The yapping of the foxes, the
crying of the dogs, those lanterns hurrying down the track, the
blackness of the night, and the strong perfume of balsam in the cold
air--an odour that he breathed deep into his lungs like the fumes of an
exhilarating drink--quickened sharply a pulse that a few hours before he
thought was almost lifeless. He had no time to ask himself whether he
was enjoying these new sensations; he felt only the thrill of them as
Thoreau and the Indian came up out of the night with their lanterns. In
Thoreau himself, as he stood a moment later in the glow of the lanterns,
was embodied the living, breathing spirit of this new world into which
David's leap out of the baggage car had plunged him. He was picturesquely
of the wild; his face was darkly bearded; his ivory-white teeth shining
as he smiled a welcome; his tricoloured, Hudson's Bay coat of wool,
with its frivolous red fringes, thrown open at the throat; the bushy
tail of his fisher-skin cap hanging over a shoulder--and with these
things his voice rattling forth, in French and half Indian, his joy
that Father Roland was not dead but had arrived at last. Behind him
stood the Indian--his face without expression, dark, shrouded--a bronze
sphinx of mystery.
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