Chapter XCIX: Section 10: A most trying thing it was to a man who carried the burden

of the future in his soul--to have to wrestle with an obstinate stomach! But so it was again; the magic red liquid seemed to be losing its power. Then, the pot-boiler was not going well; and to cap the climax, the manuscripts stopped coming. Thyrsis, after waiting two or three weeks in suspense and dread, wrote to Mr. Ardsley, and received a reply to the effect that he would not be able to send any more. Mr. Ardsley had sent them because of his interest in the proposed “practical” novel; and now he had learned that the poet had been giving his time to the writing of an impossible play!

Thyrsis’ predicament was a desperate one, and drove him to a desperate course. It was now midsummer; and run down from overwork as he was, could he face the thought of returning to the sweltering city, to go to work in some office? Or was he to hire out as a farm-laborer, under he knew not what conditions? He recoiled from either of these alternatives; and then suddenly, as he racked his brains, a wild idea flashed over him. For years he had talked and dreamed of escaping from civilization. He had pictured himself upon some tropic island, where bananas and cocoanuts grew; or again in some Northern wilderness, where he might hunt and fish, and live like the pioneers. And now--why not do it? He had an axe and a rifle and a fishing-rod; and only a few days previously he had heard a man telling of a lake in the Adirondacks, where not a dozen people went in the course of a year.

It was early one morning the idea came to him; and within an hour he had struck his tent and packed his trunk. He stowed his camp-stuff and bedding in a dry-goods box, and leaving his tent with the farmer, he purchased a ticket to a place on the edge of the wilderness. He put up at a village-hotel, and the next day drove fifteen miles by a stage, and five more by a wagon, and spent the night at a lumber-camp far in the wilderness. The next day, carrying as much of his belongings as he could, he walked three miles more, and came to the tiny lake that was his goal.

It was perhaps half a mile long; the virgin forest hung about it like a great green curtain, and the shadows of the blue mountains seemed as if painted upon its surface. Thyrsis gave a gasp of delight as he pushed through the bushes and saw it; he stripped and plunged into the crystal water--and hot and tired and soul-sick as he was, the coolness of it was like a clasp of protecting arms. There was a rock rising from the centre, and he swam out and stood upon it, and gazed about him at all the ravishing beauty, and laughed and whooped so that the mountains rang with the echoes.

He found an abandoned “open-camp”, or shed, the roof of which he made water-proof with newspapers and balsam-boughs. He cut fresh boughs for his bed, and spread his blankets upon them, and went back to the lumber-shanties, and purchased a box of prunes and a bag of rice. There were huckleberries in profusion upon the hills, and in the lakes were fish, and in the forests squirrels and rabbits, partridges and deer. There were the game-laws, to be sure; but there was also a “higher law”, as eminent authorities had declared. As one of the wits at the lumber-camp put it, “If any wild rabbit comes rushing out to bite you, don’t you hesitate to defend yourself!”

So, with the sum of one dollar and twenty-three cents in his pocket-book, Thyrsis began the happiest experience of his life. He watched the sun rise and set behind the mountains; and sometimes he climbed to the summits to see it further upon its way. He watched the progress of the tempests across the lake, and swam in the water while the rain splashed his face and the lightning splintered the pines in the forest. He crouched in the bushes and saw the wild ducks feeding, and the deer that came at sunset to drink. He watched the loons diving, and spying him out with their wild eyes--sometimes, as they rose in flight, beating the surface of the water with a sound like thunder. At night he heard their loud laughter, and the creaking cries of the herons flying past. Sometimes far up in the hills a she-fox would bark, or some too-aged tree of the forest would come down with a booming crash. Thyrsis would lie in his open camp and watch the moonlight through the pines, and prayers of thankfulness would well up within him--

“Peace of the forest, rich, profound,
Gather me closely, fold me round!”

There had been much carrying and hard work to do before he was settled, and there was more of it all through his stay. He had to cook all his meals and clean up afterwards; and because the nights were cold and his blankets few, there was much firewood to be cut. Also, there was no food unless he went out and found it, and so he spent hours each day tramping about in the forests. By the time he had got home and had cleaned the game and cooked it, he was ravenously hungry, and there was never any question as to what would digest. This was just what he had sought; and so now, deliberately, he banned all the muses from his presence, and poured the rest of the dyspepsia-medicine into the lake. His muscles became hard, and the flush of health returned to his cheeks, and as he went about his tasks he laughed and sang, and shouted his defiance to the world. And to Corydon he wrote his newest plan--to earn a little in the city that winter, and come back in the early spring and build a log-cabin for herself and the baby!