.
"Ever been through six months of living torture with the stars leering
at you and the foxes barking at you all the time, fighting to keep
yourself from going mad? I went through that twice to get John Keith,
and I guess you're right. I'm changed. I don't think I'll ever be the
same again. Something--has gone. I can't tell what it is, but I feel
it. I guess only half of me pulled through. It killed John Keith.
Rotten, isn't it?"

He felt that he had made a lucky stroke. McDowell pulled out a drawer
from under the table and thrust a box of fat cigars under his nose.

"Light up, Derry--light up and tell us what happened. Bless my soul,
you're not half dead! A week in the old town will straighten you out."

He struck a match and held it to the tip of Keith's cigar.

For an hour thereafter Keith told the story of the man-hunt. It was his
Iliad. He could feel the presence of Conniston as words fell from his
lips; he forgot the presence of the stern-faced man who was watching
him and listening to him; he could see once more only the long months
and years of that epic drama of one against one, of pursuit and flight,
of hunger and cold, of the Long Nights filled with the desolation of
madness and despair. He triumphed over himself, and it was Conniston
who spoke from within him. It was the Englishman who told how terribly
John Keith had been punished, and when he came to the final days in the
lonely little cabin in the edge of the Barrens, Keith finished with a
choking in his throat, and the words, "And that was how John Keith
died--a gentleman and a MAN!"

He was thinking of the Englishman, of the calm and fearless smile in
his eyes as he died, of his last words, the last friendly grip of his
hand, and McDowell saw the thing as though he had faced it himself. He
brushed a hand over his face as if to wipe away a film. For some
moments after Keith had finished, he stood with his back to the man who
he thought was Conniston, and his mind was swiftly adding twos and twos
and fours and fours as he looked away into the green valley of the
Saskatchewan. He was the iron man when he turned to Keith again, the
law itself, merciless and potent, by some miracle turned into the form
of human flesh.

"After two and a half years of THAT even a murderer must have seemed
like a saint to you, Conniston. You have done your work splendidly. The
whole story shall go to the Department, and if it doesn't bring you a
commission, I'll resign.