1 files changed, 2371 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/6176.txt b/6176.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f291d8b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/6176.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,2371 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook Pierre And His People, V3, by G. Parker
+#4 in our series by Gilbert Parker
+  Contents:
+    Shon McGann's Tobogan Ride
+    Pere Champagne
+    The Scarlet Hunter
+    The Stone
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
+
+This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
+Gutenberg file.  Please do not remove it.  Do not change or edit the
+header without written permission.
+
+Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
+eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file.  Included is
+important information about your specific rights and restrictions in
+how the file may be used.  You can also find out about how to make a
+donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**EBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
+
+
+Title: Pierre And His People, [Tales of the Far North], Volume 3.
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: July, 2004  [EBook #6176]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on August 27, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE, V3, PARKER ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
+file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+
+
+
+PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE
+
+TALES OF THE FAR NORTH
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+Volume 3.
+
+
+SHON MCGANN'S TOBOGAN RIDE
+PERE CHAMPAGNE
+THE SCARLET HUNTER
+THE STONE
+
+
+
+
+SHON McGANN'S TOBOGAN RIDE
+
+         "Oh, it's down the long side of Farcalladen Rise,
+               With the knees pressing hard to the saddle, my men;
+          With the sparks from the hoofs giving light to the eyes,
+               And our hearts beating hard as we rode to the glen!
+
+          "And it's back with the ring of the chain and the spur,
+               And it's back with the sun on the hill and the moor,
+          And it's back is the thought sets my pulses astir!
+               But I'll never go back to Farcalladen more."
+
+
+Shon McGann was lying on a pile of buffalo robes in a mountain hut,--an
+Australian would call it a humpey,--singing thus to himself with his pipe
+between his teeth.  In the room, besides Shon, were Pretty Pierre, Jo
+Gordineer, the Hon. Just Trafford, called by his companions simply "The
+Honourable," and Prince Levis, the owner of the establishment.  Not that
+Monsieur Levis, the French Canadian, was really a Prince.  The name was
+given to him with a humorous cynicism peculiar to the Rockies.  We have
+little to do with Prince Levis here; but since he may appear elsewhere,
+this explanation is made.
+
+Jo Gordineer had been telling The Honourable about the ghost of Guidon
+Mountain, and Pretty Pierre was collaborating with their host in the
+preparation of what, in the presence of the Law--that is of the North-
+West Mounted Police--was called ginger-tea, in consideration of the
+prohibition statute.
+
+Shon McGann had been left to himself--an unusual thing; for everyone had
+a shot at Shon when opportunity occurred; and never a bull's-eye could
+they make on him.  His wit was like the shield of a certain personage of
+mythology.
+
+He had wandered on from verse to verse of the song with one eye on the
+collaborators and an ear open to The Honourable's polite exclamations of
+wonder.  Jo had, however, come to the end of his weird tale--for weird it
+certainly was, told at the foot of Guidon Mountain itself, and in a
+region of vast solitudes--the pair of chemists were approaching "the
+supreme union of unctuous elements," as The Honourable put it, and in the
+silence that fell for a moment there crept the words of the singer:
+
+         "And it's down the long side of Farcalladen Rise,
+               And it's swift as an arrow and straight as a spear--"
+
+Jo Gordineer interrupted.  "Say, Shon, when'll you be through that
+tobogan ride of yours?  Aint there any end to it?"
+
+But Shon was looking with both eyes now at the collaborators, and he sang
+softly on:
+
+         "And it's keen as the frost when the summer-time dies,
+               That we rode to the glen and with never a fear."
+
+Then he added: "The end's cut off, Joey, me boy; but what's a tobogan
+ride, annyway?"
+
+"Listen to that, Pierre.  I'll be eternally shivered if he knows what a
+tobogan ride is!"
+
+"Hot shivers it'll be for you, Joey, me boy, and no quinine over the bar
+aither," said Shon.
+
+"Tell him what a tobogan ride is, Pierre."
+
+And Pretty Pierre said: "Eh, well, I will tell you.  It is like-no, you
+have the word precise, Joseph.  Eh?  What?"
+
+Pierre then added something in French.  Shon did not understand it, but
+he saw The Honourable smile, so with a gentle kind of contempt he went on
+singing:
+
+         "And it's hey for the hedge, and it's hey for the wall!
+               And it's over the stream with an echoing cry;
+          And there's three fled for ever from old Donegal,
+               And there's two that have shown how bold Irishmen die."
+
+The Honourable then said, "What is that all about, Shon?  I never heard
+the song before."
+
+"No more you did.  And I wish I could see the lad that wrote that song,
+livin' or dead.  If one of ye's will tell me about your tobogan rides,
+I'll unfold about Farcalladen Rise."
+
+Prince Levis passed the liquor.  Pretty Pierre, seated on a candle-box,
+with a glass in his delicate fingers, said: "Eh, well, the Honourable has
+much language.  He can speak, precise--this would be better with a little
+lemon, just a little,--the Honourable, he, perhaps, will tell.  Eh?"
+
+Pretty Pierre was showing his white teeth.  At this stage in his career,
+he did not love the Honourable.  The Honourable understood that, but he
+made clear to Shon's mind what toboganing is.
+
+And Shon, on his part, with fresh and hearty voice, touched here and
+there by a plaintive modulation, told about that ride on Farcalladen
+Rise; a tale of broken laws, and fight and fighting, and death and exile;
+and never a word of hatred in it all.
+
+"And the writer of the song, who was he?" asked the Honourable.
+
+"A gentleman after God's own heart.  Heaven rest his soul, if he's dead,
+which I'm thinkin' is so, and give him the luck of the world if he's
+livin', say I.  But it's little I know what's come to him.  In the heart
+of Australia I saw him last; and mates we were together after gold.  And
+little gold did we get but what was in the heart of him.  And we parted
+one day, I carryin' the song that he wrote for me of Farcalladen Rise,
+and the memory of him; and him givin' me the word,'I'll not forget you,
+Shon, me boy, whatever comes; remember that.  And a short pull of the
+Three-Star together for the partin' salute,' says he.  And the Three-Star
+in one sup each we took, as solemn as the Mass, and he went away towards
+Cloncurry and I to the coast; and that's the last that I saw of him, now
+three years gone.  And here I am, and I wish I was with him wherever he
+is."
+
+"What was his name"? said the Honourable.
+
+"Lawless."
+
+The fingers of the Honourable trembled on his cigar.  "Very interesting,
+Shon," he said, as he rose, puffing hard till his face was in a cloud of
+smoke.  "You had many adventures together, I suppose," he continued.
+
+"Adventures we had and sufferin' bewhiles, and fun, too, to the neck and
+flowin' over."
+
+"You'll spin us a long yarn about them another night, Shon"? said the
+Honourable.
+
+"I'll do it now--a yarn as long as the lies of the Government; and proud
+of the chance."
+
+"Not to-night, Shon" (there was a kind of huskiness in the voice of the
+Honourable); "it's time to turn in.  We've a long tramp over the glacier
+to-morrow, and we must start at sunrise."
+
+The Honourable was in command of the party, though Jo Gordineer was the
+guide, and all were, for the moment, miners, making for the little Goshen
+Field over in Pipi Valley.--At least Pretty Pierre said he was a miner.
+
+No one thought of disputing the authority of the Honourable, and they all
+rose.
+
+In a few minutes there was silence in the hut, save for the oracular
+breathing of Prince Levis and the sparks from the fire.  But the
+Honourable did not sleep well; he lay and watched the fire through most
+of the night.
+
+The day was clear, glowing, decisive.  Not a cloud in the curve of azure,
+not a shiver of wind down the canon, not a frown in Nature, if we except
+the lowering shadows from the shoulders of the giants of the range.
+Crowning the shadows was a splendid helmet of light, rich with the dyes
+of the morning; the pines were touched with a brilliant if austere
+warmth.  The pride of lofty lineage and severe isolation was regnant over
+all.  And up through the splendour, and the shadows, and the loneliness,
+and the austere warmth, must our travellers go.  Must go?  Scarcely that,
+but the Honourable had made up his mind to cross the glacier and none
+sought to dissuade him from his choice; the more so, because there was
+something of danger in the business.  Pretty Pierre had merely shrugged
+his shoulders at the suggestion, and had said:
+
+"'Nom de Dieu,' the higher we go the faster we live, that is something."
+
+"Sometimes we live ourselves to death too quickly.  In my schooldays I
+watched a mouse in a jar of oxygen do that;" said the Honourable.
+
+"That is the best way to die," remarked the halfbreed--"much."
+
+Jo Gordineer had been over the path before.  He was confident of the way,
+and proud of his office of guide.
+
+"Climb Mont Blanc, if you will," said the Honourable, "but leave me these
+white bastions of the Selkirks."
+
+Even so.  They have not seen the snowy hills of God who have yet to look
+upon the Rocky Mountains, absolute, stupendous, sublimely grave.
+
+Jo Gordineer and Pretty Pierre strode on together.  They being well away
+from the other two, the Honourable turned and said to Shon: "What was the
+name of the man who wrote that song of yours, again, Shon?"
+
+"Lawless."
+
+"Yes, but his first name?"
+
+"Duke--Duke Lawless."
+
+There was a pause, in which the other seemed to be intently studying the
+glacier above them.  Then he said: "What was he like?--in appearance, I
+mean."
+
+"A trifle more than your six feet, about your colour of hair and eyes,
+and with a trick of smilin' that would melt the heart of an exciseman,
+and O'Connell's own at a joke, barrin' a time or two that he got hold of
+a pile of papers from the ould country.  By the grave of St. Shon!  thin
+he was as dry of fun as a piece of blotting paper.  And he said at last,
+before he was aisy and free again, 'Shon,' says he, 'it's better to burn
+your ships behind ye, isn't it?'
+
+"And I, havin' thought of a glen in ould Ireland that I'll never see
+again, nor any that's in it, said: 'Not, only burn them to the water's
+edge, Duke Lawless, but swear to your own soul that they never lived but
+in the dreams of the night.'
+
+"'You're right there, Shon,' says he, and after that no luck was bad
+enough to cloud the gay heart of him, and bad enough it was sometimes."
+
+"And why do you fear that he is not alive?"
+
+"Because I met an old mate of mine one day on the Frazer, and he said
+that Lawless had never come to Cloncurry; and a hard, hard road it was to
+travel."
+
+Jo Gordineer was calling to them, and there the conversation ended.
+In a few minutes the four stood on the edge of the glacier.  Each man had
+a long hickory stick which served as alpenstock, a bag hung at his side,
+and tied to his back was his gold-pan, the hollow side in, of course.
+Shon's was tied a little lower down than the others.
+
+They passed up this solid river of ice, this giant power at endless
+strife with the high hills, up towards its head.  The Honourable was the
+first to reach the point of vantage, and to look down upon the vast and
+wandering fissures, the frigid bulwarks, the great fortresses of ice, the
+ceaseless snows, the aisles of this mountain sanctuary through which
+Nature's splendid anthems rolled.  Shon was a short distance below, with
+his hand over his eyes, sweeping the semi-circle of glory.
+
+Suddenly there was a sharp cry from Pierre: "Mon Dieu!  Look!"
+
+Shon McGann had fallen on a smooth pavement of ice.  The gold-pan was
+beneath him, and down the glacier he was whirled-whirled, for Shon had
+thrust his heels in the snow and ice, and the gold-pan performed a series
+of circles as it sped down the incline.  His fingers clutched the ice and
+snow, but they only left a red mark of blood behind.  Must he go the
+whole course of that frozen slide, plump into the wild depths below?
+
+"'Mon Dieu!--mon Dieu!'"  said Pretty Pierre, piteously.  The face of the
+Honourable was set and tense.
