In almost a moment, Duncan was out of the thickets and into the big timber, for really the first time. In his journey up the mountain road and on the trail that led to the old woman's cabin, he had been many times in the shade of the tall evergreens, but always there had been some little intrusion of civilization, some hint of the works of man that had kept him from the full sense of the majesty of the wild. At first it had been the gleaming railroad tracks, and then a road that had been built with blasting and shovels. To get the full effect of the forest one must be able to behold wide-stretching vistas, and that had been impossible heretofore because of the brush thickets. But this was the virgin forest. As far as he could see there was nothing but the great pines climbing up the long slope of the ridge. He caught glimpses of them in the vales at either side, and their dark tops made a curious background at the very extremity of his vision. They stood straight and aloof, and they were very old. He fell into their spirit at once. The half-understood emotions that had flooded him in the cabin below died within him. The great calm that is, after all, the all-pervading quality of the big pines came over him. It is always this way. A man knows solitude, his thoughts come clear, superficialities are left behind in the lands of men. Bruce was rather tremulous and exultant as he crept softly up the trail. It was the last lap of his journey. At the end of the trail he would find--Linda! And it seemed quite fitting that she would be waiting there, where the trail began, in the wildest heart of the pine woods. He was quite himself once more,--carefree, delighting in all the little manifestations of the wild life that began to stir about him. No experience of his existence had ever yielded the same pleasure as that long walk up the trail. Every curve about the shoulder of a hill, every still glen into which he dipped, every ridge that he surmounted wakened curious memories within him and stirred him in little secret ways under the skin. His delight grew upon him. It was a dream coming true. Always, it seemed to him, he had carried in his mind a picture of this very land, a sort of dream place that was a reality at last. He had known just how it would be. The wind made the same noise in the tree tops that he expected. Yet it was such a little sound that it could never be heard in a city at all. His senses had already been sharpened by the silence and the calm. He had always known how the pine shadows would fall across the carpet of needles. The trees themselves were the same grave companions that he had expected, but his delight was all the more because of his expectations.