d by association,
unless it has its foundation in community of interest and effort,
a mutual affection that can survive hard knocks.

Good-by, dear freckled man. You have taught me something. I hope
I have done as much for you. I'm sorry it couldn't be different.
But--a man must be able to stand on his own feet, eh? I leave you
to puzzle out what "standing on his own feet" means. Good-by.

Sophie.

P.S. Dad says that if you winter at Lone Moose and care to kill a
few of the long days you are welcome to help yourself to the
books he left. He will tell Cloudy Moon you are to have them all
if you want them, or any of them, any time.

Mr. Thompson folded up the sheets with deliberate precision, replaced
them in the envelope and tucked the envelope in his pocket. He rose to
go. He had a feeling of wanting to escape from that room which those
penned pages and swiftly acute memories had filled with a presence it
hurt him terribly to recall. His eye fell upon the rows of Carr's books,
orderly upon their shelves. The postscript, fresh in his
sense-impressions because it came last, and the sight of the books,
roused him to a swelling fury of anger.

The heresies of Huxley and Darwin! The blasphemies of Tom Paine! The
economic diatribes which began with Adam Smith and continued in
multiplying volumes down to the latest emanation from professorial
intellects in every civilized corner of the earth. The bulky, bitter
tomes of Marx and Engels! The Lorias and Leacocks, the tribe of
Gumplowicz, and Haeckel, the Lubbocks and Burtons, all that vast array
of minds which calmly dissect man and his manifold activities, that draw
deeply upon every branch of human knowledge to make clear the age-old
evolution and revolution in both the physical and intellectual
realm--and which generally leave gods and religions out of account
except to analyze them as manifestations of social phenomena. Those
damnable documents which he had never read, but which he had been taught
to shun as the product of perverted intellects, blasts of scientific
artillery, unkindly trained upon sacred concepts!

He put on his parka hood, gave an abrupt "good evening" to Cloudy Moon,
and went out into the night which had deepened its shadows while he sat
within.

The North lay hushed and hard under a wan moon. The teeth of the frost
nipped at him. A wolf lifted a dismal howl as he crossed the meadow. And
his anger died. T