“Hattie!” said the old man ominously. “I beg pardon for her uncivility, stranger.” “Never mind,” said Reivers lightly. “Apparently she doesn’t know any better. Speaking to you, sir, I am nobody. I’m as much nobody as a child born yesterday. My life—as far as you’re concerned—began up there on the rocks in the Dead Lands. “I died just a few days before that—died as effectively as if a dozen preachers had read the service over me. You don’t understand that. You’ve got a simple mind. But I tell you I’m beginning a new life as completely as if there was no life behind me, and as you know all that’s happened in this new life, you see there’s nothing for me to tell you about myself.” “You died,” repeated the old man slowly. “I’ll warrant you had a good reason.” “A fair one. I wanted to live. I died to save my life.” “Speak plain!” growled MacGregor. “You were not fleeing from the law?” “No—as I told you yesterday. The only law I was fleeing from was the good old one that cheap men make when they become a mob.” “I tak’ it they had a fair reason for becoming a mob?” “The best in the world,” agreed Reivers. “They wanted to kill me. Now, why they wanted to do that is something that belongs to my other life—with the other man—has nothing at all to do with this man—with me—and therefore I am not going to tell you anything about it, except this: I didn’t come away with anything that belonged to them, except possibly my life.” MacGregor nodded sagely as Reivers ended. “And his own bare life a man has a right to get away with if he can, even though it’s property forfeited to others,” he said. “I suppose you have, or had, a name?” “I did. I haven’t now; I haven’t thought of one that would please me.” “How would the ‘Woman Tamer’ suit you?” asked the girl, without pausing in her sewing. “You remember you told me one of your specialties was taming spitfires like me?” Reivers smiled. “I am glad to see that you’ve become sufficiently interested in me, Miss MacGregor, to select me a name.” “Interested!” she flared; then subsided and bent over her sewing. “I will speak no more, Uncle,” she said meekly. “Good!” sneered Reivers. “Your manners are improving. And now, Mr. MacGregor, what about yourselves, and your brother, and a mine, and a man named Moir that I’ve heard you speak of?” Duncan MacGregor tossed a fresh birch chunk into the fire and carefully poked the coals around it. Outside, the dogs, burrowing in the snow, sent up to the sky their weird night-cry, a cry of prayer and protest, protest against the darkness and mystery of night, prayer for the return of the light of day. A wind sprang up and whipped dry snow against the cabin window, and to the sound of its swishing wail Duncan MacGregor began to speak.