He heard the birds. And he heard the
girl's voice, answering them in her happiness and turning that happiness
from the radiance of her eyes upon him. When he awoke, it was with a
little cry, as if someone had stabbed him; and Olaf was building a fire,
and dawn was breaking in rose-gleams over the mountains.
CHAPTER XII
This first night and dawn in the heard of his wilderness, with the new
import of life gleaming down at him from the mighty peaks of the Chugach
and Kenai ranges, marked the beginning of that uplift which drew Alan
out of the pit into which he had fallen. He understood, now, how it was
that through many long years his father had worshiped the memory of a
woman who had died, it seemed to him, an infinity ago. Unnumbered times
he had seen the miracle of her presence in his father's eyes, and once,
when they had stood overlooking a sun-filled valley back in the
mountains, the elder Holt had said:
"Twenty-seven years ago the twelfth day of last month, mother went with
me through this valley, Alan. Do you see the little bend in the creek,
with the great rock in the sun? We rested there--before you were born!"
He had spoken of that day as if it had been but yesterday. And Alan
recalled the strange happiness in his father's face as he had looked
down upon something in the valley which no other but himself could see.
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