t took the place."

Reasons? So there had been reasons in the life of Lew Wee. I had
suspected as much. I found something guarded and timid and long-suffering
in his demeanour. He bore, I thought, the searing memory of an ordeal.

"Reasons!" I said, waiting.

"Reasons for coming this far in the first place. Wanted to save his life.
I don't know why, with that fatal idea he sticks to. Habit, probably.
Anyway, he had trouble saving it--kind of a feverish week."

She lighted the cigarette and chuckled hoarsely between the first
relishing whiffs of it.

"Yes, sir; that poor boy believes the country between here and the
coast is inhabited by savages; wild hill tribes that try to exterminate
peaceful travellers; a low kind of outlaws that can't understand a word
you tell 'em and act violent if you try to say it over. And having got
here, past the demons, I figure he's afraid to go back. I don't blame
him."

Ordinarily, this would have been enough. Now the lady merely smoked and
chuckled. When I again uttered "Well?" with a tinge of rebuke, she came
down from her musing, but into another and distant field. It was the
field of natural history, of zoology, of vertebrates, mammals, furred
quadrupeds--or, in short, skunks. One may as well be blunt in this
matter.

Ma Pettengill said the skunk got too little credit for its lovely
character, it being the friendliest wild animal known to man and never
offensive except when put upon. Wasn't we all offensive at those times?
And just because the skunk happened to be superbly gifted in this
respect, was that any reason to ostracize him?

"I ain't sayin' I'd like to mix with one when he's vexed," continued the
lady judicially; "but why vex 'em? They never look for trouble; then why
force it on their notice? Take one summer, years ago, when Lysander John
and I had a camp up above Dry Forks. My lands! Every night after supper
the prettiest gang of skunks would frolic down off the hillside and romp
round us. Here would come Pa and Ma in the lead, and mebbe a couple of
aunts and uncles and four or five of the cunningest little ones, and
they'd all snoop fearlessly round the cook fire and the grub boxes,
picking up scraps of food--right round under my feet, mind you--and
looking up now and then and saying, 'Thank you!' plain as anything, and
what lovely weather we're having, and why don't you come up and see us
some time?--and so on. They kept it up for a month while we was there;
an