He Was A Silent Fury Who No

One Cannot Violate The Promptings Of One's Nature Without Having That Nature Recoil Upon Itself.

But This Is Not A World Of Free Freights. One Pays According To An Iron Schedule--for Every Strength The Balanced Weakness; For Every High A Corresponding Low; For Every Fictitious God-like Moment An Equivalent Time In Reptilian Slime. For Every Feat Of Telescoping Long Days And Weeks Of Life Into Mad Magnificent Instants, One Must Pay With Shortened Life, And, Oft-times, With Savage Usury Added.

No; I Did Not Hate Him. The Word Is Too Weak. There Is No Word In The Language Strong Enough To Describe My Feelings. I Can Say Only That I Knew The Gnawing Of A Desire For Vengeance On Him That Was A Pain In Itself And That Exceeded All The Bounds Of Language.

He Had No Conscious Knowledge Of Death, But Like Every Animal Of The Wild, He Possessed The Instinct Of Death. To Him It Stood As The Greatest Of Hurts. It Was The Very Essence Of The Unknown; It Was The Sum Of The Terrors Of The Unknown, The One Culminating And Unthinkable Catastrophe That Could Happen To Him, About Which He Knew Nothing And About Which He Feared Everything.

The First Theft Marked Buck As Fit To Survive In The Hostile Northland Environment. It Marked His Adaptability, His Capacity To Adjust Himself To Changing Conditions, The Lack Of Which Would Have Meant Swift And Terrible Death. It Marked, Further, The Decay Or Going To Pieces Of His Moral Nature, A Vain Thing And A Handicap In The Ruthless Struggle For Existence.