"The heart has gone out of me! You have taken it out!" he cried. "I swear before our God that I'll be straight with you from now on. Won't it put heart in you if I'm your wife, standing by you through everything?" She took a long breath. Her desperation drove her to the limits of appeal. "I love you! I know it. I must have known it when I urged you on to your duty. I'm willing to say it here before all. Take me, and let's fight together." In her hysterical fear lest she was losing all, she took no thought of her pride; she was making passionate, primitive appeal to the chosen mate. But she did not understand how absolutely hopeless was the wreck of this man's fortunes, as Latisan 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!