+
+Jo Gordineer's hand clutched his throat as if he choked.  Still Shon
+sped.  It was a matter of seconds only.  The tragedy crowded to the awful
+end.
+
+But, no.
+
+There was a tilt in the glacier, and the gold-pan, suddenly swirling,
+again swung to the outer edge, and shot over.
+
+As if hurled from a catapult, the Irishman was ejected from the white
+monster's back.  He fell on a wide shelf of ice, covered with light snow,
+through which he was tunnelled, and dropped on another ledge below, near
+the path by which he and his companions had ascended.  "Shied from the
+finish, by God!" said Jo Gordineer.  "'Le pauvre Shon!'"  added Pretty
+Pierre.
+
+The Honourable was making his way down, his brain haunted by the words,
+"He'll never go back to Farcalladen more."
+
+But Jo was right.
+
+For Shon McGann was alive.  He lay breathless, helpless, for a moment;
+then he sat up and scanned his lacerated fingers: he looked up the path
+by which he had come; he looked down the path he seemed destined to go;
+he started to scratch his head, but paused in the act, by reason of his
+fingers.
+
+Then he said: "It's my mother wouldn't know me from a can of cold meat
+if I hadn't stopped at this station; but wurrawurra, what a car it was to
+come in!"  He examined his tattered clothes and bare elbows; then he
+unbuckled the gold-pan, and no easy task was it with his ragged fingers.
+"'Twas not for deep minin' I brought ye," he said to the pan, "nor for
+scrapin' the clothes from me back."
+
+Just then the Honourable came up.  "Shon, my man .  .  .  alive, thank
+God!  How is it with you?"
+
+"I'm hardly worth the lookin' at.  I wouldn't turn my back to ye for a
+ransom."
+
+"It's enough that you're here at all."
+
+"Ah, 'voila!'  this Irishman!" said Pretty Pierre, as his light fingers
+touched Shon's bruised arm gently.  This from Pretty Pierre!
+
+There was that in the voice which went to Shon's heart.  Who could have
+guessed that this outlaw of the North would ever show a sign of sympathy
+or friendship for anybody?  But it goes to prove that you can never be
+exact in your estimate of character.  Jo Gordineer only said jestingly:
+"Say, now, what are you doing, Shon, bringing us down here, when we might
+be well into the Valley by this time?"
+
+"That in your face and the hair aff your head," said Shon; "it's little
+you know a tobogan ride when you see one.  I'll take my share of the
+grog, by the same token."
+
+The Honourable uncorked his flask.  Shon threw back his head with a
+laugh.
+
+         "For it's rest when the gallop is over, me men!
+          And it's here's to the lads that have ridden their last;
+          And it's here's--"
+
+But Shon had fainted with the flask in his hand and this snatch of a song
+on his lips.
+
+They reached shelter that night.  Had it not been for the accident, they
+would have got to their destination in the Valley; but here they were
+twelve miles from it.  Whether this was fortunate or unfortunate may be
+seen later.  Comfortably bestowed in this mountain tavern, after they had
+toasted and eaten their venison and lit their pipes, they drew about the
+fire.
+
+Besides the four, there was a figure that lay sleeping in a corner on a
+pile of pine branches, wrapped in a bearskin robe.  Whoever it was slept
+soundly.
+
+"And what was it like--the gold-pan flyer--the tobogan ride, Shon?"
+remarked Jo Gordineer.
+
+"What was it like?--what was it like"? replied Shon.  "Sure, I couldn't
+see what it was like for the stars that were hittin' me in the eyes.
+There wasn't any world at all.  I was ridin' on a streak of lightnin',
+and nivir a rubber for the wheels; and my fingers makin' stripes of blood
+on the snow; and now the stars that were hittin' me were white, and thin
+they were red, and sometimes blue--"
+
+"The Stars and Stripes," inconsiderately remarked Jo Gordineer.
+
+"And there wasn't any beginning to things, nor any end of them; and whin
+I struck the snow and cut down the core of it like a cat through a glass,
+I was willin' to say with the Prophet of Ireland--"
+
+"Are you going to pass the liniment, Pretty Pierre?"  It was Jo Gordineer
+said that.
+
+What the Prophet of Israel did say--Israel and Ireland were identical to
+Shon--was never told.
+
+Shon's bubbling sarcasm was full-stopped by the beneficent savour that,
+rising now from the hands of the four, silenced all irrelevant speech.
+It was a function of importance.  It was not simply necessary to say How!
+or Here's reformation! or I look towards you!  As if by a common
+instinct, the Honourable, Jo Gordineer, and Pretty Pierre, turned towards
+Shon and lifted their glasses.  Jo Gordineer was going to say: "Here's a
+safe foot in the stirrups to you," but he changed his mind and drank in
+silence.
+
+Shon's eye had been blazing with fun, but it took on, all at once, a
+misty twinkle.  None of them had quite bargained for this.  The feeling
+had come like a wave of soft lightning, and had passed through them.  Did
+it come from the Irishman himself?  Was it his own nature acting through
+those who called him "partner"?
+
+Pretty Pierre got up and kicked savagely at the wood in the big
+fireplace.  He ostentatiously and needlessly put another log of Norfolk-
+pine upon the fire.
+
+The Honourable gaily suggested a song.
+
+"Sing us 'Avec les Braves Sauvages,' Pierre," said Jo Gordineer.
+
+But Pierre waved his fingers towards Shon: "Shon, his song--he did not
+finish--on the glacier.  It is good we hear all.  'Hein?'"
+
+And so Shon sang:
+
+         "Oh it's down the long side of Farcalladen Rise."
+
+The sleeper on the pine branches stirred nervously, as if the song were
+coming through a dream to him.  At the third verse he started up, and an
+eager, sun-burned face peered from the half-darkness at the singer.  The
+Honourable was sitting in the shadow, with his back to the new actor in
+the scene.
+
+         "For it's rest when the gallop is over, my men I
+          And it's here's to the lads that have ridden their last!
+          And it's here's--"
+
+Shon paused.  One of those strange lapses of memory came to him which
+come at times to most of us concerning familiar things.  He could get no
+further than he did on the mountain side.  He passed his hand over his
+forehead, stupidly:--"Saints forgive me; but it's gone from me, and sorra
+the one can I get it; me that had it by heart, and the lad that wrote it
+far away.  Death in the world, but I'll try it again!
+
+         "For it's rest when the gallop is over, my men!
+          And it's here's to the lads that have ridden their last!
+          And it's here's--"
+
+Again he paused.
+
+But from the half-darkness there came a voice, a clear baritone:
+
+         "And here's to the lasses we leave in the glen,
+          With a smile for the future, a sigh for the past."
+
+At the last words the figure strode down into the firelight.
+
+"Shon, old friend, don't you know me?"
+
+Shon had started to his feet at the first note of the voice, and stood as
+if spellbound.
+
+There was no shaking of hands.  Both men held each other hard by the
+shoulders, and stood so for a moment looking steadily eye to eye.
+
+Then Shon said: "Duke Lawless, there's parallels of latitude and
+parallels of longitude, but who knows the tomb of ould Brian Borhoime?"
+
+Which was his way of saying, "How come you here?"  Duke Lawless turned to
+the others before he replied.  His eyes fell on the Honourable.  With a
+start and a step backward, and with a peculiar angry dryness in his
+voice, he said:
+
+"Just Trafford!"
+
+"Yes," replied the Honourable, smiling, "I have found you."
+
+"Found me!  And why have you sought me?  Me, Duke Lawless?  I should have
+thought--"
+
+The Honourable interrupted: "To tell you that you are Sir Duke Lawless."
+
+"That?  You sought me to tell me that?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"You are sure?  And for naught else?"
+
+"As I live, Duke."
+
+The eyes fixed on the Honourable were searching.  Sir Duke hesitated,
+then held out his hand.  In a swift but cordial silence it was taken.
+Nothing more could be said then.  It is only in plays where gentlemen
+freely discuss family affairs before a curious public.  Pretty Pierre was
+busy with a decoction.  Jo Gordineer was his associate.  Shon had drawn
+back, and was apparently examining the indentations on his gold-pan.
+
+"Shon, old fellow, come here," said Sir Duke Lawless.
+
+But Shon had received a shock.  "It's little I knew Sir Duke Lawless--"
+he said.
+
+"It's little you needed to know then, or need to know now, Shon, my
+friend.  I'm Duke Lawless to you here and henceforth, as ever I was then,
+on the wallaby track."
+
+And Shon believed him.  The glasses were ready.
+
+"I'll give the toast," said the Honourable with a gentle gravity.  "To
+Shon McGann and his Tobogan Ride!"
+
+"I'll drink to the first half of it with all my heart," said Sir Duke.
+"It's all I know about."
+
+"Amen to that divorce," rejoined Shon.
+
+"But were it not for the Tobogan Ride we shouldn't have stopped here,"
+said the Honourable; "and where would this meeting have been?"
+
+"That alters the case," Sir Duke remarked.  "I take back the 'Amen,'"
+said Shon.
+
+
+
+II
+
+Whatever claims Shon had upon the companionship of Sir Duke Lawless,
+he knew there were other claims that were more pressing.  After the toast
+was finished, with an emphasised assumption of weariness, and a hint of a
+long yarn on the morrow, he picked up his blanket and started for the
+room where all were to sleep.  The real reason of this early departure
+was clear to Pretty Pierre at once, and in due time it dawned upon Jo
+Gordineer.
+
+The two Englishmen, left alone, sat for a few moments silent and smoking
+hard.  Then the Honourable rose, got his knapsack, and took out a small
+number of papers, which he handed to Sir Duke, saying, "By slow postal
+service to Sir Duke Lawless.  Residence, somewhere on one of five
+continents."
+
+An envelope bearing a woman's writing was the first thing that met Sir
+Duke's eye.  He stared, took it out, turned it over, looked curiously at
+the Honourable for a moment, and then began to break the seal.
+
+"Wait, Duke.  Do not read that.  We have something to say to each other
+first."
+
+Sir Duke laid the letter down.  "You have some explanation to make," he
+said.
+
+"It was so long ago; mightn't it be better to go over the story again?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"Then it is best you should tell it.  I am on my defence, you know."
+
+Sir Duke leaned back, and a frown gathered on his forehead.  Strikingly
+out of place on his fresh face it seemed.  Looking quickly from the fire
+to the face of the Honourable and back again earnestly, as if the full
+force of what was required came to him, he said: "We shall get the
+perspective better if we put the tale in the third person.  Duke Lawless
+was the heir to the title and estates of Trafford Court.  Next in
+succession to him was Just Trafford, his cousin.  Lawless had an income
+sufficient for a man of moderate tastes.  Trafford had not quite that,
+but he had his profession of the law.  At college they had been fast
+friends, but afterwards had drifted apart, through no cause save
+difference of pursuits and circumstances.  Friends they still were and
+likely to be so always.  One summer, when on a visit to his uncle,
+Admiral Sir Clavel Lawless, at Trafford Court, where a party of people
+had been invited for a month, Duke Lawless fell in love with Miss Emily
+Dorset.  She did him the honour to prefer him to any other man--at least,
+he thought so.  Her income, however, was limited like his own.  The
+engagement was not announced, for Lawless wished to make a home before he
+took a wife.  He inclined to ranching in Canada, or a planter's life in
+Queensland.  The eight or ten thousand pounds necessary was not, however,
+easy to get for the start, and he hadn't the least notion of discounting
+the future, by asking the admiral's help.  Besides, he knew his uncle did
+not wish him to marry unless he married a woman plus a fortune.  While
+things were in this uncertain state, Just Trafford arrived on a visit to
+Trafford Court.  The meeting of the old friends was cordial.  Immediately
+on Trafford's arrival, however, the current of events changed.  Things
+occurred which brought disaster.  It was noticeable that Miss Emily
+Dorset began to see a deal more of Admiral Lawless and Just Trafford,
+and a deal less of the younger Lawless.  One day Duke Lawless came back
+to the house unexpectedly, his horse having knocked up on the road.
