He paced the room again, and once more paused before the young rider.  “Not that I underestimate the strength of the thing.  Who knows so well as I that love is the most powerful force in the world?  Mind you, Doug, I make a sharp distinction between love and lust.  Lust can be controlled by any one.  Love can be controlled by a man as old as I am.  But when love grips a young fellow like you, he is powerless to throw it off.  I’d be a cur, Douglas, at my age, to refuse to throttle a love that would conflict with you—­the man I like best in the world.”

He paused.  Douglas did not stir.  Peter lifted his pipe, laid it down, and set a match carefully beside it.

“Douglas,” he said, “my market is made.  I sold my birthright for a mess of pottage.  Whatever regrets or grief I may have are just.  To contemplate a girl like Judith having any interest in me, is ghastly.  Judith is yours, whether she realizes it or not.  Will you stay for dinner?”

He put his pipe in his mouth, and lighted it.  Douglas gave a long, uncertain sigh.

“No, thanks, Peter!  I must get back to my sky pilot.  You will be at the log chapel early on Sunday?”

“Yes.  But you’d better let him handle the meeting.  Have him preach on immortality.  You’ve sort of got them going on that.”

Douglas nodded, put his hand on the door-knob, then turned back.

“Peter, does life never finish with a man?  Don’t you find peace anywhere along the line?”

“Not your kind of a man.  There are a number of sure springs in the desert, though, where a man can be certain of a mighty pleasant camp.  But it’s only a camp.”

Douglas moistened his lips.  “What can a fellow do about it?” he demanded.

“Well,” replied the older man, “he can make up his mind to find it devilishly interesting, even the dry marches.”

The young rider threw back his head.  “Me—­I’m going to find more than interest!  I’ll find color and some thrills, too.  See if I don’t!”

Peter laughed grimly.  “Yes, you’ll find a thrill or two but always where you least expect it.”

Douglas’ smile was twisted.  He opened the door and went out into the wind-swept day.  Smoke drove horizontally from the low chimneys that dotted the valley.  Cattle bellowed as if in disconsolate protest against the ruthless on-march of winter.  Douglas, in spite of the last few words with Peter, was in a curiously uplifted frame of mind which for some time he could not dissect.  Part of it he knew to be relief from the sudden suspicion that had overwhelmed him, but he was half-way home before he told himself that Peter’s essential fineness had revived his faith in the goodness and kindliness in human nature.  In a life where one could know a Peter, he thought, there must be beauty and a kind of beauty that Inez could neither find nor appreciate.  Poor old Inez!

The dinner hour was long past when he jingled along the trail past his father’s place.  On sudden impulse he turned the Moose into the yard.  Judith opened the door.  She was in sweater and riding-skirt.  Her black hair was bundled up under a round beaver cap under which her bright beauty glowed in a way to lift a far less interested heart than Doug’s.