and how different are his ways from those of a woman. No
housewife could have been more daintily clean, or shown a swifter
skill, or half the silent ease with which this woodsman made the
table-ware for one, enough to serve two people. But a woman would not
clean a frying-pan by burning it and throwing on cold water. He
sprinkled flour on a ground sheet, and made dough without wetting the
canvas. Would I like bread, or slapjacks, or a pie? He made a loaf of
bread, in a frying pan set on edge among glowing coals, and, wondering
how a pie could possibly happen without the assistance of an oven, I
forgot all about that cliff.

He parboiled the bacon, then peppered it while it was frying. When the
coffee boiled, he thrust in a red coal to throw the grounds to the
bottom. If I thought of English picnics, that was by way of contrast. My
host had never known, I had almost forgotten, the shabby barriers,
restraints, and traditions of that world where there are picnics.
Frontiersmen are, I think, really spirits strayed out of chivalric ages
into our century of all vulgarities. They are not abased, but only
amused by our world's condescensions. Uneducated? They are better
trained for their world than we are for ours. Their facts are at
first-hand from life, ours only at second-hand from books. Illiterate? I
should like to see one of our professors read the tracks on a frontier
trail. What was the good of the education which had led me to the brink
of this cliff? My host, who lived always at the edge of death, had eyes
which seemed to see my very thoughts. How else could he know that
silence was so kind? To the snake-bitten mare he gave outspoken
sympathy, to me his silence. Jones and I were his patients, and both of
us trusted him.

He had found me out. The thing I had intended was a crime, and
conscience-stricken, I dreaded lest he should speak. I could not bear
that. Already his camp was cleaned and in order, his pipe filled and
alight, at any moment he might break the restful silence. That's why I
spoke, and at random, asking if he were not from the United States.

His eyes said plainly, "So that's the game, eh?" His broad smile said,
"Well, we'll play." He sat down, cross-legged. "Yes," he answered, "I'm
an American citizen, except," he added softly, "on election days, and
then," he cocked up one shrewd eye, "I'm sort of British. Canadian? No,
I cayn't claim that either, coming from the Labrador, for that's
Newf'nland, a