+On entering the library he saw what turned the course of his life."
+Sir Duke here paused, sighed, shook the ashes out of his pipe with a
+grave and expressive anxiety which did not properly belong to the action,
+and remained for a moment, both arms on his knees, silent, and looking at
+the fire.  Then he continued:
+
+"Just Trafford sat beside Emily Dorset in an attitude of--say,
+affectionate consideration.  She had been weeping, and her whole manner
+suggested very touching confidences.  They both rose on the entrance of
+Lawless; but neither tried to say a word.  What could they say?  Lawless
+apologised, took a book from the table which he had not come for, and
+left."
+
+Again Sir Duke paused.
+
+"The book was an illustrated Much Ado About Nothing," said the
+Honourable.
+
+"A few hours after, Lawless had an interview with Emily Dorset.
+He demanded, with a good deal of feeling, perhaps,--for he was romantic
+enough to love the girl,--an explanation.  He would have asked it of
+Trafford first if he had seen him.  She said Lawless should trust her;
+that she had no explanation at that moment to give.  If he waited--but
+Lawless asked her if she cared for him at all, if she wished or intended
+to marry him?  She replied lightly, 'Perhaps, when you become Sir Duke
+Lawless.'  Then Lawless accused her of heartlessness, and of encouraging
+both his uncle and Just Trafford.  She amusingly said, 'Perhaps she had,
+but it really didn't matter, did it?'  For reply, Lawless said her
+interest in the whole family seemed active and impartial.  He bade her
+not vex herself at all about him, and not to wait until he became Sir
+Duke Lawless, but to give preference to seniority and begin with the
+title at once; which he has reason since to believe that she did.  What
+he said to her he has been sorry for, not because he thinks it was
+undeserved, but because he has never been able since to rouse himself to
+anger on the subject, nor to hate the girl and Just Trafford as he ought.
+Of the dead he is silent altogether.  He never sought an explanation from
+Just Trafford, for he left that night for London, and in two days was on
+his way to Australia.  The day he left, however, he received a note from
+his banker saying that L8000 had been placed to his credit by Admiral
+Lawless.  Feeling the indignity of what he believed was the cause of the
+gift, Lawless neither acknowledged it nor used it, not any penny of it.
+Five years have gone since then, and Lawless has wandered over two
+continents, a self-created exile.  He has learned much that he didn't
+learn at Oxford; and not the least of all, that the world is not so bad
+as is claimed for it, that it isn't worth while hating and cherishing
+hate, that evil is half-accidental, half-natural, and that hard work in
+the face of nature is the thing to pull a man together and strengthen him
+for his place in the universe.  Having burned his ships behind him, that
+is the way Lawless feels.  And the story is told."
+
+Just Trafford sat looking musingly but imperturbably at Sir Duke for a
+minute; then he said:
+
+"That is your interpretation of the story, but not the story.  Let us
+turn the medal over now.  And, first, let Trafford say that he has the
+permission of Emily Dorset--"
+
+Sir Duke interrupted: "Of her who was Emily Dorset."
+
+"Of Miss Emily Dorset, to tell what she did not tell that day five years
+ago.  After this other reading of the tale has been rendered, her letter
+and those documents are there for fuller testimony.  Just Trafford's part
+in the drama begins, of course, with the library scene.  Now Duke Lawless
+had never known Trafford's half-brother, Hall Vincent.  Hall was born in
+India, and had lived there most of his life.  He was in the Indian
+Police, and had married a clever, beautiful, but impossible kind of girl,
+against the wishes of her parents.  The marriage was not a very happy
+one.  This was partly owing to the quick Lawless and Trafford blood,
+partly to the wife's wilfulness.  Hall thought that things might go
+better if he came to England to live.  On their way from Madras to
+Colombo he had some words with his wife one day about the way she
+arranged her hair, but nothing serious.  This was shortly after tiffin.
+That evening they entered the harbour at Colombo; and Hall going to his
+cabin to seek his wife, could not find her; but in her stead was her
+hair, arranged carefully in flowing waves on the pillow, where through
+the voyage her head had lain.  That she had cut it off and laid it there
+was plain; but she could not be found, nor was she ever found.  The large
+porthole was open; this was the only clue.  But we need not go further
+into that.  Hall Vincent came home to England.  He told his brother the
+story as it has been told to you, and then left for South America, a
+broken-spirited man.  The wife's family came on to England also.  They
+did not meet Hall Vincent; but one day Just Trafford met at a country
+seat in Devon, for the first time, the wife's sister.  She had not known
+of the relationship between Hall Vincent and the Traffords; and on a
+memorable afternoon he told her the full story of the married life and
+the final disaster, as Hall had told it to him."
+
+Sir Duke sprang to his feet.  "You mean, Just, that--"
+
+"I mean that Emily Dorset was the sister of Hall Vincent's wife."
+
+Sir Duke's brown fingers clasped and unclasped nervously.  He was about
+to speak, but the Honourable said: "That is only half the story--wait.
+
+"Emily Dorset would have told Lawless all in due time, but women don't
+like to be bullied ever so little, and that, and the unhappiness of the
+thing, kept her silent in her short interview with Lawless.  She could
+not have guessed that Lawless would go as he did.  Now, the secret of her
+diplomacy with the uncle--diplomacy is the best word to use--was Duke
+Lawless's advancement.  She knew how he had set his heart on the ranching
+or planting life.  She would have married him without a penny, but she
+felt his pride in that particular, and respected it.  So, like a clever
+girl, she determined to make the old chap give Lawless a cheque on his
+possible future.  Perhaps, as things progressed, the same old chap got an
+absurd notion in his head about marrying her to Just Trafford, but that
+was meanwhile all the better for Lawless.  The very day that Emily Dorset
+and Just Trafford succeeded in melting Admiral Lawless's heart to the
+tune of eight thousand, was the day that Duke Lawless doubted his friend
+and challenged the loyalty of the girl he loved."
+
+Sir Duke's eyes filled.  "Great Heaven!  Just--" he said.
+
+"Be quiet for a little.  You see she had taken Trafford into her scheme
+against his will, for he was never good at mysteries and theatricals, and
+he saw the danger.  But the cause was a good one, and he joined the sweet
+conspiracy, with what result these five years bear witness.  Admiral
+Lawless has been dead a year and a half, his wife a year.  For he married
+out of anger with Duke Lawless; but he did not marry Emily Dorset, nor
+did he beget a child."
+
+"In Australia I saw a paragraph speaking of a visit made by him and Lady
+Lawless to a hospital, and I thought--"
+
+"You thought he had married Emily Dorset and--well, you had better read
+that letter now."
+
+Sir Duke's face was flushing with remorse and pain.  He drew his hand
+quickly across his eyes.  "And you've given up London, your profession,
+everything, just to hunt for me, to tell me this--you who would have
+profited by my eternal absence!  What a beast and ass I've been!"
+
+"Not at all; only a bit poetical and hasty, which is not unnatural in the
+Lawless blood.  I should have been wild myself, maybe, if I had been in
+your position; only I shouldn't have left England, and I should have
+taken the papers regularly and have asked the other fellow to explain.
+The other fellow didn't like the little conspiracy.  Women, however, seem
+to find that kind of thing a moral necessity.  By the way, I wish when
+you go back you'd send me out my hunting traps.  I've made up my mind
+to--oh, quite so--read the letter--I forgot!"
+
+Sir Duke opened the letter and read it, putting it away from him now and
+then as if it hurt him, and taking it up a moment after to continue the
+reading.  The Honourable watched him.
+
+At last Sir Duke rose.  "Just--"
+
+"Yes?  Go on."
+
+"Do you think she would have me now?"
+
+"Don't know.  Your outfit is not so beautiful as it used to be."
+
+"Don't chaff me."
+
+"Don't be so funereal, then."
+
+Under the Honourable's matter of fact air Sir Duke's face began to clear.
+"Tell me, do you think she still cares for me?"
+
+"Well, I don't know.  She's rich now--got the grandmother's stocking.
+Then there's Pedley, of the Scots Guards; he has been doing loyal service
+for a couple of years.  What does the letter say?"
+
+"It only tells the truth, as you have told it to me, but from her
+standpoint; not a word that says anything but beautiful reproach and
+general kindness.  That is all."
+
+"Quite so.  You see it was all four years ago, and Pedley--"
+
+But the Honourable paused.  He had punished his friend enough.  He
+stepped forward and laid his hand on Sir Duke's shoulder.  "Duke, you
+want to pick up the threads where they were dropped.  You dropped them.
+Ask me nothing about the ends that Emily Dorset held.  I conspire no
+more.  But go you and learn your fate.  If one remembers, why should the
+other forget?"
+
+Sir Duke's light heart and eager faith came back with a rush.  "I'll
+start for England at once.  I'll know the worst or the best of it before
+three months are out."  The Honourable's slow placidity turned.
+
+"Three months.--Yes, you may do it in that time.  Better go from Victoria
+to San Francisco and then overland.  You'll not forget about my hunting
+traps, and--oh, certainly, Gordineer; come in."
+
+"Say," said Gordineer.  "I don't want to disturb the meeting, but Shon's
+in chancery somehow; breathing like a white pine, and thrashing about!
+He's red-hot with fever."
+
+Before he had time to say more, Sir Duke seized the candle and entered
+the room.  Shon was moving uneasily and suppressing the groans that shook
+him.  "Shon, old friend, what is it?"
+
+"It's the pain here, Lawless," laying his hand on his chest.
+
+After a moment Sir Duke said, "Pneumonia!"
+
+From that instant thoughts of himself were sunk in the care and thought
+of the man who in the heart of Queensland had been mate and friend and
+brother to him.  He did not start for England the next day, nor for many
+a day.
+
+Pretty Pierre and Jo Gordineer and his party carried Sir Duke's letters
+over into the Pipi Valley, from where they could be sent on to the coast.
+Pierre came back in a few days to see how Shon was, and expressed his
+determination of staying to help Sir Duke, if need be.
+
+Shon hovered between life and death.  It was not alone the pneumonia
+that racked his system so; there was also the shock he had received in
+his flight down the glacier.  In his delirium he seemed to be always
+with Lawless:
+
+"'For it's down the long side of Farcalladen Rise'--It's share and share
+even, Lawless, and ye'll ate the rest of it, or I'll lave ye--Did ye say
+ye'd found water--Lawless--water!--Sure you're drinkin' none yourself--
+I'll sing it again for you then--'And it's back with the ring of the
+chain and the spur'--'But burn all your ships behind you'--'I'll never go
+back to Farcalladen more!'"
+
+Sir Duke's fingers had a trick of kindness, a suggestion of comfort,
+a sense of healing, that made his simple remedies do more than natural
+duty.  He was doctor, nurse,--sleepless nurse,--and careful apothecary.
+And when at last the danger was past and he could relax watching, he
+would not go, and he did not go, till they could all travel to the Pipi
+Valley.
+
+In the blue shadows of the firs they stand as we take our leave of one
+of them.  The Honourable and Sir Duke have had their last words, and Sir
+Duke has said he will remember about the hunting traps.  They understand
+each other.  There is sunshine in the face of all--a kind of Indian
+summer sunshine, infused with the sadness of a coming winter; and theirs
+is the winter of parting.  Yet it is all done quietly.
+
+"We'll meet again, Shon," said Sir Duke, "and you'll remember your
+promise to write to me."
+
+"I'll keep my promise, and I hope the news that'll please you best is
+what you'll send us first from England.  And if you should go to ould
+Donegal--I've no words for me thoughts at all!"
