Before this night he never realized how beautiful the wilderness was, how complete it could be. It had offered him visions of new life, but these visions had never quite shut out the memories of old pain. He watched and listened. The water rippled behind his canoe; it trickled in a soothing cadence after each dip of his paddle; he heard the gentle murmur of it among the reeds and grasses, and now and then the gurgling laughter of it, like the faintest tinkling of dainty bells. He had never understood it before; he had never joined in its happiness. The night sounds came to him with a different meaning, filled him with different sensations. As he slipped quietly around a bend in the river he heard a splashing ahead of him, and knew that a moose was feeding, belly-deep, in the water. At othe
