rich fellow who'd hit the high spots, had his life messed up,
and was ready to quit. He'd lived enough. Then there was Luke, a gent
who'd been double-crossed and was sore at the world on general
principles.

"Paul would have been a full-sized saint in the old days. He was never
meant to live the way other men have to live. And finally there's a guy
who lies in the grass and whistles to a bird--Matthew. A poet--and all
poets are nuts.

"Well, all those fellows were tired of the world--fed up with it. Boil
them down, and they come to this: they thought more about the welfare
of their souls than they did about the world. Was that square? It
wasn't! They left the mothers and fathers, the brothers and sisters, the
friends, everything that had brought them into the world and raised 'em.
They go off to take care of themselves.

"That wasn't bad enough for 'em--they had to go out and pluck you and
bring you up with the same rotten hunches. Davie, my boy, d'you think a
man is made to live by himself?

"You haven't got fed up with the world; you're no retired high liver;
you haven't had a chance to get double-crossed more than once; you're
not a crazy poet; and you're a hell of a long ways from being a martyr.

"I'll tell you what you are. You're a certain number of pounds of husky
muscle and bone going to waste up here in the mountains. You've been
alone so much that you've got to thinking that your own hunches come
from God, and that'd spoil any man.

"Live alone? Bah! You've had more happiness since Ruth came into this
valley than you've ever had before or you'll ever have again.

"Right now you're breaking your heart to take her in your arms and tell
her to stop crying, but your pride won't let you.

"You tried to make yourself a mystery with your room of silence and all
that bunk. But no woman can stand a mystery. They all got to read their
husband's letters. You try to bluff her with a lot of fancy words and
partly scare her. It's fear that sent the four men up here in the first
place--fear of the world.

"And they've lived by fear. They scared a lot of poor unfortunate men
into coming with them for the sake of their souls, they said. And they
kept them here the same way. And they've kept you here by telling you
that you'd be damned if you went over the mountains.

"And you still keep them here the same way. Do you think they stay
because they love you? Give them a chance and see if they won't pack up
and beat i