+
+"I know them.  Don't try to say them.  We've not had the luck together,
+all kinds and all weathers, for nothing."
+
+Sir Duke's eyes smiled a good-bye into the smiling eyes of Shon.  They
+were much alike, these two, whose stations were so far apart.  Yet
+somewhere, in generations gone, their ancestors may have toiled, feasted,
+or governed, in the same social hemisphere; and here in the mountains
+life was levelled to one degree again.
+
+Sir Duke looked round.  The pines were crowding up elate and warm towards
+the peaks of the white silence.  The river was brawling over a broken
+pathway of boulders at their feet; round the edge of a mighty mountain
+crept a mule train; a far-off glacier glistened harshly in the lucid
+morning, yet not harshly either, but with the rugged form of a vast
+antiquity, from which these scarred and grimly austere hills had grown.
+Here Nature was filled with a sense of triumphant mastery--the mastery
+of ageless experience.  And down the great piles there blew a wind of
+stirring life, of the composure of great strength, and touched the four,
+and the man that mounted now was turned to go.  A quick good-bye from him
+to all; a God-speed-you from the Honourable; a wave of the hand between
+the rider and Shon, and Sir Duke Lawless was gone.
+
+"You had better cook the last of that bear this morning, Pierre," said
+the Honourable.  And their life went on.
+
+                    ........................
+
+It was eight months after that, sitting in their hut after a day's
+successful mining, the Honourable handed Shon a newspaper to read.
+A paragraph was marked.  It concerned the marriage of Miss Emily Dorset
+and Sir Duke Lawless.
+
+And while Shon read, the Honourable called into the tent: "Have you any
+lemons for the whisky, Pierre?"
+
+A satisfactory reply being returned, the Honourable proceeded: "We'll
+begin with the bottle of Pommery, which I've been saving months for
+this."
+
+The royal-flush toast of the evening belonged to Shon.
+
+"God bless him!  To the day when we see him again!"
+
+And all of them saw that day.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PERE CHAMPAGNE
+
+"Is it that we stand at the top of the hill and the end of the travel has
+come, Pierre?  Why don't you spake?"
+
+"We stand at the top of the hill, and it is the end."
+
+"And Lonely Valley is at our feet and Whiteface Mountain beyond?"
+
+"One at our feet, and the other beyond, Shon McGann."
+
+"It's the sight of my eyes I wish I had in the light of the sun this
+mornin'.  Tell me, what is't you see?"
+
+"I see the trees on the foot-hills, and all the branches shine with
+frost.  There is a path--so wide!--between two groves of pines.  On
+Whiteface Mountain lies a glacier-field . . .  and all is still." . . .
+
+"The voice of you is far-away-like, Pierre--it shivers as a hawk cries.
+It's the wind, the wind, maybe."
+
+"There's not a breath of life from hill or valley."
+
+"But I feel it in my face."
+
+"It is not the breath of life you feel."
+
+"Did you not hear voices coming athwart the wind? . . .  Can you see the
+people at the mines?"
+
+"I have told you what I see."
+
+"You told me of the pine-trees, and the glacier, and the snow--"
+
+"And that is all."
+
+"But in the Valley, in the Valley, where all the miners are?"
+
+"I cannot see them."
+
+"For love of heaven, don't tell me that the dark is fallin' on your eyes
+too."
+
+"No, Shon, I am not growing blind."
+
+"Will you not tell me what gives the ache to your words?"
+
+"I see in the Valley--snow . . . snow."
+
+"It's a laugh you have at me in your cheek, whin I'd give years of my
+ill-spent life to watch the chimney smoke come curlin' up slow through
+the sharp air in the Valley there below."
+
+"There is no chimney and there is no smoke in all the Valley."
+
+"Before God, if you're a man, you'll put your hand on my arm and tell me
+what trouble quakes your speech."
+
+"Shon McGann, it is for you to make the sign of the Cross . . . there,
+while I put my hand on your shoulder--so!"
+
+"Your hand is heavy, Pierre."
+
+"This is the sight of the eyes that see.  In the Valley there is snow;
+in the snow of all that was, there is one poppet-head of the mine that
+was called St. Gabriel .  .  .  upon the poppet-head there is the figure
+of a woman."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"She does not move--"
+
+"She will never move?"
+
+"She will never move."
+
+"The breath o' my body hurts me.  .  .  .  There is death in the Valley,
+Pierre?"
+
+"There is death."
+
+"It was an avalanche--that path between the pines?"
+
+"And a great storm after."
+
+"Blessed be God that I cannot behold that thing this day!  .  .  .  And
+the woman, Pierre, the woman aloft?"
+
+"She went to watch for someone coming, and as she watched, the avalanche
+came--and she moves not."
+
+"Do we know that woman?"
+
+"Who can tell?"
+
+"What was it you whispered soft to yourself, then, Pierre?"
+
+"I whispered no word."
+
+"There, don't you hear it, soft and sighin'?  .  .  .  Nathalie!"
+
+"'Mon Dieu!'  It is not of the world."
+
+"It's facin' the poppet-head where she stands I'd be."
+
+"Your face is turned towards her."
+
+"Where is the sun?"
+
+"The sun stands still above her head."
+
+"With the bitter over, and the avil past, come rest for her and all that
+lie there."
+
+"Eh, 'bien,' the game is done!"
+
+"If we stay here we shall die also."
+
+"If we go we die, perhaps."  .  .  .
+
+"Don't spake it.  We will go, and we will return when the breath of
+summer comes from the South."
+
+"It shall be so."
+
+"Hush!  Did you not hear--?"
+
+"I did not hear.  I only see an eagle, and it flies towards Whiteface
+Mountain."
+
+And Shon McGann and Pretty Pierre turned back from the end of their
+quest--from a mighty grave behind to a lonely waste before; and though
+one was snow-blind, and the other knew that on him fell the chiefer
+weight of a great misfortune, for he must provide food and fire and be as
+a mother to his comrade--they had courage; without which, men are as the
+standing straw in an unreaped field in winter; but having become like the
+hooded pine, that keepeth green in frost, and hath the bounding blood in
+all its icy branches.
+
+And whence they came and wherefore was as thus:
+
+A French Canadian once lived in Lonely Valley.  One day great fortune
+came to him, because it was given him to discover the mine St. Gabriel.
+And he said to the woman who loved him, "I will go with mules and much
+gold, that I have hewn and washed and gathered, to a village in the East
+where my father and my mother are.  They are poor, but I will make them
+rich; and then I will return to Lonely Valley, and a priest shall come
+with me, and we will dwell here at Whiteface Mountain, where men are men
+and not children."  And the woman blessed him, and prayed for him, and
+let him go.
+
+He travelled far through passes of the mountains, and came at last where
+new cities lay upon the plains, and where men were full of evil and of
+lust of gold.  And he was free of hand and light of heart; and at a place
+called Diamond City false friends came about him, and gave him champagne
+wine to drink, and struck him down and robbed him, leaving him for dead.
+
+And he was found, and his wounds were all healed: all save one, and that
+was in the brain.  Men called him mad.
+
+He wandered through the land, preaching to men to drink no wine, and to
+shun the sight of gold.  And they laughed at him, and called him Pere
+Champagne.
+
+But one day much gold was found at a place called Reef o' Angel; and
+jointly with the gold came a plague which scars the face and rots the
+body; and Indians died by hundreds and white men by scores; and Pere
+Champagne, of all who were not stricken down, feared nothing, and did not
+flee, but went among the sick and dying, and did those deeds which gold
+cannot buy, and prayed those prayers which were never sold.  And who can
+count how high the prayers of the feckless go!
+
+When none was found to bury the dead, he gave them place himself beneath
+the prairie earth,--consecrated only by the tears of a fool,--and for
+extreme unction he had but this: "God be merciful to me, a sinner!"
+
+Now it happily chanced that Pierre and Shon McGann, who travelled
+westward, came upon this desperate battle-field, and saw how Pere
+Champagne dared the elements of scourge and death; and they paused and
+laboured with him--to save where saving was granted of Heaven, and to
+bury when the Reaper reaped and would not stay his hand.  At last the
+plague ceased, because winter stretched its wings out swiftly o'er the
+plains from frigid ranges in the West.  And then Pere Champagne fell ill
+again.
+
+And this last great sickness cured his madness: and he remembered whence
+he had come, and what befell him at Diamond City so many moons ago.  And
+he prayed them, when he knew his time was come, that they would go to
+Lonely Valley and tell his story to the woman whom he loved; and say that
+he was going to a strange but pleasant Land, and that there he would
+await her coming.  He begged them that they would go at once, that she
+might know, and not strain her eyes to blindness, and be sick at heart
+because he came not.  And he told them her name, and drew the coverlet up
+about his head and seemed to sleep; but he waked between the day and
+dark, and gently cried: "The snow is heavy on the mountain .  .  .  and
+the Valley is below. . . . 'Gardez,  mon  Pere!' . . .  Ah,  Nathalie!"
+And they buried him between the dark and dawn.
+
+Though winds were fierce, and travel full of peril, they kept their word,
+and passed along wide steppes of snow, until they entered passes of the
+mountains, and again into the plains; and at last one 'poudre' day, when
+frost was shaking like shreds of faintest silver through the air, Shon
+McGann's sight fled.  But he would not turn back--a promise to a dying
+man was sacred, and he could follow if he could not lead; and there was
+still some pemmican, and there were martens in the woods, and wandering
+deer that good spirits hunted into the way of the needy; and Pierre's
+finger along the gun was sure.
+
+Pierre did not tell Shon that for many days they travelled woods where no
+sunshine entered; where no trail had ever been, nor foot of man had trod:
+that they had lost their way.  Nor did he make his comrade know that one
+night he sat and played a game of solitaire to see if they would ever
+reach the place called Lonely Valley.  Before the cards were dealt, he
+made a sign upon his breast and forehead.  Three times he played, and
+three times he counted victory; and before three suns had come and gone,
+they climbed a hill that perched over Lonely Valley.  And of what they
+saw and their hearts felt we know.
+
+And when they turned their faces eastward they were as men who go to meet
+a final and a conquering enemy; but they had kept their honour with the
+man upon whose grave-tree Shon McGann had carved beneath his name these
+words:
+
+                    "A Brother of Aaron."
+
+Upon a lonely trail they wandered, the spirits of lost travellers
+hungering in their wake--spirits that mumbled in cedar thickets, and
+whimpered down the flumes of snow.  And Pierre, who knew that evil things
+are exorcised by mighty conjuring, sang loudly, from a throat made thin
+by forced fasting, a song with which his mother sought to drive away the
+devils of dreams that flaunted on his pillow when a child: it was the
+song of the Scarlet Hunter.  And the charm sufficed; for suddenly of a
+cheerless morning they came upon a trapper's hut in the wilderness, where
+their sufferings ceased, and the sight of Shon's eyes came back.  When
+strength returned also, they journeyed to an Indian village, where a
+priest laboured.  Him they besought; and when spring came they set forth
+to Lonely Valley again that the woman and the smothered dead--if it might
+chance so--should be put away into peaceful graves.  But thither coming
+they only saw a grey and churlish river; and the poppet-head of the mine
+of St. Gabriel, and she who had knelt thereon, were vanished into
+solitudes, where only God's cohorts have the rights of burial.  .  .  .
+
+But the priest prayed humbly for their so swiftly summoned souls.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SCARLET HUNTER
+
+"News out of Egypt!" said the Honourable Just Trafford.  "If this is
+true, it gives a pretty finish to the season.  You think it possible,
+Pierre?  It is every man's talk that there isn't a herd of buffaloes in
+the whole country; but this-eh?"
