tameable. It is not habit that rules this
man. It is instinct a million years old. The call which he will hear is
the call of the wilderness, and to answer it he will leave father and
wife and children and ride out with his horse and his dog!"

The old man lay quite motionless, staring at the ceiling.

"I don't want to believe you," he said slowly, "but before God I think
you're right. Oh, lad, why was I bound up in a tangle like this one? And
Kate--what will she do?"

The doctor was quivering with excitement.

"Let the man stay with her. In time she will come to see the brute
nature of Daniel Barry. That will be the end of him with her."

"Brute. Doc. They ain't nobody as gentle as Dan!"

"Till he tastes blood, a lion can be raised like a house-dog," answered
the doctor.

"Then she mustn't marry him? Ay, I've felt it--jest what you've put in
words. It's livin' death for Kate if she marries him! She's kept him
here to-day. To-morrow something may cross him, and the minute he feels
the pull of it, he'll be off on the trail--the blow of a man, the
hollering out of the wild geese--God knows what it'll take to start him
wild again and forget us all--jest the way a child forgets its parents!"

A voice broke in upon them, calling far away: "Dan! Dan Barry!"

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE ACID TEST

In the living-room below they heard it, Dan and Kate Cumberland. All day
she had sat by the fire which still blazed on the hearth, replenished
from time to time by the care of Wung Lu. She had taken up some sewing,
and she worked at it steadily. Some of that time Dan Barry was in the
room, sitting through long intervals, watching her with lynx-eyed
attention. Very rarely did he speak--almost never, and she could have
numbered upon her two hands the words he had spoken--ay, and she could
have repeated them one by one. Now and again he rose and went out, and
the wolf-dog went with him each time. But towards the last Black Bart
preferred to stay in the room, crouched in front of her and blinking at
the fire, as if he knew that each time his master would return to the
fire. Then, why leave the pleasant warmth for the chilly greyness of the
day outside?

There he remained, stirring only now and then to lift a clumsy paw and
brush it across his eyes in an oddly human gesture. Once or twice, also,
he lifted that great, scarred head and laid it on her knees, looking
curiously from her busy hands to her face, and from her face ba