his fires in the black gloom painted him pictures as they had never painted them before, and the trees and the rocks and the twisted shrub comforted him more and more in his loneliness, and gave to him the presence of life in their movement, in the coming and going of their shadow-forms. Everywhere they were the same old friends, unvarying and changeless. The spruce-shadow of to-night, nodding to him in its silent way, was the same that had nodded to him last night -- a hundred nights ago; the stars were the same, the winds whispering to him in the tree-tops were the same, everything was as it was yesterday -- years ago -- unchanged, never leaving him, never growing cold in their devotion. He had loved the forest -- NOW he worshipped it. In its vast silence he still possessed Melisse. It whispered to him still of her old love, of their days and years of happiness, and with his forest he lived these days over and over again, and when he slept with his forest he dreamed of them.