"A thrill!" Dan echoed. He spoke as a man speaks in the presence of some great wonder. "Good Heavens, I never saw anything like it in my life." "In this very stream," the mountaineer told him joyously, "you may occasionally catch trout that weigh three pounds." But as he got back into the car, the look of interest died out of Lennox's eyes. Of course any man would be somewhat excited by his first glimpse of the wilderness. It was not that he had inherited any of the traits of his grandfather. It was absurd to hope that he had. And he would soon get tired of the silences and want to go back to his cities. He told his thought--that it would all soon grow old to him; and Dan turned almost in anger. "You don't know," he said. "I didn't know myself, how I would feel about it. I'm never going to leave the hills again." "You don't mean that." "But I do." He tried to speak further, but he coughed instead. "But I couldn't if I wanted to. That cough tells you why, I guess." "You mean to say--" Silas Lennox turned in amazement. "You mean that you're a--a goner? That you've given up hope of recovering?" "That's the impression I meant to convey. I've got a little over four months--though I don't see that I'm any weaker than I was when the doctor said I had six months. Those four will take me all through the fall and the early winter. And I hope you won't feel that you've been imposed upon--to have a dying man on your hands." "It isn't that." Silas Lennox threw his car into gear and started up the long grade. And he drove clear to the top of it and into another glen before he spoke again. Then he pointed to what looked to Dan like a brown streak that melted into the thick brush. "That was a deer," he said slowly. "Just a glimpse, but your grandfather could have got him between the eyes. Most like as not, though, he'd have let him go. He never killed except when he needed meat. But that--as you say--ain't the impression I'm trying to convey." He seemed to be groping for words. "What is it, Mr. Lennox?" Dan asked. "Instead of being sorry, I'm mighty glad you've come," Lennox told him. "It's not that I expect you to be like your grandfather. You haven't had his chance. But it's always the way of true men, the world over, to come back to their own kind to die. That deer we just saw--he's your people, and so are all these ranchers that grub their lives out of the forests--they are your people too. The bears and the elk, and even the porcupines. Though you likely won't care for 'em, it's almost as if they were your grandfather's own folks. And you couldn't have pleased the old man's old friends any better, or done more for his memory, than to come back to his own land for your last days."