you're not reckoning on. I've seen it happen before to-day-all in justice, too."

Mr. Edson whistled gently at this reproof, and opened the audacious eyes a trifle wider.

"Natural advice from an orthodox," he agreed; "but I thought you belonged to the lot who leave God out of the universe. I've heard them call you-" He stopped short; fitful as he was to serious thought and flippantly as he treated it, his face flushed with impatience as he found his tongue running so far ahead of his discretion. "I really beg you pardon," he said, putting out his hand in an impulsive way, and with a smile winningly characteristic of his desire to please. "You speak like a gentleman, and I—like a fool; but if you can get used to the idea that I'm a harmless sort of a fool, we may get along all right together."

"I shouldn't wonder if we did," said the older man in the same quiet way, but closing his eyes for an instant, much as the other remembered him doing that first day; so he did not see the offered hand, Don supposed, and with a grimace and a sigh the unaccepted member was thrust in his pocket. "And you needn't feel bad about what they call me here," continued the man; "it's the 'Pagan,' I reckon. Yes, I've heard them. I don't mind it now. It isn't for not believing in God that these pious folks damn a man, or have the will to do it. It's enough for them to know that a man has his own opinion about the character of the Almighty, and can't in his soul see a justice and a lesson in the God Moses tells about. That was Moses' idea of what a God ought to be, I reckon, an' I fought for faith in it for a long time; but it's gone. The Almighty I'd try to reach is above tradin' blessings for sheep's blood. I ain't askin' any help from God, becase I won't get it. I get a chance to work out my own salvation, jest as every other

human has to-for the sins o' this life an' the other lives before this."

"Oh, the other lives before this-yes," murmured Mr. Edson, eying the broad shoulders of this queer specimen of paganism, and wondering what his chances would be to get out of the way with a whole hide if the man's opinions were likely to render him combative as well as strongly assertive. Had he not heard that the "Pagan" was a little "touched" mentally? And the meeting in the timber began to have the savor of an adventure, and the contest between discretion and curiosity in the young man's mind was won by the latter when he ventured: "Those lives you spoke of just now-the lives before this now do you know, Mr. Lennard, I haven't just as clear a recollection of mine as I would like to have."

"None of us have," announced the man, gravely, not seeing the quizzical expression on the other face. "None of us have seen the future life, either, I reckon only in dreams, may be-but something tells us to believe in it; an' if our souls are immortal an' have no end, it's reasonable to ask where the beginning of it was. I don't know what your feelings tell you about it, but mine tell me I was in this world before; not just remembrance, but kind o' feelings when you come to places, an' people, an' thoughts in books that you know have been something to you, but you haven't got the record right clear enough to tell just when. Could you tell me true"-and he stopped squarely and looked up at his listener-"could you tell me true, an' say that you haven't ever come to faces an' eyes -especially eyes—that set you thinking like that?”

"Especially eyes!" Don tried to look down nonchalantly into the questioning ones raised to him, and failed utterly. What curious eyes they were, with the green glints across the gray like an agate he had seen somewhere

-but where? or might it have been the eyes themselves? He felt a swift chill touch him as he tried to take his eyes away from those other compelling ones, and could not. He knew a dizziness as though the earth was coming up to meet him, and the spell was broken by the clasp of a hand on his wrist.

"There! we'll drop that question for this time," he heard the man saying in a kind voice. "You're strong enough in some ways, but not in others. It's the bird that sings in the throat there that makes you easily touched. Did you know that the snakes charm the birds easier than any other thing?"

"The snakes-ugh!" and Mr. Edson shivered back into a realization that his horse was again walking through the laurel, and that the green-eyed monster with the earnest face was walking beside him. "What makes you speak of snakes like that? and will you have the indulgence to tell me what happened back there?—some jugglery."

"I don't know," said the man, slowly; "one o' the marks left on me to carry into this life, I reckon-it's been called different names. Long ago, when people could lay their hands or their eyes cn others an' influence them for good, it was called the power o' God, an' the people who had it were called saints; an' then when it was used for bad it was called the workings o' the devil, an' the people were burned for witches; an' ye've heard tell of it, I reckon. I can't explain-I don't know how it comes; it's the weight o' justice, I reckon. I was a boy when they said it was the devil in me. I've grown to be a man, an' they can't say harm I've ever done, but they believe it's the devil yet."

"And back there?"

Don's brows were wrinkled perplexedly trying to follow the slow statements and the queer sensations he had felt for a moment.

"Back there? oh, I was earnest, that was all-powerful earnest-an' I looked at you so an' clean forgot everything till I saw you get white. You see, sir," he added, pathetically apologetic, "this seems the corner o' the earth my life is made for, but sometimes I've been starved like for more larning out o' books, an' when I can ask anyone who has studied books, an' the world, may be, my tongue don't seem to belong to me any more-I just have to ask; an' that's why I was so earnest, a hoping some day I'll come across some man or some woman who feels as I do about God's plan and the justice in it; but I never have yet, an' a good many never give me the chance to ask them a second time."

"I can understand that, too," said Mr. Edson, with suspicious alacrity. He was beginning to recover something of his natural manner, but was not yet quite decided whether this advocate of reincarnation and dispenser of charms should be viewed in a comical or pathetic light. What a queer confession of faith! Religious doubts did not trouble Don enough for him to understand any sound mind becoming perplexed very deeply. His own interest in things theological had never led him far enough to reach doubt. But this other man-where had he ever gathered. those ideas? Assuredly not through association with like minds. Don had a conviction that it was as well there were no like minds to keep him company.

They had reached a plateau in the wood where the trail branched into two; a stranger could scarcely have seen their faint tracing, but to the mountaineer the hills and the valleys were as the pages of one book, allowed to be within reach of his hands always.

"I'm on my way to the forge at the Ledge," he said, "an' if you're for a different trail we part here."

"But I am not; I'm going there myself, and then, I think, to Riker's."

The green-eyed monster-Don had already mentally invested him with that title-looked up at him, one curious, searching gaze, quickly withdrawn.

"An' you're bound for Indian Ledge too, to-day?" he said, slowly. "Well, I reckon there is room enough on the trail for us both." But for the rest of the way speech was gone from his tongue; the mood that had invited companionship of thought had departed. Something that he had forgotten or driven away for a space had settled like a cloud over the serious face, and he stalked on with bent head, answering only when spoken to. But once he spoke unasked, when his companion, for some awkward trick of horsemanship, gave vent to an opinion on his own restrictions in a mental sense when he was ushered into the world.

"You called yourself a fool, away across the ridge there, too," he stated, “an' you haven't any call to do that. You ain't a fool, but I don't reckon you know yet rightly what you are, or what it's in you to be; lots o' people go clear through life an' never find the best that might be in them, and they ain't fools, either."

"Thanks," murmured Mr. Edson, with the humility that was suspicious.

"It's got to come gradual, that kind o' knowledge," continued the other, ruminatively; "it's a gift some people are fenced jest out o' reach of all through this life—a longing for the knowledge and a guessing at its worth, but not let touch it. An' something tells me them same people have had larning and knowledge in some other life, an' abused it, may be, or threw it away, an' their punishment is to live now without it, but with the something inside always telling them, 'It belonged to you once, but not now; you threw away the thing you're a starving for, an' you're only getting justice. Yes, sir," he added, rousing himself as if to