"You know what I done! God knows I had a right to! They say I ain't fit to live among men." Again Thayor stared into the fire. "How they've hounded me," Dinsmore went on, clearing his thin voice as best he could--a voice unaccustomed to conversation. "The winter's the worst; you ain't never been hounded in winter. You ain't never knowed what it is to go hongry and alone. It'll give ye a new idee consarnin' folks. I used to think I knew the woods, but I tell ye I know 'em _now_. I've got friends in 'em now," he went on, as if confiding a secret; "sometimes a fox will leave me what he ain't ate--I've known a wolverine git a dum sight more human than them that's been huntin' me. Him and me shared the same cave--he got to know me--he was a great fisher. I got him out of a trap twice--he see I warn't goin' to hurt him." Thayor sat looking steadily into the hollow, tired eyes like a man in a dream, forgetting even to question him further. Moreover, he knew he was telling the truth, and that Dinsmore's frankness was proof enough that he had much to say to him of importance. Somehow he felt that in his disconnected narrative he would slowly lead to it. His character in this respect was much like his father's. "Winter's the worst," repeated Dinsmore, the effort of speaking already perceptible in his drawn features--"nights when yer heart seems froze and ye wait for mornin' and the sun to thaw in; the sun's most as good as food when yer that way. I tried, twice, to git across the line into Canady, but I come back. I hadn't no friends thar, and somehow these here woods I knowed seemed kinder. Besides, I always had the chance of seein' father and sometimes Billy and Freme; and sometimes--my little gal." He paused, trying to proceed more directly with the drift of what he wished to say. For some moments his mind seemed vacant. At length he resumed: