I at present speculated with the philosophers; but my imagination, siding with the spiritualists, assured me that some one spoke to me, and reason was silenced. I sat still as long as I could endure it, alone, and then crept back, trembling, to the camp,--feeling quiet only when surrounded by the rest of the party. My attendant daemon did not leave me, I found; for now I heard the question asked, half-tauntingly,--"Subjective or objective?" I asked myself, in reply,--"Am I mad or sane?" "Quite sane, but with your eyes opened to something new!" was the instantaneous reply. On such expeditions, men get back to the primitive usages and conditions of humanity. We had arisen at daybreak; darkness brought the disposition to rest. We arranged ourselves side by side on the couch of balsam and cedar boughs which the guides had spread on the ground of the camp, our feet to the fire, and all but myself soon slept. I lay a long time, excited, looking out through the open front of the camp at the stars which shone in through the trees, and even they seemed partakers of my new state of existence, and twinkled consciously and confidentially, as to one who shared the secret of their own existence and purposes. The pine-trees overhead had an added tone in their meanings, and indeed everything, as I regarded it, seemed to manifest a new life, to become identified with me: Nature and I had all things in common. I slept, at length,--a strange kind of sleep; for when the guides awoke me, in the full daylight, I was conscious of some one having talked with me through the night.