ting the firm,
graceful outlines of his body, that he was a soldier. Within the past
twenty-four hours he had had a fight for life with one of the terrible
"colds" which, like an unstayed plague, close up the courses of the
body, and carry a man out of the hurly-burly, without pause to say how
much or how little he cares to go.

Pierre, whose rude skill in medicine was got of hard experiences here
and there, had helped him back into the world again, and was himself
now a little astonished at acting as Scripture reader to a Protestant
invalid. Still, the Bible was like his childhood itself, always with him
in memory, and Old Testament history was as wine to his blood. The lofty
tales sang in his veins: of primitive man, adventure, mysterious and
exalted romance. For nearly an hour, with absorbing interest, he had
read aloud from these ancient chronicles to Fawdor, who held this Post
of the Hudson's Bay Company in the outer wilderness.

Pierre had arrived at the Post three days before, to find a half-breed
trapper and an Indian helpless before the sickness which was hurrying to
close on John Fawdor's heart and clamp it in the vice of death. He had
come just in time. He was now ready to learn, by what ways the future
should show, why this man, of such unusual force and power, should have
lived at a desolate post in Labrador for twenty-five years.

"'This is the portion of them that spoil us, and the lot of them that
rob us--'" Fawdor repeated the words slowly, and then said: "It is
good to be out of the restless world. Do you know the secret of life,
Pierre?"

Pierre's fingers unconsciously dropped on the Bible at his side,
drumming the leaves. His eyes wandered over Fawdor's face, and presently
he answered, "To keep your own commandments."

"The ten?" asked the sick man, pointing to the Bible. Pierre's fingers
closed the book. "Not the ten, for they do not fit all; but one by one
to make your own, and never to break--comme ca!"

"The answer is well," returned Fawdor; "but what is the greatest
commandment that a man can make for himself?"

"Who can tell? What is the good of saying, 'Thou shalt keep holy the
Sabbath day,' when a man lives where he does not know the days? What is
the good of saying, 'Thou shalt not steal,' when a man has no heart to
rob, and there is nothing to steal? But a man should have a heart, an
eye for justice. It is good for him to make his commandments against
that wherein he is a fool or ha