viewed the situation. Ridicule, the taunt
that he had been fooled by a girl from the city, was waiting for him all
along the river. Echford Flagg would be the first to deny the worth of a
man who had received the Big Laugh. No man on the Noda had ever incurred
mock to such a degree. And he had vaunted his engagement to her!

She went toward him, her hands outstretched; he had been backing away
from her.

"Look out!" he warned. "I never struck a woman!" He spread his big hand.
All the fury of his forebears was rioting in him.

He was not swayed by rage, merely; there would have been something petty
in ordinary human resentment at that moment. There was another quality
that was devilishly and subtly complex in the sudden mania which
obsessed him. He had seen woodsmen leaping and shouting in the ecstasy
of drunkenness; liquor seemed to affect the men of the woods in that
way--to accentuate their sense of wild liberty. Latisan had been obliged
to pitch in and quell riots where woodsmen had heaped their clothes and
were making a bonfire of the garments they needed for decency's sake.
And a mere liquid had been able to put them into that temper!

But this that was sweeping through all his being was liquid fire!

He had never been else than a spectator of what alcohol would do to a
man; he had never tasted the stuff.

Here he was, all of a sudden, drunk with something else--he knew that he
was drunk--and he let himself go! He leaped up and tossed his arms above
his head. By action alone a woodsman expressed his feelings, he told
himself, and he was only a woodsman; the hellions of the world were not
allowing him to make anything else of himself! The north country was
closed to him; his power as a boss was gone. Look at those grinning
faces around him!

Then he yelled shrilly. Many who stood around understood what that whoop
meant, though it had not been heard for a long time on the Noda. It was
"the Latisan lallyloo"! It had echoed among the hills in the old days
when John Latisan was down from the river and had grabbed a bottle from
the hand of the first bootlegger who offered his wares.

The grandson, then and there, was veritably drunk with the frenzy of
despair!

Yanking his arms free, he dragged off his belted jacket and flung it on
the ground; on the jacket, with a pile-driver sweep of his arm, he drove
down his cap.

"Lie there, drive master!" he shouted.

The down train of the narrow-gauge was dragging out