‘If I had, it would be no worse than the experience of a hundred shipwrecks,’ answered the other, glancing from Lucius to his gun, with an air at once furtive and ferocious, like some savage beast at bay. ‘I have half a mind to shoot you down like the wolf you are,’ said Lucius, rising slowly from his knees, after throwing the bones back into the blaze. ‘Do it, and welcome,’ answered the stranger, casting off all reserve with a contemptuous tone, that might be either the indifference of desperation or mere bravado. ‘Famine knows no law. I have done only what I daresay you would have done in my situation. We had starved, literally starved—no half rations, but sheer famine—for five days, when I killed him with a sudden stroke of my hatchet. I cut off one arm, and buried the rest of him—yonder, under the snow. I daresay I was half-mad when I did it. Yet it was a mercy to put him out of his misery. If he had been a white skin, I should have tossed up with him which was to go, but I didn’t stand on punctilio with a nigger. It may be my turn next, perhaps. Shoot me, and welcome, if you’ve a mind to waste a charge of powder on so miserable a wretch.’ ‘No,’ said Lucius, ‘no one has made me your judge or your executioner. I leave you to your conscience. But if ever you darken the threshold of our hut again—be your errand what it may—by the God above us both, you shall die like a dog!’ Matchi’s keen eyes followed the vanishing form of his accuser, and his thin lips shaped themselves into a triumphant grin. ‘You didn’t inquire about the money the Indian carried,’ he muttered. ‘_That_ was my real motive. Better to be thought a cannibal than a thief. And with that money I can begin life again if ever I get clear of this forest.’ * * * * * Lucius Davoren spent that night in the forest, by a fire of his own kindling, after having put some distance between himself and that other wanderer. He recruited exhausted nature with a buffalo steak, and then sat out the night by his lonely fire; sometimes dozing, more often watching, knowing not when murder might creep upon him with stealthy footfall across the silent snow. Morning came, however, and the night had brought no attack. By daylight he regained the lost trail, found his way back to the hut, laden with his spoil, and to his unspeakable joy found a change for the better in the sick man. ‘I have gaven him his traft, bongdual,’ said Mr. Schanck, pointing to the empty medicine bottle, ‘and he is gooller; he bersbires. Dat is goot.’ ‘Von der Stirne heisse, Rinnen muss der Schweiss.’