+
+Pierre did not seem disposed to answer.  He had been watching a man's
+face for some time; but his eyes were now idly following the smoke of his
+cigarette as it floated away to the ceiling in fading circles.  He seemed
+to take no interest in Trafford's remarks, nor in the tale that Shangi
+the Indian had told them; though Shangi and his tale were both
+sufficiently uncommon to justify attention.
+
+Shon McGann was more impressionable.  His eyes swam; his feet shifted
+nervously with enjoyment; he glanced frequently at his gun in the corner
+of the hut; he had watched Trafford's face with some anxiety, and
+accepted the result of the tale with delight.  Now his look was occupied
+with Pierre.
+
+Pierre was a pretty good authority in all matters concerning the prairies
+and the North.  He also had an instinct for detecting veracity, having
+practised on both sides of the equation.  Trafford became impatient, and
+at last the half-breed, conscious that he had tried the temper of his
+chief so far as was safe, lifted his eyes, and, resting them casually on
+the Indian, replied: "Yes, I know the place.  .  .  .  No, I have not
+been there, but I was told-ah, it was long ago!  There is a great valley
+between hills, the Kimash Hills, the hills of the Mighty Men.  The woods
+are deep and dark; there is but one trail through them, and it is old.
+On the highest hill is a vast mound.  In that mound are the forefathers
+of a nation that is gone.  Yes, as you say, they are dead, and there is
+none of them alive in the valley--which is called the White Valley--where
+the buffalo are.  The valley is green in summer, and the snow is not deep
+in winter; the noses of the buffalo can find the tender grass.  The Injin
+speaks the truth, perhaps.  But of the number of buffaloes, one must see.
+The eye of the red man multiplies."
+
+Trafford looked at Pierre closely.  "You seem to know the place very
+well.  It is a long way north where--ah yes, you said you had never been
+there; you were told.  Who told you?"
+
+The half-breed raised his eyebrows slightly as he replied: "I can
+remember a long time, and my mother, she spoke much and sang many songs
+at the campfires."  Then he puffed his cigarette so that the smoke
+clouded his face for a moment, and went on,--"I think there may be
+buffaloes."
+
+"It's along the barrel of me gun I wish I was lookin' at thim now," said
+McGann.
+
+"'Tiens,' you will go"? inquired Pierre of Trafford.  "To have a shot at
+the only herd of wild buffaloes on the continent!  Of course I'll go.
+I'd go to the North Pole for that.  Sport and novelty I came here to see;
+buffalo-hunting I did not expect.  I'm in luck, that's all.  We'll start
+to-morrow morning, if we can get ready, and Shangi here will lead us; eh,
+Pierre?"
+
+The half-breed again was not polite.  Instead of replying he sang almost
+below his breath the words of a song unfamiliar to his companions, though
+the Indian's eyes showed a flash of understanding.  These were the words:
+
+    "They ride away with a waking wind, away, away!
+     With laughing lip and with jocund mind at break of day.
+     A rattle of hoofs and a snatch of song, they ride, they ride!
+     The plains are wide and the path is long,--so long, so wide!"
+
+Just Trafford appeared ready to deal with this insolence, for the half-
+breed was after all a servant of his, a paid retainer.  He waited,
+however.  Shon saw the difficulty, and at once volunteered a reply.
+"It's aisy enough to get away in the mornin', but it's a question how far
+we'll be able to go with the horses.  The year is late; but there's dogs
+beyand, I suppose, and bedad, there y' are!"
+
+The Indian spoke slowly: "It is far off.  There is no colour yet in the
+leaf of the larch.  The river-hen still swims northward.  It is good that
+we go.  There is much buffalo in the White Valley."
+
+Again Trafford looked towards his follower, and again the half-breed,
+as if he were making an effort to remember, sang abstractedly:
+
+    "They follow, they follow a lonely trail, by day, by night,
+     By distant sun, and by fire-fly pale, and northern light.
+     The ride to the Hills of the Mighty Men, so swift they go!
+     Where buffalo feed in the wilding glen in sun and snow."
+
+"Pierre," said Trafford, sharply, "I want an answer to my question."
+
+"'Mais, pardon,' I was thinking .  .  .  well, we can ride until the deep
+snows come, then we can walk; and Shangi, he can get the dogs, maybe, one
+team of dogs."
+
+"But," was the reply, "one team of dogs will not be enough.  We'll bring
+meat and hides, you know, as well as pemmican.  We won't cache any
+carcases up there.  What would be the use?  We shall have to be back in
+the Pipi Valley by the spring-time."
+
+"Well," said the half-breed with a cold decision, "one team of dogs will
+be enough; and we will not cache, and we shall be back in the Pipi Valley
+before the spring, perhaps."  But this last word was spoken under his
+breath.
+
+And now the Indian spoke, with his deep voice and dignified manner:
+"Brothers, it is as I have said, the trail is lonely and the woods are
+deep and dark.  Since the time when the world was young, no white man
+hath been there save one, and behold sickness fell on him; the grave is
+his end.  It is a pleasant land, for the gods have blessed it to the
+Indian forever.  No heathen shall possess it.  But you shall see the
+White Valley and the buffalo.  Shangi will lead, because you have been
+merciful to him, and have given him to sleep in your wigwam, and to eat
+of your wild meat.  There are dogs in the forest.  I have spoken."
+
+Trafford was impressed, and annoyed too.  He thought too much sentiment
+was being squandered on a very practical and sportive thing.  He disliked
+functions; speech-making was to him a matter for prayer and fasting.  The
+Indian's address was therefore more or less gratuitous, and he hastened
+to remark: "Thank you, Shangi; that's very good, and you've put it
+poetically.  You've turned a shooting-excursion into a mediaeval romance.
+But we'll get down to business now, if you please, and make the romance a
+fact, beautiful enough to send to the 'Times' or the New York 'Call'.
+Let's see, how would they put it in the Call?--'Extraordinary Discovery
+--Herd of buffaloes found in the far North by an Englishman and his
+Franco-Irish Party--Sport for the gods--Exodus of 'brules' to White
+Valley!'--and so on, screeching to the end."
+
+Shon laughed heartily.  "The fun of the world is in the thing," he said;
+"and a day it would be for a notch on a stick and a rasp of gin in the
+throat.  And if I get the sight of me eye on a buffalo-ruck, it's down on
+me knees I'll go, and not for prayin' aither.  Here's both hands up for a
+start in the mornin'!"
+
+Long before noon next day they were well on their way.  Trafford could
+not understand why Pierre was so reserved, and, when speaking, so
+ironical.  It was noticeable that the half-breed watched the Indian
+closely, that he always rode behind him, that he never drank out of the
+same cup.  The leader set this down to the natural uncertainty of
+Pierre's disposition.  He had grown to like Pierre, as the latter had
+come in course to respect him.  Each was a man of value after his kind.
+Each also had recognised in the other qualities of force and knowledge
+having their generation in experiences which had become individuality,
+subterranean and acute, under a cold surface.  It was the mutual
+recognition of these equivalents that led the two men to mutual trust,
+only occasionally disturbed, as has been shown; though one was regarded
+as the most fastidious man of his set in London, the fairest-minded of
+friends, the most comfortable of companions; while the other was an
+outlaw, a half-heathen, a lover of but one thing in this world, the
+joyous god of Chance.  Pierre was essentially a gamester.  He would have
+extracted satisfaction out of a death-sentence which was contingent on
+the trumping of an ace.  His only honour was the honour of the game.
+
+Now, with all the swelling prairie sloping to the clear horizon, and the
+breath of a large life in their nostrils, these two men were caught up
+suddenly, as it were, by the throbbing soul of the North, so that the
+subterranean life in them awoke and startled them.  Trafford conceived
+that tobacco was the charm with which to exorcise the spirits of the
+past.  Pierre let the game of sensations go on, knowing that they pay
+themselves out in time.  His scheme was the wiser.  The other found that
+fast riding and smoking were not sufficient.  He became surrounded by the
+ghosts of yesterdays; and at length he gave up striving with them, and
+let them storm upon him, until a line of pain cut deeply across his
+forehead, and bitterly and unconsciously he cried aloud,--"Hester, ah,
+Hester!"
+
+But having spoken, the spell was broken, and he was aware of the beat of
+hoofs beside him, and Shangi the Indian looking at him with a half smile.
+Something in the look thrilled him; it was fantastic, masterful.  He
+wondered that he had not noticed this singular influence before.  After
+all, he was only a savage with cleaner buckskin than his race usually
+wore.  Yet that glow, that power in the face--was he Piegan, Blackfoot,
+Cree, Blood?  Whatever he was, this man had heard the words which broke
+so painfully from him.
+
+He saw the Indian frame her name upon his lips, and then came the words,
+"Hester--Hester Orval!"
+
+He turned sternly, and said, "Who are you?  What do you know of Hester
+Orval?"
+
+The Indian shook his head gravely, and replied, "You spoke her name, my
+brother."
+
+"I spoke one word of her name.  You have spoken two."
+
+"One does not know what one speaks.  There are words which are as sounds,
+and words which are as feelings.  Those come to the brain through the
+ear; these to the soul through sign, which is more than sound.  The
+Indian hath knowledge, even as the white man; and because his heart is
+open, the trees whisper to him; he reads the language of the grass and
+the wind, and is taught by the song of the bird, the screech of the hawk,
+the bark of the fox.  And so he comes to know the heart of the man who
+hath sickness, and calls upon someone, even though it be a weak woman,
+to cure his sickness; who is bowed low as beside a grave, and would stand
+upright.  Are not my words wise?  As the thoughts of a child that dreams,
+as the face of the blind, the eye of the beast, or the anxious hand of
+the poor, are they not simple, and to be understood?"
+
+Just Trafford made no reply.  But behind, Pierre was singing in the
+plaintive measure of a chant:
+
+              "A hunter rideth the herd abreast,
+               The Scarlet Hunter from out of the West,
+               Whose arrows with points of flame are drest,
+               Who loveth the beast of the field the best,
+               The child and the young bird out of the nest,
+               They ride to the hunt no more, no more!"
+
+They travelled beyond all bounds of civilisation; beyond the northernmost
+Indian villages, until the features of the landscape became more rugged
+and solemn, and at last they paused at a place which the Indian called
+Misty Mountain, and where, disappearing for an hour, he returned with a
+team of Eskimo dogs, keen, quick-tempered, and enduring.  They had all
+now recovered from the disturbing sentiments of the first portion of the
+journey; life was at full tide; the spirit of the hunter was on them.
+
+At length one night they camped in a vast pine grove wrapped in coverlets
+of snow and silent as death.  Here again Pierre became moody and alert
+and took no part in the careless chat at the camp-fire led by Shon
+McGann.  The man brooded and looked mysterious.  Mystery was not pleasing
+to Trafford.  He had his own secrets, but in the ordinary affairs of life
+he preferred simplicity.  In one of the silences that fell between Shon's
+attempts to give hilarity to the occasion, there came a rumbling far-off
+sound, a sound that increased in volume till the earth beneath them
+responded gently to the vibration.  Trafford looked up inquiringly at
+Pierre, and then at the Indian, who, after a moment, said slowly: "Above
+us are the hills of the Mighty Men, beneath us is the White Valley.  It
+is the tramp of buffalo that we hear.  A storm is coming, and they go to
+shelter in the mountains."
+
+The information had come somewhat suddenly, and McGann was the first to
+recover from the pleasant shock: "It's divil a wink of sleep I'll get
+this night, with the thought of them below there ripe for slaughter, and
+the tumble of fight in their beards."
+
+Pierre, with a meaning glance from his half-closed eyes, added: "But it
+is the old saying of the prairies that you do not shout dinner till you
+have your knife in the loaf.  Your knife is not yet in the loaf, Shon
+McGann."
