into the habit of using the nickname which the wilderness people
had given him. He did not hate these police. Curiously, he loved
them. Their type was to him the living flesh and blood of the
finest manhood since the Crusaders. And he did not hate the law.
At times the Law, as personified in all of its unswerving majesty,
amused him. It was so terribly serious over such trivial things--
like himself, for instance. It could not seem to sleep or rest
until a man was hanged, or snugly put behind hard steel, no matter
how well that man loved his human-kind--and the world. And Jolly
Roger loved both. In his heart he believed he had not committed a
crime by achieving justice where otherwise there would have been
no justice. Yet outwardly he cursed himself for a lawbreaker. And
he loved life. He loved the stars silently glowing down at him
tonight. He loved even the gray, lifeless rock, which recalled to
his imaginative genius the terrific and interesting life that had
once existed--he loved the ghostly majesty of the grave-like
pinnacle that rose above him, and beyond that he loved all the
world.

But most of all, more than his own life or all that a thousand
lives might hold for him, he loved the violet-eyed girl who had
come into his life from the desolation and unhappiness of Jed
Hawkins' cabin.

Forgetting the law, forgetting all but her, he went at last into
the dungeon-like gloom between the rocks, and after Peter had
wallowed himself a bed in the carpet of sand they fell asleep.

They awoke with the dawn. But for three days thereafter they went
forth only at night, and for three days did not show themselves