"Indeed! What things?" Norris asked placidly.

"Suppose you enlarge your mind by looking up the stories of the old

coureurs du bois who used to stumble through these woods when they

were the border-land between Chippewa and Sioux." Dick threw a pebble at

Norris' face. "Suppose you go up to that inky stream in the north, which

twists mysteriously through the forests, black with the bodies of dead

men rotting in its mire. I don't wonder they thought the rough life more

fascinating than kings and courts. I'd like to have seen sun-dances and

maiden-tests; I'd like to have eaten food strange enough to be

picturesque, and to have found new streams and traced them to their

sources, and to have come unexpectedly on new lakes, like amethysts.

It's as much fun to discover as to invent. And then the Jesuit fathers,

half-tramp, half-martyr,--they were great old fellows."

"And the Frenchman--where is he?" said Madeline. "Gone, and left a few

names for the Swede and the American to mispronounce; but you may come

down later, Mr. Norris, and find how law and order, in our own people,

fought with savagery out here on the frontier. It's a thrilling story."

"You love it all and its legends, don't you?" Ellery looked from one to

the other.

"Don't you?" Madeline asked.

"By Jove, I do!" he cried, sitting suddenly upright as though stirred

with genuine feeling. "I love it without its legends. It does not seem

to me to have any past. It is all future. It makes me feel all future,

too."

"Do you know what's happened to you?" Dick laughed exultantly. "Gitche

Manito the Mighty has got you--the spirit of the West--which, being

interpreted, is Ozone."

"Something has got me, I admit," Norris cried. "What is it? What is it

that makes the sky so dazzling? What is it that makes the leaves fairly

radiate light? What is it that, every time you take a breath, makes the

air freshen you down to your toes? I feel younger than I ever did before

in all my life."

The other two were looking at him.

"Well, our height above the sea-level--" Dick began.

"Oh, rot!" Ellery exclaimed. "It's something more than air--it's

atmosphere. You feel here that it's glorious to work."

"You make me proud of you, old boy."

"It's funny how universally you fellows call me 'old boy'. I suppose I

was older than the rest of you. I had to take the responsibility for my

own life too soon and it took out of me that assurance that most of you

had--that complacent confidence that things would somehow manage

themselves. But I'm getting even now. I'm appreciating being young,

which most men don't."

"Bully for you!" Dick cried. "If you couldn't be born a Westerner, you

are born again one. I am moved to tell you something that gave me a

small glow yesterday. I met Lewis--the editor of the Star, you know,

Madeline--and he insisted on stopping me and congratulating me on having

brought Mr. Norris to St. Etienne; said he was irritated at first by

having a man forced on him by influence, when there was really no

particular place for him, but, he went on, 'Mr. Norris is rapidly making

his own place. We think him a real acquisition.'"




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