". . . . . . . .let the steer bleed,
And the rich altars, as they pay their vows,
Breathe incense to the gods: for me, I rise
To better life, and grateful own the blessing."

"A pagan thought for a Christmas Eve," she said to him, with her fingers
feeling for the folds of silken flesh in the throat of the moose; "but
wounded men must be humoured. And, mother dear, here are our Argonauts
returned; and--and now I think I will go."

With a quick kiss on her father's cheek--not so quick but he caught the
tear that ran through her happy smile--she vanished into the house.

That night there was gladness in this home. Mirth sprang to the lips of
the men like foam on a beaker of wine, so that the evening ran towards
midnight swiftly. All the tale of the hunt was given by Malbrouck to
joyful ears; for the mother lived again her youth in the sunrise of this
romance which was being sped before her eyes; and the father, knowing
that in this world there is nothing so good as courage, nothing so base
as the shifting eye, looked on the young man, and was satisfied, and told
his story well;--told it as a brave man would tell it, bluntly as to
deeds done, warmly as to the pleasures of good sport, directly as to all.
In the eye of the young man there had come the glance of larger life, of
a new-developed manhood. When he felt that dun body crashing on him, and
his life closing with its strength, and ran the good knife home, there
flashed through his mind how much life meant to the dying, how much it
ought to mean to the living; and then this girl, this Margaret, swam
before his eyes--and he had been graver since.

He knew, as truly as if she had told him, that she could never mate with