There had been no prearranged plan for a general celebration at Christmas--no looking forward in anticipation of a grand hurrah. But the spirit of Christmas was in the air. And each sourdough, independent of his neighbor, harnessed his dogs and silently hit the trail, knowing instinctively that at the end of the trail he would find his neighbor. For man is by instinct gregarious, and he will travel far to answer the primordial call of his kind. For a month, a year--longer, he may remain alone. But the passive act of remaining is a distinct effort of will, a continued and continuous throttling of desire, until at last the time comes when desire may no longer be throttled. A man may remake himself, may completely change the sequence of act, the sequence of thought, that has differentiated him from other men, he may thus change what men are pleased to call his nature. But, the fundamental law that has decreed him a social animal he cannot change--and remain a man. The fugitive from justice, though he know himself to be beyond thought of capture in some far fastness of the wilderness will, when the time comes, count prison bars, and even the hangman’s noose, as naught, and will deliberately risk capture in seeking the society of his kind. And the man of the far North will brave the hardships of the long trail, will laugh at the strong cold, will bore through the blinding blizzard, will risk thin ice, and uncomplaining accept the gruelling labor of the snow-trail for no other thing than that he may intermingle with his own kind. It is the law. Men have broken the law and have paid the fullness of its fearsome penalty. The brain that makes man man explodes, and the man of a moment before is a raving insentient brute which in a fume of unreasoning fury seeks only to destroy until in a final paroxysm of malignity he destroys himself. Or, the dissolution of the brain may come gently and the breaker of the law of kind, maundering, and prattling, and babbling, may live on, and on, and on.