It was a splendid night. Ahead of him the river was like a
rippling sheet of molten silver. On both sides, a quarter of a
mile apart, rose the walls of the forest, like low-hung, oriental
tapestries. The sky seemed near, loaded with stars, and the moon,
rising with almost perceptible movement toward the zenith, had
changed from red to a mellow gold. Carrigan's soul always rose to
this glory of the northern light. Youth and vigor, he told
himself, must always exist under those unpolluted lights of the
upper worlds, the unspeaking things which had told him more than
he had ever learned from the mouths of other men. They stood for
his religion, his faith, his belief in the existence of things
greater than the insignificant spark which animated his own body.
He appreciated them most when there was stillness. And tonight it
was still. It was so quiet that the trickling of the paddles was
like subdued music. From the forest there came no sound. Yet he
knew there was life there, wide-eyed, questing life, life that
moved on velvety wing and padded foot, just as he and Marie-Anne
and the half-breed Bateese were moving in the canoe. To have
called out in this hour would have taken an effort, for a supreme
and invisible Hand seemed to have commanded stillness upon the
earth.
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