He had no idea of freedom in dissociation with human faces and voices and eyes.

But now he had left all these, and as he ran from them a red pall seemed settling down behind him, wrapping up and hiding away his country, his home.
For the first time in his life, the fatherless, motherless, brotherless, sisterless stray of the streets felt himself alone.
The sensation was an awful one.

He had lost so many, and had not one left! That gash in Sambo's black throat had slain "a whole cityful." His loneliness grew upon him, until again he darted aside from the road into the bush, this time to hide from the Spectre of the Desert--the No Man.

Deprived of human countenances, the face of creation was a mask without eyes, and liberty a mere negation.

Not that Gibbie had ever thought about liberty; he had only enjoyed: not that he had ever thought about human faces; he had only loved them, and lived upon their smiles.