The buds on the poplars were growing fat and near the bursting point; the grasses were sending out shoots tender and sweet; the camas were filling with juice; the shooting stars, the dog-tooth violets, and the spring beauties were thrusting themselves up into the warm glow of the sun, inviting Noozak and Neewa to the feast.
All these things Noozak smelled with the experience and the knowledge of twenty years of life behind her--the delicious aroma of the spruce and the jackpine; the dank, sweet scent of water-lily roots and swelling bulbs that came from a thawed-out fen at the foot of the ridge; and over all these things, overwhelming their individual sweetnesses in a still greater thrill of life, the smell of the heart itself! And Neewa smelled them.

His amazed little body trembled and thrilled for the first time with the excitement of life.

A moment before in darkness, he found himself now in a wonderland of which he had never so much as had a dream.

In these few minutes Nature was at work upon him.
He possessed no knowledge, but instinct was born within him.

He knew this was HIS world, that the sun and the warmth were for him, and that the sweet things of the earth were inviting him into his heritage.