"Suppose you enlarge your mind by looking up the stories of the old _coureurs du bois_ who used to stumble through these woods when they were the border-land between Chippewa and Sioux." Dick threw a pebble at Norris' face. "Suppose you go up to that inky stream in the north, which twists mysteriously through the forests, black with the bodies of dead men rotting in its mire. I don't wonder they thought the rough life more fascinating than kings and courts. I'd like to have seen sun-dances and maiden-tests; I'd like to have eaten food strange enough to be picturesque, and to have found new streams and traced them to their sources, and to have come unexpectedly on new lakes, like amethysts. It's as much fun to discover as to invent. And then the Jesuit fathers, half-tramp, half-martyr,--they were great old fellows." "And the Frenchman--where is he?" said Madeline. "Gone, and left a few names for the Swede and the American to mispronounce; but you may come down later, Mr. Norris, and find how law and order, in our own people, fought with savagery out here on the frontier. It's a thrilling story." "You love it all and its legends, don't you?" Ellery looked from one to the other. "Don't you?" Madeline asked. "By Jove, I do!" he cried, sitting suddenly upright as though stirred with genuine feeling. "I love it without its legends. It does not seem to me to have any past. It is all future. It makes me feel all future, too." "Do you know what's happened to you?" Dick laughed exultantly. "Gitche Manito the Mighty has got you--the spirit of the West--which, being interpreted, is Ozone." "Something has got me, I admit," Norris cried. "What is it? What is it that makes the sky so dazzling? What is it that makes the leaves fairly radiate light? What is it that, every time you take a breath, makes the air freshen you down to your toes? I feel younger than I ever did before in all my life." The other two were looking at him. "Well, our height above the sea-level--" Dick began. "Oh, rot!" Ellery exclaimed. "It's something more than air--it's atmosphere. You feel here that it's glorious to work." "You make me proud of you, old boy." "It's funny how universally you fellows call me 'old boy'. I suppose I was older than the rest of you. I had to take the responsibility for my own life too soon and it took out of me that assurance that most of you had--that complacent confidence that things would somehow manage themselves. But I'm getting even now. I'm appreciating being young, which most men don't."