Vaguely, Quincy came to feel that he had set hopes upon the woods, that he had built upon these murmurous companions, fondly, unconsciously, a hope of solace and of haven. What a strange feeling it was, as he trudged on, over the uneven path of rock and root, to know that this deep heart of Nature with its accent of green had dwelt, unknown, within his own heart and there persevered, a bulwark of promise against the blast of his reality! Yet, poignantly, was this true. A great urge in the lad’s soul had swept back from life in the city to the rural setting that preceded it. Man will have his happiness, though he distort childhood, fabricate history, to attain it. The usual happy conception, in man’s mind, of childhood is an example. Quincy, miserable with the present, had been forced back in his search of that mystic Eden which each man and each race must cherish, to make of it a goal and pattern for the future. And in his innocent regression, what could he fix on better than this fringe of his life, vague and therefore easily idealized? He could not fix, for this purpose, on any member of his family. They were still with him; they had already fought--as if with all their powers--against this zealous effort. The one great distinction between the unhappy present and the past that he willed to serve as contrast, was this same gentle, all-pervasive thing--the woods, the meadows. Here was an element which had disappeared with his fictitious happiness. Yet, doubtless, a something deeper than these reasonings gave Nature her deep place in Quincy’s heart; doubtless, the sole fact of herself, of her still depths and her mystic penetrations, of her transcendent eloquence and her calm, stately love. No child could live within the murmur of her breath, within the perfume of her energies, and utterly escape her. For the swaying of trees is a blessing; and the wind in their laced branches is a prayer; and the stirring of life packed with myriad simpleness throughout the reaches of the wood is an unforgettable music. And to sleep where the air comes brushing, be it only from the dryest grass or the lowest shrub, is to have slept in an embrace that neither mortal love nor hatred can abolish.