er in Lost City. You know better than I what
the laws were in those days, Fingers. Food failed to come up. Snow came
early, the thermometer never rose over fifty below zero for three
straight months, and Lost City was an inferno of starvation and death.
You could go out and kill a man, then, and perhaps get away with it,
Fingers. But if you stole so much as a crust of bread or a single bean,
you were taken to the edge of the camp and told to go! And that meant
certain death--death from hunger and cold, more terrible than shooting
or hanging, and for that reason it was the penalty for theft.

"Tatman wasn't a thief. It was seeing his young wife slowly dying of
hunger, and his horror at the thought of seeing her fall, as others
were falling, a victim to scurvy, that made him steal. He broke into a
cabin in the dead of night and stole two cans of beans and a pan of
potatoes, more precious than a thousand times their weight in gold. And
he was caught. Of course, there was the wife. But those were the days
when a woman couldn't save a man, no matter how lovely she was. Tatman
was taken to the edge of camp and given his pack and his gun--but no
food. And the girl, hooded and booted, was at his side, for she was
determined to die with him. For her sake Tatman had lied up to the last
minute, protesting his innocence.

"But the beans and the potatoes were found in his cabin, and that was
evidence enough. And then, just as they were about to go straight out
into the blizzard that meant death within a few hours, then--"

Kent rose to his feet, and walked to the little window, and stood
there, looking out. "Fingers, now and then a superman is born on earth.
And a superman was there in that crowd of hunger-stricken and
embittered men. At the last moment he stepped out and in a loud voice
declared that Tatman was innocent and that he was guilty. Unafraid, he
made a remarkable confession. He had stolen the beans and the potatoes
and had slipped them into the Tatman cabin when they were asleep. Why?
Because he wanted to save the woman from hunger! Yes, he lied, Fingers.
He lied because he loved the wife that belonged to another man--lied
because in him there was a heart as true as any heart God ever made. He
lied! And his lie was a splendid thing. He went out into that blizzard,
strengthened by a love that was greater than his fear of death, and the
camp never heard of him again. Tatman and his wife returned to their
cabin and lived.