MacNair ceased speaking and turned abruptly toward the river.

“My!” Chloe Elliston exclaimed.  “Really, you are delightful, Mr. Brute MacNair.  During the half-hour or more of our acquaintance you have called me, among other things, a fool, a goose, and a moose-calf.  I repeat that you are delightful, and honest, shall I say?  No; candid—­for I know that you are not honest.  But do tell me the rest of the story.  Don’t leave it like The Lady or the Tiger.  How will it end?  Are you a prophet, or merely an allegorist?”

MacNair, who was again facing her, answered without a smile.  “I do not know about the lady or the tiger, nor of what happened to either.  If they were pitted against each other, my bet would be laid on the tiger, though my sympathy might be with the lady.  I am not a prophet.  I cannot tell you the end of the story.  Maybe the fool moose-calf will butt its brains out against the trunk of the tree.  That would be no fault of the tree.  The tree was there first, and was minding its own business.  Maybe the calf will butt and get hurt, and scamper for home.  Maybe it will succeed in eluding the fangs of the wolf, and reach its mountain in safety.  In such case it will have learned something.

“Maybe it will butt and butt against the tree until it dislodges a limb from high among the branches, and the limb will fall to the ground and crush, shall we say—­the waiting wolf?  And, maybe the calf will butt, learn that the tree is immovable, swallow its hurt, and pass on, giving the tree a wide berth—­pass on into the quagmire, with the wolf licking his chops, as grinning, he points out the way.”

Chloe, in spite of herself, was intensely interested.

“But,” she asked, “you are quite sure the tree is immovable?”

“Quite sure.”

“Suppose, however, that this particular tree is rotten—­rotten to the heart?  That the very roots that hold it in place are rotten?  And that the moose-calf butts ’til he butts it down—­what then?”

There was a gleam of admiration in MacNair’s eyes as he answered: 

“If the tree is rotten it will fall.  But it will fall to the mighty push o’ the winds o’ God—­and not to the puny butt of a moose-calf!” Chloe Elliston was silent.  The man was speaking again.  “Good day to you, madam, or miss, or whatever one respectfully calls a woman.  As I told you, I have known no women.  I have lived always in the North.  Death robbed me of my mother before I was old enough to remember her.  The North, you see, is hard and relentless, even with those who know her—­and love her.”

The girl felt a sudden surge of sympathy for this strange, outspoken man of the Northland.  She knew that the man had spoken, with no thought of arousing sympathy, of the dead mother he had never known.  And in his voice was a note, not merely of deep regret, but of sadness.

“I am sorry,” she managed to murmur.