peating the lesson over and
over. "And that isn't wrong, Peter. The sin is in killing when you
don't have to. See that tree over there, with a vine as big as my wrist
winding around it, like a snake? Well, that vine is choking the life out
of the tree, and in time the tree will die. But the vine is doing just
what God A'mighty meant it to do. It needs a tree to live on. But I'm
going to cut the vine, because I think more of the tree than I do the
vine. That's MY privilege--following my conscience. And we're eating
young partridges tonight, because we had to have something to keep us
alive. It's the necessity of the thing that counts, Peter. Think you can
understand that?"

It was pretty hard for Peter at first, but he was observant, and his
mind worked quickly. The crime of destroying birdlings in their nest, or
on the ground, was impressed upon him. He began to understand there was
a certain humiliating shame attached to an attack upon a creature weaker
than himself, unless there was a reason for it. He looked chiefly to
his master for decisions in the matter. Snowshoe rabbits, young and half
grown, were very tame in this month of August, and ordinarily he would
have destroyed many of them in a day's travel. But unless Jolly
Roger gave him a signal, or he was hungry, he would pass a snowshoe
unconcernedly. This phase of Peter's development interested Jolly
Roger greatly. The outlaw's philosophy had not been punctured by the
egotistical "I am the only reasoning being" arguments of narrow-gauged
nature scientists. He believed that Peter possessed not only a brain and
super-instinct, but also a very positive reasoning power which he was
helping to develop. And the process was one that fascinated him. When he
was not sleeping, or traveling, or teaching Peter he was usually reading
the wonderful little red volumes of history which he had purloined from
the mail sledge up near the Barren Lands. He knew their contents nearly
by heart. His favorites were the life-stories of Napoleon, Margaret of
Anjou, and Peter the Great, and always when he compared his own
troubles with the difficulties and tragedies over which these people
had triumphed he felt a new courage and inspiration, and faced the world
with better cheer. If Nature was his God and Bible, and Nada his Angel,
these finger-worn little books written by a man half a century dead
were voices out of the past urging him on to his best. Their pages were
filled with the vivid