Meantime Jean and her father were spending their four precious hours on Bay-quah-de-nah-shing. They drove from one point to another through the hardwood and the clearings, now stopping to shake hands with some old friend, now pausing to survey some pleasant prospect. At four o’clock they reached the top of the mountain, whence both Canada and Michigan could be seen.

At their feet lay the long southern end of the island, miles on miles of treetops. Beyond it, under the shadows of the flying clouds, a score of smaller islands were visible, and across them the sunlight dreamed of violets.

At the first touch of all this beauty poor Jean felt the tears coming, and glanced back to see if she must hide them from the driver. But he had disappeared. She drew closer to her father’s side, and he clasped her with one arm.

He had been there with surveyors whose only interest was to increase the lines of division. He had been there with a historian to show him where the British flag had floated for thirteen years after the peace of Ghent ought to have hauled it down. He had been there with Ojeeg, who could stand for a long time in silence to survey his ancient homeland, but who would be sure at last to say something bitter about the trading posts where his ancestors were deliberately made drunkards.

But the old man had ceased from bitterness. He felt it useless to lament the passing of fox or hunter. He felt it equally useless to lament men’s hunger for land. Here he had stood with bowed head thinking of forty youths whom he had slain when land hunger plunged Columbia into civil war. He had done what he thought was right, but that could not save him from the infinite pity of it. He could no more reverse the deed than he could whiten an unhappy mulatto or darken him again to a happy negro.

He had been there in 1879, the year when this boundary was first endangered by the seal question. Till that time men had been content to round up young bulls and knock them on the head, but thereafter women were to be richly clad with skins of mothers. For a time it looked as if this river would be run red with blood of boys disputing the right to kill the unborn, but in 1893 the danger passed, and both sides proceeded to exterminate the race of seals.

He had good hope that this boundary would remain unfortified, at least until Jean’s grandchildren were past the age when they might be drafted. He did not doubt the good intentions of either nation.

But there was no more frontier left, and no more chance for the democracy which is possible when land is abundant and farmers are few. Soon these islands would be taken for summer homes by money lenders. Soon industrial uses would be found for these delicate peninsulas. Soon the stratification of classes would set in, with Praetorian guards to pay. This little picture of peace was a mere utopia, like the colored perfection seen on the ground glass of a camera.

But for a moment he stood above all history. He was looking down on beauty which is older than the human race and which will last when the race is gone. Before him were spread the kingdoms of earth, not as they ever were, but as he wished they might have been. Long he gazed, looking down on perfect silence, shore on shore rimmed with the intimate sea. The coasts of enemies were blending. Continent faded into continent, as if all the world were one at heart. Nations sundered by mountains and by mutual fear were hid together in the self-same cloud. All human effort seemed united to conquer, but not to ravish, the beautiful and exacting earth.

It was only a wish, but it had power to strengthen him. So one last look, dear as the face of Jean’s mother. As he swept the scene with his weak human vision he murmured some lines of Greek—the lines wherein Menander counts him happiest who, before returning whence he came, gazes upon the holy things, the common sun, the water, the clouds. Then beneath the nimbus a great pure beam struggled down, whitening islands so as no fuller on earth can whiten them.