“Well, it certainly isn’t lack of religion and it certainly isn’t lack of marrying,” she retorted.  “Those are the only suggestions you’ve ever been able to make about my state of mind.”

“But, you see,” Doug’s voice was still gentle, “I don’t even know what your state of mind is!  Sometimes you tell me you find life a bitter disappointment.  Sometimes you find it very beautiful.  Sometimes you want to spend all your days in Lost Chief.  Sometimes you must sell your heart’s blood to get away from it.  All that I really know about your state of mind is that you are lonely and uneasy, like me.”

Judith watched him with less perhaps of anger than of resentment in her deep gray eyes.

“It’s the unfairness of it!  The utter unfairness of life to women!” she burst out.  “Don’t you see?”

Douglas shook his head.  “How can I see?  You are very beautiful.  You have the strength of a fine boy.  You have a splendid mind.  You have a very special gift in handling animals.  You are gay and brave-hearted and lovable.  Why in the world should I feel that life isn’t fair to you?”

“Don’t you see?” wringing her hands together.  “I have all that, and no chance to use any of it so that it’s put to any sort of big use at all.  I’m buried alive!”

“Oh!” Douglas gasped.  He had indeed seen Judith’s trouble.  All the vital beauty, the splendid talents—­was marriage to him a big use of them?  “Oh!” he repeated.  He brushed his hand across his eyes.  “God!  Judith,” he muttered, “what can I do?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “but at least you can stop trying to thrust old Fowler down my throat.  As for Inez, I judge Inez a good deal more exactly than you do and in many ways more harshly.  But what I do insist on is that no man in Lost Chief is fit to judge her.”

Judith again picked up the eggs, and went out.

Douglas put in the rest of the week placing his traps up the canyon, and purposely avoided talking with Fowler about his next sermon.  He was not surprised, however, when he read the announcement which the preacher gave him to tack up on the post-office door.  The sermon was to deal with the modern Magdalene.

Fowler had chosen his subject with the idea of exciting popular interest:  his choice was almost perfect.  Every soul in Lost Chief was packed into the log chapel long before the services began—­every soul, that is, but Inez.  Mr. Fowler never had been more eloquent and never, probably, had preached to a more deeply interested congregation.  His sermon was a vitriolic arraignment, thinly disguised by Biblical nomenclature, of Inez Rodman.

When Fowler had finished, Young Jeff rose slowly to his feet.  Douglas, from his usual place in a rear seat, smiled a little.  He liked Young Jeff and liked him best when he rose as now, to do battle for a friend.

“Fowler,” said Young Jeff, “I don’t like that sermon.  We all know who you are driving at, and as for me, you make me very sore.  That’s a Lost Chief girl and no outsider can come in here and insult her.”