The firebrand was passed to the waiting missionary. He sucked in the pleasant fumes of a lumberman's tobacco. Then the stick was flung back to its place in the fire.
Father Adam nursed one long leg, which he flung across the other, while his wide, intelligent eyes gazed squarely into the eyes of the man opposite.
"Tell me," he said. "What brought you into the life of the woods? What left you quitting the things I can see civilisation handed you? This is the life of the wastrel, the fallen, the man who knows no better. It's not for men starting out in possession of all those things—you have."
Bull sat for a moment without replying. Father Adam's "dope" had done its work. His passionate moments had vanished like an ugly dream. His turbulent spirit had attained peace. Suddenly he looked up with a frank laugh.
"Now, why in hell should I tell you?"
It was an irresistible challenge. The missionary nodded his approval.
"Yes. Why—in hell—should you?"
He, too, laughed. And his laugh miraculously lit up his ascetic features.
Instantly Bull flung out one bandaged hand in a sweeping gesture.
"Why shouldn't I—anyway?" he cried, with the abandon of a man impatient of all subterfuge. "Guess I ought to turn right around and ask who the devil you are to look into my affairs? Who are you to assume the right of inquisitor?" He shook his head. "But I'm not going to. Now I'm sane again I know just how much you did for me. I meant killing Laval. Oh, yes, there wasn't a thing going to break my hold until he was dead—dead. You got me in time to save me from wrecking my whole life. And you got in at—the risk of your own. If I'd killed him all the things and purposes I've worried with since I left college would have been just so much junk; and I'd have drifted into the life of a bum lumber-jack without any sort of notion beyond rye whiskey, and the camp women, and a well swung axe. You saved me from that. You saved me from myself. Well, you're real welcome to ask me any old thing, and I'll hand you all the truth there is in me. I'm an 'illegitimate.' I'm one of the world's friendless. I'm a product of a wealthy man's licence and unscruple. I'm an outcast amongst the world's honest born. But it's no matter. I'm not on the squeal. Those who're responsible for my being did their best to hand me the things a man most needs. Mind, and body, and will. Further, they gave me all that education, books, and college can hand a feller. More than that, my father, who seems to have had more honesty than you'd expect, handed me a settlement of a hundred thousand dollars the day I became twenty-one. I never knew him, and I never knew my mother. The circumstances of my birth were simply told me on my twenty-first birthday. I know no more. And I care nothing to hunt out those spectres that don't figger to hand a feller much comfort. The rest is easy. I hope I'm a feller of some guts—"