"I ain't lettin' no judge and jury do my business. I'm for certain sure, not for p'r'aps! An' I want to do it myself. Clint was only twenty. Like boys we was together. I was eighteen when I married, an' he come when she went--jest a year--jest a year. An' ever since then we lived together, him an' me, an' shot together, an' trapped together, an' went gold-washin' together on the Cariboo, an' eat out of the same dish, an' slept under the same blanket, and jawed together nights--ever since he was five, when old Mother Lablache had got him into pants, an' he was fit to take the trail." The old man stopped a minute, his whipcord neck swelling, his lips twitching. He brought a fist down on the table with a bang. "The biggest little rip he was, as full of fun as a squirrel, an' never a smile-o-jest his eyes dancin', an' more sense than a judge. He laid hold o' me, that cub did--it was like his mother and himself together; an' the years flowin' in an' peterin' out, an' him gettin' older, an' always jest the same. Always on rock-bottom, always bright as a dollar, an' we livin' at Black Nose Lake, layin' up cash agin' the time we was to go South, an' set up a house along the railway, an' him to git married. I was for his gittin' married same as me, when we had enough cash. I use to think of that when he was ten, and when he was eighteen I spoke to him about it; but he wouldn't listen--jest laughed at me. You remember how Clint used to laugh sort of low and teasin' like--you remember that laugh o' Clint's, don't you?" Sinnet's face was towards the valley and Juniper Bend, but he slowly turned his head and looked at Buckmaster strangely out of his half-shut eyes. He took the pipe from his mouth slowly. "I can hear it now," he answered slowly. "I hear it often, Buck." The old man gripped his arm so suddenly that Sinnet was startled,--in so far as anything could startle anyone who had lived a life of chance and danger and accident, and his face grew a shade paler; but he did not move, and Buckmaster's hand tightened convulsively. "You liked him, an' he liked you; he first learnt poker off you, Sinnet. He thought you was a tough, but he didn't mind that no more than I did. It ain't for us to say what we're goin' to be, not always. Things in life git stronger than we are. You was a tough, but who's goin' to judge you! I ain't; for Clint took to you, Sinnet, an' he never went wrong in his thinkin'. God! he was wife an' child to me--an' he's dead--dead-- dead." The man's grief was a painful thing to see. His hands gripped the table, while his body shook with sobs, though his eyes gave forth no tears. It was an inward convulsion, which gave his face the look of unrelieved tragedy and suffering--Laocoon struggling with the serpents of sorrow and hatred which were strangling him.