In another year the forest would be springing up where Wareville had been, and the wolf and the fox would prowl among the charred timbers.

And among the bleaching bones would be those of his own mother and sister and Lucy Upton--if they were not taken away for a worse fate.
He endured the keenest thrill of agony that life had yet held for him.
All his old life, the dear familiar ties surged up, and were hot upon his brain.

His place was there! with them! not here! He had yielded too easily to the spell of the woods and the call of the old primeval nature.

He might have escaped long ago, there had been many opportunities, but he could not see them.

His blindness had been willful, the child of his own desires.