+
+The boom of the trampling ceased, and now there was a stirring in the
+snow-clad tree tops, and a sound as if all the birds of the North were
+flying overhead.  The weather began to moan and the boles of the pines to
+quake.  And then there came war,--a trouble out of the north, a wave of
+the breath of God to show inconsequent man that he who seeks to live by
+slaughter hath slaughter for his master.
+
+They hung over the fire while the forest cracked round them, and the
+flame smarted with the flying snow.  And now the trees, as if the
+elements were closing in on them, began to break close by, and one
+lurched forward towards them.  Trafford, to avoid its stroke, stepped
+quickly aside right into the line of another which he did not see.
+Pierre sprang forward and swung him clear, but was himself struck
+senseless by an outreaching branch.
+
+As if satisfied with this achievement, the storm began to subside.  When
+Pierre recovered consciousness Trafford clasped his hand and said,--
+"You've a sharp eye, a quick thought, and a deft arm, comrade."
+
+"Ah, it was in the game.  It is good play to assist your partner," the
+half-breed replied sententiously.  Through all, the Indian had remained
+stoical.  But McGann, who swore by Trafford--as he had once sworn by
+another of the Trafford race--had his heart on his lips, and said:
+
+         "There's a swate little cherub that sits up aloft,
+          Who cares for the soul of poor Jack!"
+
+It was long after midnight ere they settled down again, with the wreck of
+the forest round them.  Only the Indian slept; the others were alert and
+restless.  They were up at daybreak, and on their way before sunrise,
+filled with desire for prey.  They had not travelled far before they
+emerged upon a plateau.  Around them were the hills of the Mighty Men--
+austere, majestic; at their feet was a vast valley on which the light
+newly-fallen snow had not hidden all the grass.  Lonely and lofty, it was
+a world waiting chastely to be peopled!  And now it was peopled, for
+there came from a cleft of the hills an army of buffaloes lounging slowly
+down the waste, with tossing manes and hoofs stirring the snow into a
+feathery scud.
+
+The eyes of Trafford and McGann swam; Pierre's face was troubled, and
+strangely enough he made the sign of the cross.
+
+At that instant Trafford saw smoke issuing from a spot on the mountain
+opposite.  He turned to the Indian: "Someone lives there"? he said.
+
+"It is the home of the dead, but life is also there."
+
+"White man, or Indian?"
+
+But no reply came.  The Indian pointed instead to the buffalo rumbling
+down the valley.  Trafford forgot the smoke, forgot everything except
+that splendid quarry.  Shon was excited.  "Sarpints alive," he said,
+"look at the troops of thim!  Is it standin' here we are with our tongues
+in our cheeks, whin there's bastes to be killed, and mate to be got, and
+the call to war on the ground below!  Clap spurs with your heels, sez I,
+and down the side of the turf together and give 'em the teeth of our
+guns!"  The Irishman dashed down the slope.  In an instant, all followed,
+or at least Trafford thought all followed, swinging their guns across
+their saddles to be ready for this excellent foray.  But while Pierre
+rode hard, it was at first without the fret of battle in him, and he
+smiled strangely, for he knew that the Indian had disappeared as they
+rode down the slope, though how and why he could not tell.  There ran
+through his head tales chanted at camp-fires when he was not yet in
+stature so high as the loins that bore him.  They rode hard, and yet they
+came no nearer to that flying herd straining on with white streaming
+breath and the surf of snow rising to their quarters.  Mile upon mile,
+and yet they could not ride these monsters down!
+
+Now Pierre was leading.  There was a kind of fury in his face, and he
+seemed at last to gain on them.  But as the herd veered close to a wall
+of stalwart pines, a horseman issued from the trees and joined the
+cattle.  The horseman was in scarlet from head to foot; and with his
+coming the herd went faster, and ever faster, until they vanished into
+the mountain-side; and they who pursued drew in their trembling horses
+and stared at each other with wonder in their faces.
+
+"In God's name what does it mean"? Trafford cried.
+
+"Is it a trick of the eye or the hand of the devil"? added Shon.
+
+"In the name of God we shall know perhaps.  If it is the hand of the
+devil it is not good for us," remarked Pierre.
+
+"Who was the man in scarlet who came from the woods"? asked Trafford of
+the half-breed.
+
+"'Voila,' it is strange!  There is an old story among the Indians!  My
+mother told many tales of the place and sang of it, as I sang to you.
+The legend was this:--In the hills of the North which no white man, nor
+no Injin of this time hath seen, the forefathers of the red men sleep;
+but some day they will wake again and go forth and possess all the land;
+and the buffalo are for them when that time shall come, that they may
+have the fruits of the chase, and that it be as it was of old, when the
+cattle were as clouds on the horizon.  And it was ordained that one of
+these mighty men who had never been vanquished in fight, nor done an evil
+thing, and was the greatest of all the chiefs, should live and not die,
+but be as a sentinel, as a lion watching, and preserve the White Valley
+in peace until his brethren waked and came into their own again.  And him
+they called the Scarlet Hunter; and to this hour the red men pray to him
+when they lose their way upon the plains, or Death draws aside the
+curtains of the wigwam to call them forth."
+
+"Repeat the verses you sang, Pierre," said Trafford.  The half-breed did
+so.  When he came to the words, "Who loveth the beast of the field the
+best," the Englishman looked round.  "Where is Shangi"? he asked.
+McGann shook his head in astonishment and negation.  Pierre explained:
+"On the mountain-side where we ride down he is not seen--he vanish . . .
+'mon Dieu,' look!"
+
+On the slope of the mountain stood the Scarlet Hunter with drawn bow.
+From it an arrow flew over their heads with a sorrowful twang, and fell
+where the smoke rose among the pines; then the mystic figure disappeared.
+
+McGann shuddered, and drew himself together.  "It is the place of
+spirits," he said; "and it's little I like it, God knows; but I'll follow
+that Scarlet Hunter, or red devil, or whatever he is, till I drop, if the
+Honourable gives the word.  For flesh and blood I'm not afraid of; and
+the other we come to, whether we will or not, one day."
+
+But Trafford said: "No, we'll let it stand where it is for the present.
+Something has played our eyes false, or we're brought here to do work
+different from buffalo-hunting.  Where that arrow fell among the smoke
+we must go first.  Then, as I read the riddle, we travel back the way we
+came.  There are points in connection with the Pipi Valley superior to
+the hills of the Mighty Men."
+
+They rode away across the glade, and through a grove of pines upon a
+hill, till they stood before a log but with parchment windows.
+
+Trafford knocked, but there was no response.  He opened the door and
+entered.  He saw a figure rise painfully from a couch in a corner,--the
+figure of a woman young and beautiful, but wan and worn.  She seemed
+dazed and inert with suffering, and spoke mournfully: "It is too late.
+Not you, nor any of your race, nor anything on earth can save him.  He is
+dead--dead now."
+
+At the first sound of her voice Trafford started.  He drew near to her,
+as pale as she was, and wonder and pity were in his face.  "Hester," he
+said, "Hester Orval!"
+
+She stared at him like one that had been awakened from an evil dream,
+then tottered towards him with the cry,--"Just, Just, have you come to
+save me?  O Just!"  His distress was sad to see, for it was held in deep
+repression, but he said calmly and with protecting gentleness: "Yes, I
+have come to save you.  Hester, how is it you are here in this strange
+place--you?"
+
+She sobbed so that at first she could not answer; but at last she cried:
+"O Just, he is dead .  .  .  in there, in there!  .  .  .  Last night, it
+was last night; and he prayed that I might go with him.  But I could not
+die unforgiven, and I was right, for you have come out of the world to
+help me, and to save me."
+
+"Yes, to help you and to save you,--if I can," he added in a whisper to
+himself, for he was full of foreboding.  He was of the earth, earthy, and
+things that had chanced to him this day were beyond the natural and
+healthy movements of his mind.  He had gone forth to slay, and had been
+foiled by shadows; he had come with a tragic, if beautiful, memory
+haunting him, and that memory had clothed itself in flesh and stood
+before him, pitiful, solitary,--a woman.  He had scorned all legend and
+superstition, and here both were made manifest to him.  He had thought of
+this woman as one who was of this world no more, and here she mourned
+before him and bade him go and look upon her dead, upon the man who had
+wronged him, into whom, as he once declared, the soul of a cur had
+entered,--and now what could he say?  He had carried in his heart the
+infinite something that is to men the utmost fulness of life, which,
+losing, they must carry lead upon their shoulders where they thought the
+gods had given pinions.
+
+McGann and Pierre were nervous.  This conjunction of unusual things was
+easier to the intelligences of the dead than the quick.  The outer air
+was perhaps less charged with the unnatural, and with a glance towards
+the room where death was quartered, they left the hut.
+
+Trafford was alone with the woman through whom his life had been turned
+awry.  He looked at her searchingly; and as he looked the mere man in him
+asserted itself for a moment.  She was dressed in coarse garments; it
+struck him that her grief had a touch of commonness about it; there was
+something imperfect in the dramatic setting.  His recent experiences had
+had a kind of grandeur about them; it was not thus that he had remembered
+her in the hour when he had called upon her in the plains, and the Indian
+had heard his cry.  He felt, and was ashamed in feeling, that there was
+a grim humour in the situation.  The fantastic, the melodramatic, the
+emotional, were huddled here in too marked a prominence; it all seemed,
+for an instant, like the tale of a woman's first novel.  But immediately
+again there was roused in him the latent force of loyalty to himself and
+therefore to her; the story of her past, so far as he knew it, flashed
+before him, and his eyes grew hot.
+
+He remembered the time he had last seen her in an English country-house
+among a gay party in which royalty smiled, and the subject was content
+beneath the smile.  But there was one rebellious subject, and her name
+was Hester Orval.  She was a wilful girl who had lived life selfishly
+within the lines of that decorous yet pleasant convention to which she
+was born.  She was beautiful,--she knew that, and royalty had graciously
+admitted it.  She was warm-thoughted, and possessed the fatal strain of
+the artistic temperament.  She was not sure that she had a heart; and
+many others, not of her sex, after varying and enthusiastic study of the
+matter, were not more confident than she.  But it had come at last that
+she had listened with pensive pleasure to Trafford's tale of love; and
+because to be worshipped by a man high in all men's, and in most women's,
+esteem, ministered delicately to her sweet egotism, and because she was
+proud of him, she gave him her hand in promise, and her cheek in
+privilege, but denied him--though he knew this not--her heart and the
+service of her life.  But he was content to wait patiently for that
+service, and he wholly trusted her, for there was in him some fine spirit
+of the antique world.
+
+There had come to Falkenstowe, this country-house and her father's home,
+a man who bore a knightly name, but who had no knightly heart; and he
+told Ulysses' tales, and covered a hazardous and cloudy past with that
+fascinating colour which makes evil appear to be good, so that he roused
+in her the pulse of art, which she believed was soul and life, and her
+allegiance swerved.  And when her mother pleaded with her, and when her
+father said stern things, and even royalty, with uncommon use, rebuked
+her gently, her heart grew hard; and almost on the eve of her wedding-day
+she fled with her lover, and married him, and together they sailed away
+over the seas.
+
+The world was shocked and clamorous for a matter of nine days, and then
+it forgot this foolish and awkward circumstance; but Just Trafford never
+forgot it.  He remembered all vividly until the hour, a year later, when
+London journals announced that Hester Orval and her husband had gone down
+with a vessel wrecked upon the Alaskan and Canadian coast.  And there new
+regret began, and his knowledge of her ended.
+
+But she and her husband had not been drowned; with a sailor they had
+reached the shore in safety.  They had travelled inland from the coast
+through the great mountains by unknown paths, and as they travelled, the
+sailor died; and they came at last through innumerable hardships to the
+Kimash Hills, the hills of the Mighty Men, and there they stayed.  It was
+not an evil land; it had neither deadly cold in winter nor wanton heat in
+summer.  But they never saw a human face, and everything was lonely and
+spectral.  For a time they strove to go eastwards or southwards but the
+mountains were impassable, and in the north and west there was no hope.
