n Father Adam goes,
and--and--But believe me no judgment you can pass on me can begin to
express the thing I feel about myself. Please don't think I bear one
single hard thought against you."

The man laughed outright. The buoyancy of that moment was supreme. Bat
Harker was again in his mind. Bat, with all his quaint, crude
philosophy.

"Say, that beats everything," Bull cried. "My judgment of you. And all
this time I've been guessing--Oh, hell! Say, do you know, it gets me bad
when I think of you going back to Peterman and his crew? It sets me
well-nigh crazy. Oh, I know. I've no right. None at all. But it don't
make me feel any better. Here, I'll tell you about it. I'm not going to
take to myself virtues I don't possess, and have no right to anyway. I
wanted to win out in the fight against the Skandinavia because I'm a bit
of a fighting machine. I wanted to win out for the dollars I'm going to
help myself to. But I also wanted to win out because of the great big
purpose that lies behind these mills of Sachigo. I want you to get right
inside my mind on that thing so you'll know one of the reasons why I
hate that you're sending word to Peterman. You'll maybe understand then
the thing that made me fight you, a woman, as well as the others, and
treat you in a fashion that's made me hate myself ever since. I'm going
to say it as bluntly as I know how. It'll be like beating you, a
helpless victim, right over the head with a club. I've acted the brute
right along to you, an' I s'pose I best finish up that way. You were
doing your best to sell your birthright, my birthright, to the
foreigner. You were helping the alien, Peterman, and his gang, to snatch
the wealth of our forests. Why? You didn't think. You didn't know. There
was no one to tell you. You simply didn't know the thing you were doing.

"This man Peterman was good to you. He held out prospects that
glittered. It was good enough. And all the time he was looking to steal
your birthright. The birthright of every Canadian. That makes you feel
bad. Sure it does. I can see it. But I got to tell it that way,
because--Here, I'm on the other side. It was chance, not virtue set me
there. But once there the notion got me good. Sachigo was built to
defend the great Canadian forests against the foreigner. That slogan got
a grip on me. Yes, it got me good. I could scrap with every breath in my
body for that. Well, now we've got the Skandinavia beat, and in a year
or so they'l