An old man is sitting again in his cabin in the far Northwest. He is wondering, wondering if it has been but a dream, his old-age journey. How could it be real? Surely there was once the fort where the river joined the lake, and there were the yellow sand-ridges, and the low, green prairie and the wilderness. He had seen them. They were there, familiar to the pioneers, the features of a landscape where was the outpost in the wilderness of the race which conquers. He knew there could be no mistake about it, that what he remembered was something real, for the river was in its ancient channel; though dark its waters, the lake was blue and vast as of old, and the tree with its stark branches was still the Tree. Those who had lived with him in his old age in the far Northwest had seemed never to doubt in him the retained possession of all his faculties, and he knew that he could not be mistaken as to the things that were. He had lived with them. How could such changes have come within the span of a single lifetime? Yet he had seen the new! How could it be? And the old man could not tell.