strength, it is something away back in you--lustful, and
ferocious, and wild, and crouching."

He smiled wryly.

"It is my local color, maybe--absorbed from this country. I'll try
to change, though, if you want me to. I'll let them rope and throw
and brand me. I'll take on the graces of civilization and put away
revenge and ambition and all the rest of it, if it will make you
like me any better. Why, I'll even promise not to violate the
person of our claim-jumper if I catch him; and Heaven knows THAT
means that Samson has parted with his locks."

"I think I could like you if you did," she said, "but you can't do
it. You are a savage."

There are no clubs nor marts where men foregather for business in
the North--nothing but the saloon, and this is all and more than a
club. Here men congregate to drink, to gamble, and to traffic.

It was late in the evening when Glenister entered the Northern and
passed idly down the row of games, pausing at the crap-table,
where he rolled the dice when his turn came. Moving to the
roulette-wheel, he lost a stack of whites, but at the faro "lay-
out" his luck was better, and he won a gold coin on the "high-
card." Whereupon he promptly ordered a round of drinks for the men
grouped about him, a formality always precedent to overtures of
general friendship.

As he paused, glass in hand, his eyes were drawn to a man who