In the excitement of these discoveries he smote the waters again.  He remembered having said something of the sort on the night of his interview with Wayne; but he had not till now grasped its significance.  It was the emancipation of his conscience.  Whatever difficulties he might encounter from outside, he should be hampered by no scruples from within.  He had been relieved of them; they had been taken from him.  Since none had a duty toward him, he had no duty toward any.  If it suited his purposes to juggle with men, the blame must rest upon themselves.  He could but do his best with the maimed existence they had left to him.  Self-respect would entail observance of the common laws of truth and honesty, but beyond this he need never allow consideration for another to come before consideration for himself.  He was absolved from the necessity in advance.  In the region in which he should pass his inner life there would be no occupant but himself.  From the world where men and women had ties of love and pity and mutual regard they had cast him out, forcing him into a spiritual limbo where none of these things obtained.  It was only lawful that he should make use of such advantages as his lot allowed him.

There was exaltation in the way in which he grasped this creed as his rule of life; and looking up suddenly, he saw the dawn.  It had taken him unawares, stealing like a gray mist of light over the tops of the Vermont hills, lifting their ridges faintly out of night, like the ghosts of so many Titans.  Among the Adirondacks one high peak caught the first glimmer of advancing day, while all the lower range remained a gigantic silhouette beneath the perceptibly paling stars.  Over Canada the veil was still down, but he fancied he could detect a thinner texture to the darkness.

Then, as he passed a wooded headland, came a sleepy twitter, from some little pink and yellow bill barely withdrawn from its enfolding wing—­to be followed by another, and another, and another, till both shores were aquiver with that plaintive chirrup, half threnody for the flying darkness, half welcome to the sun, like the praise of a choir of children roused to sing midnight matins, but still dreaming.  Ford’s dip was softer now, as though he feared to disturb that vibrant drowsiness; but when, later, capes and coves began to define themselves through the gray gloaming, and, later still, a shimmer of saffron appeared above the eastern summits, he knew it was time to think of a refuge from the daylight.

The saffron became fire; the fire lit up a heaven of chrysoprase and rose.  Where the lake had been as a metal mirror for the stars, it rippled and dimpled and gleamed with the tints of mother-of-pearl.  He knew the sun must be on the farther slope of the Green Mountains, because the face they turned toward him was dense in shadow, like the unilluminated portion of the moon.  On the western shore the Adirondacks were rising out of the bath of night as dewy fresh as if they had been just created.