m willing to finish it,
if you want to--but isn't it--isn't it rather foolish?"

"No end foolish. Don't think we'd ever finish," Ashe said with a gleam
of his old humor. "Let's call it a draw. I feel a bit ashamed of myself
by now."

Somewhere, sometime, Mr. Thompson had heard that men who fought shook
hands when the struggle was ended--a little ceremony that served to
restore the _status quo_. He had not the least rancor against Tommy
Ashe. It had all seeped away in the blind fury of that clash. He thrust
out a hand upon which the knuckles were cut and bloody. And the man upon
whose countenance he had bruised those knuckles took it with a wry
self-conscious smile.

Then they drew a little apart and squatted on the bank of the creek to
lave their battered faces in the cold water.

For a period of possibly five minutes they sat dabbling water-soaked
handkerchiefs upon their faces. The blood ceased to ooze from Thompson's
nostrils. Tommy Ashe looked over at his late antagonist and remarked
casually.

"We're a pair of capital idiots, eh, Thompson?"

Mr. Thompson tried to smile. But his countenance was swelling rapidly
and was in no condition for smiling. He mustered up a grimace, nodding
assent.

"I hope Sophie didn't see us making such asses of ourselves," Tommy
continued ruefully.

"I hardly think she would," Thompson returned. "It couldn't have been
the sort of spectacle a woman would care to watch."

"You never can tell about a woman," Ashe observed thoughtfully. "Nor,"
he added, "a man. I could never have imagined myself going off
half-cocked like that. I suppose the primitive brute in us is never
really far from the surface. Especially in this country. There's
something," he looked up at the surrounding depths of forest, down along
the dusky channel of Lone Moose, curving away among the spruce, "there's
something about this infernal solitude that brings out the savage. I've
noticed it in little things. We're loosed, in a way, from all restraint,
except what we put upon ourselves. Funny world, eh? You couldn't
imagine two chaps like us mauling each other like a pair of bruisers in
Mrs. Grundy's drawing-room, could you? Over a girl--oh, well, it'll be
all the same a hundred years from now."

There was nothing apologetic in either Tommy's tone or words. Thompson
understood. Tommy Ashe was thinking out loud, that was all. And
presently, after another silent interval, he stood up.

"I think I'll be getting