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It was that hour when, with clear skies, the gray northern daould have been breaking faintly over the eastern forests Kent found the darkness loom But he could not see the water under his feet Nor could he see the rail of the scow, or the river From the stern, ten feet from the cabin door, the cabin itself ed up and invisible
With the steady, swinging ular became his movements that they ran in a sort of rhythhts Thepails of water assu He could s of cedar and balsam came to him faintly
But it was the river that impressed itself most upon his senses It see He could hear it gurgling and playing under the end of the scow And with that sound there was another and , the tremble of it, the pulse of it, the thrill of it in the iloohty flood between its wilderness walls Kent had always said, "You can hear the river's heart beat--if you kno to listen for it" And he heard it now He felt it The rain could not beat it out, nor could the splash of the water he was throwing overboard drown it, and the darkness could not hide it fro coal within hiiven hirown into a thing with a soul, a thing that personified hope, courage, coreat in final achieveht--the soul of it see to hiht that filled hireater assurance, never had a more positive sense of the inevitable possessed hiht, even to fear the possibility of being taken by the Police He wasfor his freedoht to exist A thing vastly more priceless than either freedom or life, if they were to be accepted alone, waited for him in the little cabin, shut in by its sea of darkness And ahead of them lay their world He emphasized that THEIR world--the world which, in an illusive and unreal sort of way, had been a part of his dreams all his life In that world they would shut thelory of the sun and the stars and God's open country would be with them always