had a right to solitude. Those who noted his departure from the camp
remembered with pleasure that he was to preach again on the morrow.
He was going to commune with God in the depths of the forest, that the
Message next day might be clearer and more luminous still.

Theron strolled for a little, with an air of aimlessness, until he was
well outside the more or less frequented neighborhood of the camp.
Then he looked at the sun and the lay of the land with that informing
scrutiny of which the farm-bred boy never loses the trick, turned, and
strode at a rattling pace down the hillside. He knew nothing personally
of this piece of woodland--a spur of the great Adirondack wilderness
thrust southward into the region of homesteads and dairies and
hop-fields--but he had prepared himself by a study of the map, and
he knew where he wanted to go. Very Soon he hit upon the path he had
counted upon finding, and at this he quickened his gait.

Three months of the new life had wrought changes in Theron. He bore
himself more erectly, for one thing; his shoulders were thrown back, and
seemed thicker. The alteration was even more obvious in his face. The
effect of lank, wistful, sallow juvenility had vanished. It was the
countenance of a mature, well-fed, and confident man, firmer and more
rounded in its outlines, and with a glow of health on its whole surface.
Under the chin were the suggestions of fulness which bespeak an easy
mind. His clothes were new; the frock-coat fitted him, and the thin,
dark-colored autumn overcoat, with its silk lining exposed at the
breast, gave a masculine bulk and shape to his figure. He wore a shining
tall hat, and, in haste though he was, took pains not to knock it
against low-hanging branches.

All had gone well--more than well--with him. The second Quarterly