Strangely, he no longer even missed the old days. The love of strong drink was gone from his body. He didn’t look a great deal like the man that the Old Colonel had sent forth from the Greenwood Club. His hands and face had been brown before, now they were almost as dark as those of Pete, his late guide. A fast walk over the ridges did not fatigue him now. He was lean and hard as hickory, the muscles rippled under his toughened skin, the sweet, mountain air rushed deep in his lungs. It was almost recreation: never in his old life had he known the buoyancy, the tireless strength, the simple joy of living vibrant and alive in every nerve. There was a curious change in his eyes, too. The little blood-splotches had quite gone from the whites, and they were a firm, pale blue. The corneas looked slightly more hard and bright, and the lines that dissipation had enscribed were almost gone. “Go for two weeks,” the Old Colonel had said. “And Lord knows—it might make a man of you.” Two weeks! Three months had already passed, and whether Alice knew it or not, that remote possibility that the Old Colonel had hoped for had already come true. Hugh had done a man’s work: the degree had been won. For the law that was true in the earth’s young days is true to-day; it endures when scorn has spent itself and false pride is humbled: that by toil and conflict alone shall men find their place, their honor, and their happiness. Hugh knew now, as he watched his sheep, that this was the world of the warrior, not the weakling; of those who gave, not those who took; of those who stood firm and endured, not those who broke and fled from the crash of armor. He did not doubt but that he had already been forgotten by the members of the Greenwood Club. Three months had he been gone: another played his hand at poker, another occupied his favorite seat in the club dining room. But of course they would forget him! There was no comradeship of arms, no mutual memories of trial and strife and conquest to hold them close to him. He had supposed that he had known them intimately, their natures and their souls, but now he realized that they had been but strangers, after all. Living an artificial life, he had seen only exteriors. He had flattered himself—in his subconscious mind rather than conscious—that they were close and lasting friends. Now he knew that only the fire of conflict and stress can weld a lasting friendship between man and man. Friendship is too dear and precious a thing to find in soft ways. That, like all of the other rewards of life, goes only to the warrior.