hought that his employers' trip should end in any
gloom because the one painful chapter in his own life had closed
forever. Moreover, although more than once, as he fought his way through
a jungle or jumped a windfall, something nipped his heart, pinching him
up inside, and making his eyes leak, he felt that the thing had ended
well for him--and for Chris.

Herb, in his simple faith, scarcely doubted that the old chum, whom he
had forgiven, had reached a Home-Camp where his broken will and stunted
life might be repaired, and grow as they had poor chance to grow here.

"Say, boys!" he burst forth, a few minutes after his protest against
"moping," and when the band were within sight of the spring whence they
had started, an age back, as it seemed, on the trail of the moose. "Say,
boys! I've been all these years raging at Chris. Seems to me now as if
he was a poor sort of overgrowed baby, and not so bad a thief as the
chump who gave him that whiskey, and stole his senses. It's a thundering
big pity that man hadn't the burying of him to-day.

"He was always the under dog,--was Chris," he went on slowly, as if he
was seeking from his own heart an excuse for those unforeseen impulses
which had worked it and his body during the past five hours. "Whites and
Injuns jumped on him. They said he was criss-cross all through, same as
his eyes. But he warn't. Never seed a half-breed that had less gall and
more grit, except when the hanker for whiskey would creep up in him, and
boss him. He could no more stand agen it, and the things it made him do,
than a jack-rabbit."

"Another reason why we Americans ought to feel our responsibility
towards every man in whose veins runs Indian blood, a thousand times
more hotly than we do!" burst out Cyrus. "It maddens a fellow to think
that we made them the under dogs, and as much by giving them a 'boss,'
as you say, in fire-water, as by anything else."

"I kind o' think that way myself sometimes," said Herb.

And there was silence until the guide cried:--

"Here's our camp, boys. I'll bet you're glad to see it. I must get the
kettle, and cruise off for water. 'Tain't likely I'll trust one of you
fellers after last night. But you can hustle round and build the
camp-fire while I'm gone."

Herb had a shrewd motive in this. He knew that there is nothing which
will cure the blues in a camper, if he is touched by that affliction,
rare in forest life, like the building of his fire, watching the l