rom all the
world what one wished for one's self, and to do it without mercy and
without fear-that was the clear plan in the primitive world, where
action was more than speech and dominance than knowledge. Was not
civilisation a mistake, and religion the insinuating delusion designed
to cover it up; or, if not designed, accepted by the original few who
saw that humanity could not turn back, and must even go forward with
illusions, lest in mere despair all men died and the world died with
them?

His eyes wandered to the raft where the men were singing, and he
remembered the threat made: that if he came again to the Cote Dorion
he "would get what for!" He remembered the warning of Rouge Gosselin
conveyed by Jolicoeur, and a sinister smile crossed over his face. The
contradictions of his own thoughts came home to him suddenly, for was it
not the case that his physical strength alone, no matter what his skill,
would be of small service to him in a dark corner of contest? Primitive
ideas could only hold in a primitive world. His real weapon was his
brain, that which civilisation had given him in lieu of primitive
prowess and the giant's strength.

They had come to a long piece of corduroy-road, and the horse's hoofs
struck rumbling hollow sounds from the floor of cedar logs. There was
a swamp on one side where fire-flies were flickering, and there flashed
into Charley Steele's mind some verses he had once learned at school:

"They made her a grave too cold and damp
For a soul so warm and true--"

It kept repeating itself in his brain in a strange dreary monotone.

"Stop the horse. I'll walk the rest of the way," he said presently to
the groom. "You needn't come for me, Finn; I'll walk back as far as the
Marochal Tavern. At twelve sharp I'll be there. Give yourself a drink
and some supper"--he put a dollar into the man's hand--"and no white
whiskey, mind: a bottle of beer and a leg of mutton, that's the thing."
He nodded his head, and by the light of the moon walked away smartly
down the corduroy-road through the shadows of the swamp. Finn the groom
looked after him.

"Well, if he ain't a queer dick! A reg'lar 'centric--but a reg'lar
brick, cutting a wide swathe as he goes. He's a tip-topper; and he's a
sort of tough too--a sort of a kind of a tough. Well, it's none of my
business. Get up!" he added to the horse, and turning round in the road
with difficulty, he drove back a mile to the Tavern Marochal f