+Though the buffalo swept by them in the valley they could not slay them,
+and they lived on forest fruits until in time the man sickened.  The
+woman nursed him faithfully, but still he failed; and when she could go
+forth no more for food, some unseen dweller of the woods brought buffalo
+meat, and prairie fowl, and water from the spring, and laid them beside
+her door.
+
+She had seen the mounds upon the hill, the wide couches of the sleepers,
+and she remembered the things done in the days when God seemed nearer to
+the sons of men than now; and she said that a spirit had done this thing,
+and trembled and was thankful.  But the man weakened and knew that he
+should die, and one night when the pain was sharp upon him he prayed
+bitterly that he might pass, or that help might come to snatch him from
+the grave.  And as they sobbed together, a form entered at the door,--
+a form clothed in scarlet,--and he bade them tell the tale of their lives
+as they would some time tell it unto heaven.  And when the tale was told
+he said that succour should come to them from the south by the hand of
+the Scarlet Hunter, that the nation sleeping there should no more be
+disturbed by their moaning.  And then he had gone forth, and with his
+going there was a storm such as that in which the man had died, the storm
+that had assailed the hunters in the forest yesterday.
+
+This was the second part of Hester Orval's life as she told it to Just
+Trafford.  And he, looking into her eyes, knew that she had suffered, and
+that she had sounded her husband's unworthiness.  Then he turned from her
+and went into the room where the dead man lay.  And there all hardness
+passed from him, and he understood that in the great going forth man
+reckons to the full with the deeds done in that brief pilgrimage called
+life; and that in the bitter journey which this one took across the dread
+spaces between Here and There, he had repented of his sins, because they,
+and they only, went with him in mocking company; the good having gone
+first to plead where evil is a debtor and hath a prison.  And the woman
+came and stood beside Trafford, and whispered, "At first--and at the
+last--he was kind."
+
+But he urged her gently from the room: "Go away," he said; "go away.  We
+cannot judge him.  Leave me alone with him."
+
+They buried him upon the hill-side, far from the mounds where the Mighty
+Men waited for their summons to go forth and be the lords of the North
+again.  At night they buried him when the moon was at its full; and he
+had the fragrant pines for his bed, and the warm darkness to cover him;
+and though he is to those others resting there a heathen and an alien,
+it may be that he sleeps peacefully.
+
+When Trafford questioned Hester Orval more deeply of her life there, the
+unearthly look quickened in her eyes, and she said: "Oh, nothing, nothing
+is real here, but suffering; perhaps it is all a dream, but it has
+changed me, changed me.  To hear the tread of the flying herds, to see no
+being save him, the Scarlet Hunter, to hear the voices calling in the
+night!  .  .  .  Hush!  There, do you not hear them?  It is midnight--
+listen!"
+
+He listened, and Pierre and Shon McGann looked at each other
+apprehensively, while Shon's fingers felt hurriedly along the beads of a
+rosary which he did not hold.  Yes, they heard it, a deep sonorous sound:
+"Is the daybreak come?"  "It is still the night," came the reply as of
+one clear voice.  And then there floated through the hills more softly:
+"We sleep--we sleep!"  And the sounds echoed through the valley--"Sleep
+--sleep!"
+
+Yet though these things were full of awe, the spirit of the place held
+them there, and the fever of the hunter descended on them hotly.  In the
+morning they went forth, and rode into the White Valley where the buffalo
+were feeding, and sought to steal upon them; but the shots from their
+guns only awoke the hills, and none were slain.  And though they rode
+swiftly, the wide surf of snow was ever between them and the chase, and
+their striving availed nothing.  Day after day they followed that flying
+column, and night after night they heard the sleepers call from the
+hills.  The desire of the thing wasted them, and they forgot to eat and
+ceased to talk among themselves.  But one day Shon McGann, muttering aves
+as he rode, gained on the cattle, until once again the Scarlet Hunter
+came forth from a cleft of the mountains, and drove the herd forward with
+swifter feet.  But the Irishman had learned the power in this thing, and
+had taught Trafford, who knew not those availing prayers, and with these
+sacred conjurations on their lips they gained on the cattle length by
+length, though the Scarlet Hunter rode abreast of the thundering horde.
+Within easy range, Trafford swung his gun shoulder-wards to fire, but at
+that instant a cloud of snow rose up between him and his quarry so that
+they all were blinded.  And when they came into the clear sun again the
+buffalo were gone; but flaming arrows from some unseen hunter's bow came
+singing over their heads towards the south; and they obeyed the sign,
+and went back to where Hester wore her life out with anxiety for them,
+because she knew the hopelessness of their quest.  Women are nearer to
+the heart of things.  And now she begged Trafford to go southwards before
+winter froze the plains impassably, and the snow made tombs of the
+valleys.  Thereupon he gave the word to go, and said that he had done
+wrong--for now the spell was falling from him.
+
+But she, seeing his regret, said: "Ah, Just, it could not have been
+different.  The passion of it was on you as it was on us, as if to teach
+us that hunger for happiness is robbery, and that the covetous desire of
+man is not the will of the gods.  The herds are for the Mighty Men when
+they awake, not for the stranger and the Philistine."
+
+"You have grown wise, Hester," he replied.
+
+"No, I am sick in brain and body; but it may be that in such sickness
+there is wisdom."
+
+"Ah," he said, "it has turned my head, I think.  Once I laughed at all
+such fanciful things as these.  This Scarlet Hunter, how many times have
+you seen him?"
+
+"But once."
+
+"What were his looks?"
+
+"A face pale and strong, with noble eyes; and in his voice there was
+something strange."
+
+Trafford thought of Shangi, the Indian,--where had he gone?  He had
+disappeared as suddenly as he had come to their camp in the South.
+
+As they sat silent in the growing night, the door opened and the Scarlet
+Hunter stood before them.  "There is food," he said, "on the threshold--
+food for those who go upon a far journey to the South in the morning.
+Unhappy are they who seek for gold at the rainbow's foot, who chase the
+fire-fly in the night, who follow the herds in the White Valley.  Wise
+are they who anger not the gods, and who fly before the rising storm.
+There is a path from the valley for the strangers, the path by which they
+came; and when the sun stares forth again upon the world, the way shall
+be open, and there shall be safety for you until your travel ends in the
+quick world whither you go.  You were foolish; now you are wise.  It is
+time to depart; seek not to return, that we may have peace and you
+safety.  When the world cometh to her spring again we shall meet."  Then
+he turned and was gone, with Trafford's voice ringing after him,--"
+Shangi!  Shangi!"
+
+They ran out swiftly, but he had vanished.  In the valley where the
+moonlight fell in icy coldness a herd of cattle was moving, and their
+breath rose like the spray from sea-beaten rocks, and the sound of their
+breathing was borne upwards to the watchers.
+
+At daybreak they rode down into the valley.  All was still.  Not a trace
+of life remained; not a hoofmark in the snow, nor a bruised blade of
+grass.  And when they climbed to the plateau and looked back, it seemed
+to Trafford and his companions, as it seemed in after years, that this
+thing had been all a fantasy.  But Hester's face was beside them, and it
+told of strange and unsubstantial things.  The shadows of the middle
+world were upon her.  And yet again when they turned at the last there
+was no token.  It was a northern valley, with sun and snow, and cold blue
+shadows, and the high hills,--that was all.
+
+Then Hester said: "O Just, I do not know if this is life or death--and
+yet it must be death, for after death there is forgiveness to those who
+repent, and your face is forgiving and kind."
+
+And he--for he saw that she needed much human help and comfort--gently
+laid his hand on hers and replied: "Hester, this is life, a new life for
+both of us.  Whatever has been was a dream; whatever is now"--and he
+folded her hand in his--"is real; and there is no such thing as
+forgiveness to be spoken of between us.  There shall be happiness
+for us yet, please God!"
+
+"I want to go to Falkenstowe.  Will--will my mother forgive me?"
+
+"Mothers always forgive, Hester, else half the world had slain itself in
+shame."
+
+And then she smiled for the first time since he had seen her.  This was
+in the shadows of the scented pines; and a new life breathed upon her,
+as it breathed upon them all, and they knew that the fever of the White
+Valley had passed away from them forever.
+
+After many hardships they came in safety to the regions of the south
+country again; and the tale they told, though doubted by the race of
+pale-faces, was believed by the heathen; because there was none among
+them but, as he cradled at his mother's breasts, and from his youth up,
+had heard the legend of the Scarlet Hunter.
+
+For the romance of that journey, it concerned only the man and woman to
+whom it was as wine and meat to the starving.  Is not love more than
+legend, and a human heart than all the beasts of the field or any joy of
+slaughter?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE STONE
+
+The Stone hung on a jutting crag of Purple Hill.  On one side of it, far
+beneath, lay the village, huddled together as if, through being close
+compacted, its handful of humanity should not be a mere dust in the
+balance beside Nature's portentousness.  Yet if one stood beside The
+Stone, and looked down, the flimsy wooden huts looked like a barrier at
+the end of a great flume.  For the hill hollowed and narrowed from The
+Stone to the village, as if giants had made this concave path by
+trundling boulders to that point like a funnel where the miners' houses
+now formed a cul-de-sac.  On the other side of the crag was a valley
+also; but it was lonely and untenanted; and at one flank of The Stone
+were serried legions of trees.
+
+The Stone was a mighty and wonderful thing.  Looked at from the village
+direct, it had nothing but the sky for a background.  At times, also, it
+appeared to rest on nothing; and many declared that they could see clean
+between it and the oval floor of the crag on which it rested.  That was
+generally in the evening, when the sun was setting behind it.  Then the
+light coiled round its base, between it and its pedestal, thus making it
+appear to hover above the hill-point, or, planet-like, to be just
+settling on it.  At other times, when the light was perfectly clear and
+not too strong, and the village side of the crag was brighter than the
+other, more accurate relations of The Stone to its pedestal could be
+discovered.  Then one would say that it balanced on a tiny base, a toe of
+granite.  But if one looked long, especially in the summer, when the air
+throbbed, it evidently rocked upon that toe; if steadily, and very long,
+he grew tremulous, perhaps afraid.  Once, a woman who was about to become
+a mother went mad, because she thought The Stone would hurtle down the
+hill at her great moment and destroy her and her child.  Indians would
+not live either on the village side of The Stone or in the valley beyond.
+They had a legend that, some day, one, whom they called The Man Who
+Sleeps, would rise from his hidden couch in the mountains, and, being
+angry that any dared to cumber his playground, would hurl The Stone upon
+them that dwelt at Purple Hill.  But white men pay little heed to Indian
+legends.  At one time or another every person who had come to the village
+visited The Stone.  Colossal as it was, the real base on which its weight
+rested was actually very small: the view from the village had not been
+all deceitful.  It is possible, indeed, that at one time it had really
+rocked, and that the rocking had worn for it a shallow cup, or socket, in
+which it poised.  The first man who came to Purple Valley prospecting had
+often stopped his work and looked at The Stone in a half-fear that it
+would spring upon him unawares.  And yet he had as often laughed at
+himself for doing so, since, as he said, it must have been there hundreds
+of thousands of years.  Strangers, when they came to the village, went to
+sleep somewhat timidly the first night of their stay, and not
+infrequently left their beds to go and look at The Stone, as it hung
+there ominously in the light of the moon; or listened towards it if it
+was dark.  When the moon rose late, and The Stone chanced to be directly
+in front of it, a black sphere seemed to be rolling into the light to
+blot it out.
