A strange thrill shot through him at the thought, and he wondered again if he was mad at the longing that filled him—­the desire to reach out and snuggle the little creature in his hand, and hold it close up to his bearded face, and talk to it!  He laughed, and drew his stool a little more into the light.  The mouse did not run.  He edged nearer and nearer, until his elbows rested on the table, and a curious feeling of pleasure took the place of his loneliness when he saw that the mouse was looking at him, and yet seemed unafraid.

“Don’t be scairt,” he said softly, speaking directly to it.  “I won’t hurt you.  No, siree, I’d—­I’d cut off a hand before I’d do that.  I ain’t had any company but you for two months.  I ain’t seen a human face, or heard a human voice—­nothing—­nothing but them shrieks ‘n’ wails ‘n’ baby-cryings out there in the wind.  I won’t hurt you—­” His voice was almost pleading in its gentleness.  And for the tenth time that day he felt, with his fever, a sickening dizziness in his head.  For a moment or two his vision was blurred, but he could still see the mouse—­farther away, it seemed to him.

“I don’t s’pose you’ve killed anyone—­or anything,” he said, and his voice seemed thick and distant to him.  “Mice don’t kill, do they?  They live on—­cheese.  But I have—­I’ve killed.  I killed a man.  That’s why I’m here.”

His dizziness almost overcame him, and he leaned heavily against the table.  Still the little mouse did not move.  Still he could see it through the strange gauze veil before his eyes.

“I killed—­a man,” he repeated, and now he was wondering why the mouse did not say something at that remarkable confession.  “I killed him, old man, an’ you’d have done the same if you’d been in my place.  I didn’t mean to.  I struck too hard.  But I found ‘im in my cabin, an’ she was fighting—­fighting him until her face was scratched an’ her clothes torn,—­God bless her dear heart!—­fighting him to the last breath, an’ I come just in time!  He didn’t think I’d be back for a day—­a black-hearted devil we’d fed when he came to our door hungry.  I killed him.  And they’ve hunted me ever since.  They’ll put a rope round my neck, an’ choke me to death if they catch me—­because I came in time to save her!  That’s law!

“But they won’t find me.  I’ve been up here a year now, and in the spring I’m going down there —­where you come from—­back to the Girl and the Kid.  The policemen won’t be looking for me then.  An’ we’re going to some other part of the world, an’ live happy.  She’s waitin’ for me, she an’ the kid, an’ they know I’m coming in the spring.  Yessir, I killed a man.  An’ they want to kill me for it.  That’s the law—­Canadian law—­the law that wants an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, an’ where there ain’t no extenuatin’ circumstance.  They call it murder.  But it wasn’t—­was it?”

He waited for an answer.  The mouse seemed going farther and farther away from him.  He leaned more heavily on the table.