"Then the fault must be yours, sir, and I am sorry for you. That old prospector has been to me a true friend ever since I met him on the Northern Light. I fear he is much worried over my disappearance, and no doubt he thinks that I am lying dead somewhere in the wilderness."
"H'm, don't you worry about him. Most likely he is pleased to be rid of you."
"I cannot believe that of him," Reynolds stoutly defended. "Anyway, he would not treat a man as a prisoner and a criminal such as you do. He is a true friend, so I believe, and one of Nature's gentlemen."
"A queer gentleman," and Weston smiled for the first time during the interview. "I am surprised that you consider him as one."
"I wish I could consider all I have met in the same light. Such men are altogether too rare. He is the only perfect gentleman, to my way of thinking, I have encountered since coming north."
"Do you not consider me one?"
"Not from what I have so far observed."
"How dare you say that?"
"I have always been in the habit of fitting my words to whom I am talking. To a gentleman I talk as a gentleman, and to a brute as a brute."
"And a brute you consider me. Is that it?"