+
+But none who lived in the village looked upon The Stone in quite the same
+fashion as did that first man who had come to the valley.  He had seen it
+through three changing seasons, with no human being near him, and only
+occasionally a shy, wandering elk, or a cloud of wild ducks whirring down
+the pass, to share his companionship with it.  Once he had waked in the
+early morning, and, possessed of a strange feeling, had gone out to look
+a The Stone.  There, perched upon it, was an eagle; and though he said to
+himself that an eagle's weight was to The Stone as a feather upon the
+world, he kept his face turned towards it all day; for all day the eagle
+stayed.  He was a man of great stature and immense strength.  The thews
+of his limbs stood out like soft unbreakable steel.  Yet, as if to cast
+derision on his strength and great proportions, God or Fate turned his
+bread to ashes, gave failure into his hands where he hugely grasped at
+fortune, and hung him about with misery.  He discovered gold, but others
+gathered it.  It was his daughter that went mad, and gave birth to a dead
+child in fearsome thought of The Stone.  Once, when he had gone over the
+hills to another mining field, and had been prevented from coming back by
+unexpected and heavy snows, his wife was taken ill, and died alone of
+starvation, because none in the village remembered of her and her needs.
+Again, one wild night, long after, his only son was taken from his bed
+and lynched for a crime that was none of his, as was discovered by his
+murderers next day.  Then they killed horribly the real criminal, and
+offered the father such satisfaction as they could.  They said that any
+one of them was ready there to be killed by him; and they threw a weapon
+at his feet.  At this he stood looking upon them for a moment, his great
+breast heaving, and his eyes glowering; but presently he reached out his
+arms, and taking two of them by the throat, brought their heads together
+heavily, breaking their skulls; and, with a cry in his throat like a
+wounded animal, left them, and entered the village no more.  But it
+became known that he had built a rude but on Purple Hill, and that he had
+been seen standing beside The Stone or sitting among the boulders below
+it, with his face bent upon the village.  Those who had come near to him
+said that he had greatly changed; that his hair and beard had grown long
+and strong, and, in effect, that he looked like some rugged fragment of
+an antique world.
+
+The time came when they associated The Man with The Stone: they grew to
+speak of him simply as The Man.  There was something natural and apt in
+the association.  Then they avoided these two singular dwellers on the
+height.  What had happened to The Man when he lived in the village became
+almost as great a legend as the Indian fable concerning The Stone.  In
+the minds of the people one seemed as old as the other.  Women who knew
+the awful disasters which had befallen The Man brooded at times most
+timidly, regarding him as they did at first--and even still--The Stone.
+Women who carried life unborn about with them had a strange dread of both
+The Stone and The Man.  Time passed on, and the feeling grew that The
+Man's grief must be a terrible thing, since he lived alone with The Stone
+and God.  But this did not prevent the men of the village from digging
+gold, drinking liquor, and doing many kinds of evil.  One day, again,
+they did an unjust and cruel thing.  They took Pierre, the gambler, whom
+they had at first sought to vanquish at his own art, and, possessed
+suddenly of the high duty of citizenship, carried him to the edge of a
+hill and dropped him over, thinking thereby to give him a quick death,
+while the vultures would provide him a tomb.  But Pierre was not killed,
+though to his grave--unprepared as yet--he would bear an arm which should
+never be lifted higher than his shoulder.  When he waked from the
+crashing gloom which succeeded the fall, he was in the presence of a
+being whose appearance was awesome and massive--an outlawed god: whose
+hair and beard were white, whose eye was piercing, absorbing, painful,
+in the long perspective of its woe.  This being sat with his great hand
+clasped to the side of his head.  The beginning of his look was the
+village, and--though the vision seemed infinite--the village was the end
+of it too.  Pierre, looking through the doorway beside which he lay, drew
+in his breath sharply, for it seemed at first as if The Man was an
+unnatural fancy, and not a thing.  Behind The Man was The Stone, which
+was not more motionless nor more full of age than this its comrade.
+Indeed, The Stone seemed more a thing of life as it poised above the
+hill: The Man was sculptured rock.  His white hair was chiselled on his
+broad brow, his face was a solemn pathos petrified, his lips were curled
+with an iron contempt, an incalculable anger.
+
+The sun went down, and darkness gathered about The Man.  Pierre reached
+out his hand, and drank the water and ate the coarse bread that had been
+put near him.  He guessed that trees or protruding ledges had broken his
+fall, and that he had been rescued and brought here.  As he lay thinking,
+The Man entered the doorway, stooping much to do so.  With flints he
+lighted a wick which hung from a wooden bowl of bear's oil; then
+kneeling, held it above his head, and looked at Pierre.  And Pierre, who
+had never feared anyone, shrank from the look in The Man's eyes.  But
+when the other saw that Pierre was awake, a distant kindness came upon
+his face, and he nodded gravely; but he did not speak.  Presently a great
+tremor as of pain shook all his limbs, and he set the candle on the
+ground, and with his stalwart hands arranged afresh the bandages about
+Pierre's injured arm and leg.  Pierre spoke at last.
+
+"You are The Man"? he said.  The other bowed his head.
+
+"You saved me from those devils in the valley?"  A look of impregnable
+hardness came into The Man's face, but he pressed Pierre's hand for
+answer; and though the pressure was meant to be gentle, Pierre winced
+painfully.  The candle spluttered, and the hut filled with a sickly
+smoke.  The Man brought some bear skins and covered the sufferer, for,
+the season being autumn, the night was cold.  Pierre, who had thus spent
+his first sane and conscious hour in many days, fell asleep.  What time
+it was when he waked he was not sure, but it was to hear a metallic
+click-click come to him through the clear air of night.  It was a
+pleasant noise as of steel and rock: the work of some lonely stone-cutter
+of the hills.  The sound reached him with strange, increasing
+distinctness.  Was this Titan that had saved him sculpturing some figure
+from the metal hill?  Click-click!  it vibrated as regularly as the keen
+pulse of a watch.  He lay and wondered for a long time, but fell asleep
+again; and the steely iteration went on in his dreams.
+
+In the morning The Man came to him, and cared for his hurts, and gave him
+food; but still would speak no word.  He was gone nearly all day in the
+hills; yet when evening came he sought the place where Pierre had seen
+him the night before, and the same weird scene was re-enacted.  And again
+in the night the clicking sound went on; and every night it was renewed.
+Pierre grew stronger, and could, with difficulty, stand upon his feet.
+One night he crept out, and made his way softly, slowly towards the
+sound.  He saw The Man kneeling beside The Stone, he saw a hammer rise
+and fall upon a chisel; and the chisel was at the base of The Stone.  The
+hammer rose and fell with perfect but dreadful precision.  Pierre turned
+and looked towards the village below, whose lights were burning like a
+bunch of fire-flies in the gloom.  Again he looked at The Stone and The
+Man.
+
+Then the thing came to him sharply.  The Man was chiselling away the
+socket of The Stone, bringing it to that point of balance where the touch
+of a finger, the wing of a bird, or the whistle of a north-west wind,
+would send it down upon the offending and unsuspecting village.
+
+The thought held him paralysed.  The Man had nursed his revenge long past
+the thought of its probability by the people beneath.  He had at first
+sat and watched the village, hated, and mused dreadfully upon the thing
+he had determined to do.  Then he had worked a little, afterwards more,
+and now, lastly, since he had seen what they had done to Pierre, with the
+hot but firm eagerness of an avenging giant.  Pierre had done some sad
+deeds in his time, and had tasted some sweet revenges, but nothing like
+to this had ever entered his brain.  In that village were men who--as
+they thought--had cast him to a death fit only for a coward or a cur.
+Well, here was the most exquisite retaliation.  Though his hand should
+not be in the thing, he could still be the cynical and approving
+spectator.
+
+But yet: had all those people hovering about those lights below done harm
+to him?  He thought there were a few--and they were women--who would not
+have followed his tumbril to his death with cries of execration.  The
+rest would have done so,--most of them did so, not because he was a
+criminal, but because he was a victim, and because human nature as it is
+thirsts inordinately at times for blood and sacrifice--a living strain of
+the old barbaric instinct.  He remembered that most of these people were
+concerned in having injured The Man.  The few good women there had vile
+husbands; the few pardonable men had hateful wives: the village of Purple
+Hill was an ill affair.
+
+He thought: now doubtfully, now savagely, now with irony.
+
+The hammer and steel clicked on.
+
+He looked at the lights of the village again.  Suddenly there came
+to his mind the words of a great man who sought to save a city manifold
+centuries ago.  He was not sure that he wished to save this village; but
+there was a grim, almost grotesque, fitness in the thing that he now
+intended.  He spoke out clearly through the night:
+
+"'Oh, let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once:
+Peradventure ten righteous shall be found there.'"
+
+The hammer stopped.  There was a silence, in which the pines sighed
+lightly.  Then, as if speaking was a labour, The Man replied in a deep,
+harsh voice:
+
+"I will not spare it for ten's sake."
+
+Again there was a silence, in which Pierre felt his maimed body bend
+beneath him; but presently the voice said,--"Now!"
+
+At this the moon swung from behind a cloud.  The Man stood behind The
+Stone.  His arm was raised to it.  There was a moment's pause--it seemed
+like years to Pierre; a wind came softly crying out of the west, the moon
+hurried into the dark, and then a monster sprang from its pedestal upon
+Purple Hill, and, with a sound of thunder and an awful speed, raced upon
+the village below.  The boulders of the hillside crumbled after it.
+
+And Pierre saw the lights go out.
+
+The moon shone out again for an instant, and Pierre saw that The Man
+stood where The Stone had been; but when he reached the place The Man was
+gone.  Forever!
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+At first--and at the last--he was kind
+Courage; without which, men are as the standing straw
+Evil is half-accidental, half-natural
+Fascinating colour which makes evil appear to be good
+Had the luck together, all kinds and all weathers
+Hunger for happiness is robbery
+If one remembers, why should the other forget
+Instinct for detecting veracity, having practised on both sides
+Mothers always forgive
+The higher we go the faster we live
+The Injin speaks the truth, perhaps--eye of red man multipies
+The world is not so bad as is claimed for it
+Whatever has been was a dream; whatever is now is real
+You do not shout dinner till you have your knife in the loaf
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE, V3, PARKER ***
+
+*********** This file should be named 6176.txt or 6176.zip ***********
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
+even years after the official publication date.
+
+Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our Web sites at:
+https://gutenberg.org or
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
+Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
+eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement
+can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03
+
+Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text
+files per month:  1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+
+We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):
+
+eBooks Year Month
+
+    1  1971 July
+   10  1991 January
+  100  1994 January
+ 1000  1997 August
+ 1500  1998 October
+ 2000  1999 December
+ 2500  2000 December
+ 3000  2001 November
+ 4000  2001 October/November
+ 6000  2002 December*
+ 9000  2003 November*
+10000  2004 January*
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
+to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
+and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
+Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
+Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
+Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
+Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
+Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
+Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
+Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
+
+We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones
+that have responded.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
+will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
+Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+In answer to various questions we have received on this:
+
+We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
+request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
+you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
+just ask.
+
+While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
+not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
+donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
+donate.
+
+International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
+how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
+deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
+ways.
+
+Donations by check or money order may be sent to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655-4109
+
+Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
+method other than by check or money order.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
+the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
+[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
+tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fund-raising
+requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
+made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information online at:
+
+https://www.gutenberg.org/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
+you can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
+
+We would prefer to send you information by email.
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
+you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook
+under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
+receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims
+all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from. If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
+and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
+with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
+legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
+following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this eBook,
+[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook,
+or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     eBook or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the eBook (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
+public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
+in machine readable form.
+
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
+Money should be paid to the:
+"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only
+when distributed free of all fees.  Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by
+Michael S. Hart.  Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be
+used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be
+they hardware or software or any other related product without
+express permission.]
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END*
+