mental fancy a little army of faces trooped
before him, faces dark and white, faces filled with hatred and despair,
faces brave with the cheer of hope and faces pallid with the dread of
death. And of these ghosts of his man-hunting prowess it was Anton
Fournet's face that came out of the crowd and remained with him. For he
had brought Anton to this same cell--Anton, the big Frenchman, with his
black hair, his black beard, and his great, rolling laugh that even in
the days when he was waiting for death had rattled the paper-weights on
Kedsty's desk.

Anton rose up like a god before Kent now. He had killed a man, and like
a brave man he had not denied it. With a heart in his great body as
gentle as a girl's, Anton had taken pride in the killing. In his prison
days he sang songs to glorify it. He had killed the white man from
Chippewyan who had stolen his neighbor's wife! Not _his_ wife, but his
neighbor's! For Anton's creed was, "Do unto others as you would have
others do unto you," and he had loved his neighbor with the great
forest love of man for man. His neighbor was weak, and Anton was strong
with the strength of a bull, so that when the hour came, it was Anton
who had measured out vengeance. When Kent brought Anton in, the giant
had laughed first at the littleness of his cell, then at the
unsuspected strength of it, and after that he had laughed and sung
great, roaring songs every day of the brief tenure of life that was
given him. When he died, it was with the smiling glory in his face of
one who had cheaply righted a great wrong.

Kent would never forget Anton Fournet. He had never ceased to grieve
that it had been his misfortune to bring Anton in, and always, in close
moments, the thought of Anton, the stout-hearted, rallied him back to
courage. Never would he be the man that Anton Fournet had been, he told
himself many times. Never would his heart be as great or as big, though
the Law had hanged Anton by the neck until the soul was choked out of
his splendid body, for it was history that Anton Fournet had never
harmed man, woman, or child until he set out to kill a human snake and
the Law placed its heel upon him and crushed him.

And tonight Anton Fournet came into the cell again and sat with Kent on
the cot where he had slept many nights, and the ghosts of his laughter
and his song filled Kent's ears, and his great courage poured itself
out in the moonlit prison room so that at last, when Kent stretched
hi