thing to which he had given his oath. It began to lose the vague semblance of a burden to be slipped when possible; a lesson to be got up with a crib; a factor which had no value, no interest except where it concerned his private self. Step by step, out here among these mighty forces which could crush him so lightly, the personal sloughed off and the impersonal grew more real. What he was doing; what Tempest was doing; what every map and woman who bent their will to accept law and restraint and discipline throughout the universe was doing, could not be a little thing. In the bulk it was bigger than Destiny itself, because it was the only force which could overcome what humanity knows as Destiny. It was the only force which could raise the world when done from purified motives.
Dick had never done anything from a purified motive in his life, although the delivering of Tempest had been near it in the beginning. Now, with his clear inner sight, he knew that he probably never would do anything from that motive. He knew that when he found Ducane he would delight to see the man cringe and whimper to him. He would delight to kick Ducane up on to his feet and keep him there by the goad. He had suffered too much through Jennifer's husband ever to forgive him, and he knew well that he was going to suffer, so long as he or Ducane lived. And then suddenly, Myers, passing him on the portage, halted, peering into his face with little twinkling, blue eyes.
"Who was you a-settin' out to kill jus' now?" he demanded.
"Black flies," said Dick, and scooped his hand down his stinging neck. "Like Joab and Joshua and the rest, I've been slaying my thousands and tens of thousands."
Myers grunted.
"Looks like the smell o' blood don't sicken you any," he said, and went on.
There was a curious affinity between the cheerful little Cockney and Dick. Myers had served in the Yukon Territory during the mining rush, and there were several passages in his life which he found it convenient to forget. But he had learnt there how to seek for the inner values in a man, knowing them to be different utterly from the side he faces the world with. Like Dick there were times
