Paul was glad to be saved the necessity of speech, and he felt the swift discernment with which the packer resumed his usual manner. “Got any more of that stuff you call soup? Divide even! I won't be made no baby of.” “We might as well finish it up. It's hardly worth making two bites of a cherry.” “Call this 'cherry'! It's been a good while on the bough. What's it mostly made of?” “Rind of bacon, snow water,--plenty of water,--and a tablespoonful of rice.” “Good work! Hungry folks can live on what the full bellies throw away.” “Oh, I can save. But there comes a time when you can't live by saving what you haven't got.” “That's right! Well, let's talk, then, before the bacon-rind fades out of us.” The packer's face and voice, his whole manner, showed the joy of a soul that has found relief. Paul was not trying now to behave dutifully; they were man to man once more. The quaint, subdued humor asserted itself, and the narrator's speech flowed on in the homely dialect which expressed the man. “I stayed out all that winter, workin' towards the coast. One day, along in March, I fetched a charcoal burner's camp, and the critter took me in and nursed my frost-bites and didn't ask no questions, nor I of him. We struck up a trade, my drivin' stock, mostly skin and bone, for a show in his business. He wa'n't gettin' rich at it, that was as plain as the hip bones on my mules. I kep' in the woods, cuttin' timber and tendin' kiln, and he hauled and did the sellin'. Next year he went below to Portland and brought home smallpox with him. It broke out on him on the road. He was a terrible sick man. I buried him, and waited for my turn. It didn't come. I seemed kind o' insured. I've been in lots of trouble since then, but nothing ever touched me till now. I banked on it too strong, though. I sure did! My pardner was just such another lone bird like me. If he had any folks of his own he kep' still about them. So I took his name--whether it was his name there's no knowing. Guess I've took full as good care of it as he would. 'Hagar?' folk would say, sort o' lookin' me over. 'You ain't Jim Hagar.' No, but I was John, and they let it go at that.