o you know how strong you are?" she questioned.

"Why, no," he admitted. "That is, I don't know just what I can lift, if
that is what you mean, nor what I could pack for say a mile if I had to.
There's a good deal of knack in that sort of thing--balance and
distribution of weight, and the development of a certain set of muscles
by keeping at it. There are men who can pack five hundred on a short
portage. I've heard of eight hundred--but I don't know."

Faith thought she had known Angus before marriage. But in the
companionship of the trail and beside the evening fires beneath the
stars she learned that her knowledge of him had been superficial. She
found that the country rock of his reserve hid unsuspected veins of
tenderness, of poesy and of melancholy. But though he possessed these
softer veins--and she reflected that it should be her task to develop
them--the man himself was essentially hard and grim. His outlook, when
she came to know it, proved primitive, the code which governed him
simple and ancient--the old, old code of loyalty to friends, and in the
matter of reprisals eye for eye and tooth for tooth.

"But that is not right," she urged when he had set forth this latter
belief. "We are told to return good for evil."

Angus smiled grimly. "We may be told to do so," he said, "and we are
told to turn the other cheek to the smiter. That is all very well when
the evil or the blow is unintentional, sort of by accident. But when a
man does you harm on purpose, out of meanness, the best way to show him
he has made a mistake is to get back at him hard."

"Which makes him hate you all the more."

"Maybe. But it makes him mighty careful what he does."

"But don't you see," she argued, "that if there were no such thing as
forgiveness--if everybody paid back everybody for injuries in the same
coin--the whole world would be at feud and at war. We should go back to
savagery."

"And don't you see," he responded, "that if men knew they could get away
with anything without a comeback the world wouldn't be much better.
There are men and nations who are decent, and there are both who are
not. These have to be kept down. If they ruled, it would be terrorism."

"There would be the law; there must be the law, of course. That would
protect people."

"The law has too much red tape about it. In the old days things were
better. Then a man packed his own law."

"The gun? A horrible state of affairs! Barbarism!"

"Well, it ma