Consequently he had, in his first young bitterness and heartbreak, taken a sort of gloomy satisfaction in living remote from his fellow beings and burying himself in the wilds, ever strengthening his capacity to do without the ordered and cultivated life of which he had been a part, and which had seemed essential to his well-being; and he had no disillusionizing past experiences to teach him the philosophy that time assuages all griefs, and that it is the part of common sense to take life as you find it.

Gradually his new manner of living, of wandering whither he would without ties or responsibilities, became a habit to him.  He lost interest in the world of achievement as well as in the world of manners, but so insidious was this change, this shifting of the point of view, that he had never fully realized it until now when, in some way, some indefinite, goading and not altogether pleasant way, Pearl was bringing a faint realization of his acquired habit of mind home to him.

As Pearl watched him and wondered what remembrance it was that clouded his face, her interest in him increased.  “I wonder—­” she said, and hesitated.

Her words recalled him to himself immediately; with a little gesture of impatience as if annoyed at his own weakness, he put from him these morbid memories of the past.  “You wonder—­what?” he asked.

She flushed slightly at the thought that he might think her guilty of an intrusive curiosity, but she could not stop now.  She must know more.  Her craving intelligence demanded some explanation.  “Jose,” she said doubtfully and almost involuntarily.

A smile of pure amusement rippled about his mouth.  “Yes,” he said, “Jose.  What about him?”

Speech came readily enough to her now.  “You know what Jose is,” accusingly.  “You know the big reward that is offered for him, and yet you keep him in your cabin and treat him almost like a brother.”

“Quite like a brother,” he said; “why not?  Who would have the heart to put Pan in prison?  Do you think shutting Jose up behind bars would make him any better?  At any rate, he is safe to do no mischief here, and he is happy.  Would you want us to give him up?”

“I!” She looked at him in surprise and shook her head.  “But then we are different, my father and me.  He likes bad company, and I guess I take after him.  But you, they call you Saint Harry, you are respectable.”

“Not I,” he said earnestly; “you must not accuse me of such things.  Look yonder at that long mountain trail, leading up to the peaks.  There are mile-stones in it.  So it is in life.  When we have stopped trying to make people measure up to our standard we have passed one; when we have gone beyond forgiveness and learned that there is never anything to forgive we have passed another, and when we have ceased from all condemnation we have progressed a little farther.”

She made no response to this.  In that sunwarmed silence the wind whispered softly through the pines, a sound like the monotonous, musical murmur of distant seas.  “But you will forget all that,” she said suddenly.  “You will go back to the world.  I know.”