He knew that it would be long after sunset before he could get there, and he scarcely expected that his comrades would wait for him, but he did not care; he gloried in the independence of his strength, for his legs were like iron and his wind was like a hound's. Ten miles were no more to him than a mile to another man, for he could run all day and come home fresh, and always when alone in the lone hills he felt within so glad a gush of wild exhilaration that his joy was full. [Illustration] So when his friends, feeling sure that he could take care of himself, drove home and left him, he was glad to be left. They seemed rather to pity him for imposing on himself such long, toilsome tramps. They had no realization of what he found in those wind-swept hills. They never once thought what they, and all their friends and every man that ever lived has striven for and offered his body, his brain, his freedom and his life to buy; what they were vainly wearing out their lives in fearful, hopeless drudgery to gain, that boy was daily finding in those hills. The bitter, biting, blizzard wind was without, but the fire of health and youth was within; and at every stride in his daily march, it was _happiness_ he found, and he knew it. And he smiled such a gentle smile when he thought of them driven home in the sleigh shivering and miserable, yet pitying him. [Illustration] Oh! what a glorious sunset he saw that day on Kennedy's Plain, with the snow dyed pink and the poplar woods aglow in red and gold. What a glorious tramp through the darkening woods as the shadows fell and the yellow moon came up! "These are the best days of my life," he said. "These are my golden days!" And as he neared the great Spruce Hill, Yan yelled a long hurrah! "In case they are still there," he told himself, but really for very joy of feeling all alive. As he listened for the improbable response, he heard a faint howling of wolves away over Kennedy's Plain. He mimicked their cry and quickly got response, and noticed that they were gathering together, doubtless hunting something, for now it was their hunting cry. Nearer and nearer it came, and his howls brought ready answers from the gloomy echoing woods, when suddenly it flashed upon him: "It's _my_ trail you are on. _You are hunting me._" [Illustration]