It was the first sensation of its
kind he had ever experienced; it was disquieting, and yet soothing; it
filled him with an indefinable uneasiness, and yet with a strange
yearning. He stood, in these moments, at the inscrutable threshold of
the great North; he felt the enigmatical, voiceless spirit of it; it
passed into his blood; it made his heart beat a little faster; it made
him afraid, and yet daring. In his breast the spirit of adventure was
waking--had awakened; he felt the call of the Northland, and it alarmed
even as it thrilled him. He knew, now, that this was the beginning--the
door opening to him--of a world that reached for hundreds of miles up
there. Yes, there were thousands of miles of it, many thousands; white,
as he saw it here; beautiful, terrible, and deathly still. And into this
world Father Roland had asked him to go, and he had as good as pledged
himself!
Before he could think, or stop himself, he had laughed. For an instant
it struck him like mirth in a tomb, an unpleasant, soulless sort of
mirth, for his laugh had in it a jarring incredulity, a mocking lack of
faith in himself. What right had _he_ to enter into a world like that?
Why, even now, his legs ached because of his exertion in furrowing
through a few hundred steps of foot-and-a-half snow!
But the laugh succeeded in bringing him back into the reality of
things.
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