He saw only reality, the blazing fire, the dusky figures lying motionless before it, and the circling wall of dark woods.

Then he slept.
Willet was the only white man who remained awake.

He saw the great fire die, and the dawn come in its place.

He felt then for the first time in all that long encounter the strangeness of his own position.
The wilderness, savages and forest battle had become natural to him, and yet his life had once been far different.

There was a taste of a distant past in that fierce duel at Quebec when he slew the bravo, Boucher, a deed for which he had never felt a moment's regret, and yet when he balanced the old times against the present, he could not say which had the advantage.