The sound of the river rose reverberating from its profundity of shadow, for it had cost the party most of a day to climb to the height they had pitched the camp upon.

There was but little light overhead, though here and there a star blinked fitfully, and Alton shivered again, for it was very cold and but little past the hour when man's vitality sinks to its lowest.
Raising himself a trifle he listened again with ears that could distinguish each component of the nocturnal harmonies.

No one but a bushman could have heard them, but to those who toil in the stillness of that forest-shrouded land the silence is but the perfect blending of musical sound.

There was the faintest of crisp rattles as the withered needles shook down from a twig, and then a sigh and a whisper along the dim black vault above, as though a spirit hovered above the sleeping earth.

Alton heard, and knew it was not the wind, for the little breeze had paused while the river made it answer in subdued antiphones.
He had dwelt in close contact with the soil he sprang from, and there were times when he felt his nature thrill in faint response to the life there is in what the men of the cities deem inanimate things.
Then a leaf sailed past the tent, and he knew what tree it came from as it touched the earth, and strained his ears the more, wondering what he listened for, as he, and others of his kind, had done in the bush before.