d it word for word, and I forgot the tang,
for it was solemn, a declaration of religion--pagan, if you will; and
clothed in the living garmenture of herself.

"'And the rest of it was torn away,' she added, a great emptiness in her
voice. 'It was only a scrap of newspaper. But that Thoreau was a wise
man. I wish I knew more about him.' She stopped a moment, and I swear
her face was ineffably holy as she said, 'I could have made him a good
wife.'

"And then she went on. 'I knew right away, as soon as I read that, what
was the matter with me. I was a night-born. I, who had lived all my
life with the day-born, was a night-born. That was why I had never been
satisfied with cooking and dishwashing; that was why I had hankered to
run naked in the moonlight. And I knew that this dirty little Juneau
hash-joint was no place for me. And right there and then I said, "I
quit." I packed up my few rags of clothes, and started. Jake saw me and
tried to stop me.

"'What you doing?" he says.

"'Divorcin' you and me,' I says. 'I'm headin' for tall timber and where
I belong.'"

"'No you don't,' he says, reaching for me to stop me. 'The cooking has
got on your head. You listen to me talk before you up and do anything
brash.'

"But I pulled a gun-a little Colt's forty-four--and says, 'This does my
talkin' for me.'

"And I left."

Trefethan emptied his glass and called for another.

"Boys, do you know what that girl did? She was twenty-two. She had spent
her life over the dish-pan and she knew no more about the world than I
do of the fourth dimension, or the fifth. All roads led to her desire.
No; she didn't head for the dance-halls. On the Alaskan Pan-handle it
is preferable to travel by water. She went down to the beach. An Indian
canoe was starting for Dyea--you know the kind, carved out of a single
tree, narrow and deep and sixty feet long. She gave them a couple of
dollars and got on board.

"'Romance?' she told me. 'It was Romance from the jump. There were three
families altogether in that canoe, and that crowded there wasn't room to
turn around, with dogs and Indian babies sprawling over everything, and
everybody dipping a paddle and making that canoe go.' And all around the
great solemn mountains, and tangled drifts of clouds and sunshine. And
oh, the silence! the great wonderful silence! And, once, the smoke of
a hunter's camp, away off in the distance, trailing among the trees.
It was like a picnic, a grand picnic, an