Ambrose broke in on Peter’s reminiscences.  He seemed scarcely to have heard.

“I don’t know what’s the matter with me!” he cried bitterly.  “I can’t seem to settle down to anything lately.  I’ve got no use for myself at all.  I get so cranky, anybody that speaks to me I want to punch them.  God knows I need company, too.  It is certainly square of you to put up with me the way you do.  I appreciate it—­”

“Aw, bosh!” muttered Peter.

“I’ve tried to work it off!” cried Ambrose.  “You know I’ve worked, though I’ve generally made a mess of things because I can’t keep my mind on anything.  My head goes round like a top.  Half the time I’m in a daze.  I feel as if I was going crazy.  I don’t know what is the matter with me!”

“Twenty-five years old,” murmured Peter; “in the pink of condition!  I’m telling you what’s the matter with you.  It’s a plain case of June fever.  Ask any of the fellows up here.”

“What am I going to do?” said Ambrose.  “As it is, I work till I’m ready to drop.”

“I mind when I had it,” said Peter, “I came to a camp of French half-breeds on Musquasepi, and I saw Eva Lajeunesse for the first time.  It was like a blow between the eyes.  You do not know what she looked like then.  I didn’t think about it this way or that; I just up and married her.  I was glad to get her!

“Man to man I’ll not deny I ain’t been sorry sometimes,” he went on; “who ain’t, sometimes?  But, on the whole, after all these years, how could I have done any better?  She’s good enough for me.  A man worries about his children sometimes; but I guess if they go straight there’s a place for them, though they are dusky.  Eva, she has her bad points, but she’s been real good to me.  How can I be but grateful!”

This was a rare and unusual confidence for Peter to offer his young partner.  Ambrose, flattered and embarrassed, did not know what to say, and said nothing.

He was right, for if he had referred to it, Peter would have been obliged to turn it into a joke.  As it was, they smoked on in understanding silence.  Finally Peter went on: 

“You see, I gave right in.  You’re different; you want to fight the thing.  Blest if I know what to tell you.”

“Eva and I don’t get on very well,” said Ambrose shamefacedly.  “She doesn’t like me around the house.  But I respect her.  You know that.”

“Sure,” said Peter.

“I couldn’t do it, Peter,” Ambrose went on after a while with seeming irrelevance—­howsoever Peter understood.  “God knows it’s not because I think myself any better than anybody else, or because I think a man does for himself by marrying a—­by marrying up here.  But I just couldn’t do it, that’s all.”

“No offense,” said Peter.  “Every man must chop his own trail.  I won’t say but what you’re right.  But what are you going to do?  A man can’t live and die alone.”