His love for it was greater than his love for man.

It was his inarticulate God.

It held him as no religion in the world could have held him, and deeper and deeper it had drawn him into the soul of itself, delivering up to him one by one its guarded secrets and its mysteries, opening for him page by page the book that was the greatest of all books.

And it was the wonder of it now, the fact that it was near him, about him, embracing him, glowing for him in the sunshine, whispering to him in the soft breath of the air, nodding and talking to him from the crest of every ridge, that gave to him a strange happiness even in these hours when he knew that he was dying.
And then his eyes fell nearer to the settlement which nestled along the edge of the shining river a quarter of a mile away.

That, too, had been the wilderness, in the days before the railroad came.