“Well, perhaps it is; but in this country we consider a man’s mine as sacred as his family.  We didn’t know what a lock and key were in the early times and we didn’t have any troubles except famine and hardship.  It’s different now, though.  Why, there have been more claims jumped around here this spring than in the whole length and history of the Yukon.”

They had reached the hotel, and Glenister paused, turning to the girl as the Judge entered.  When she started to follow, he detained her.

“I came down from the hills on purpose to see you.  It has been a long week—­”

“Don’t talk that way,” she interrupted, coldly.  “I don’t care to hear it.”

“See here—­what makes you shut me out and wrap yourself up in your haughtiness?  I’m sorry for what I did that night—­I’ve told you so repeatedly.  I’ve wrung my soul for that act till there’s nothing left but repentance.”

“It is not that,” she said, slowly.  “I have been thinking it over during the past month, and now that I have gained an insight into this life I see that it wasn’t an unnatural thing for you to do.  It’s terrible to think of, but it’s true.  I don’t mean that it was pardonable,” she continued, quickly, “for it wasn’t, and I hate you when I think about it, but I suppose I put myself into a position to invite such actions.  No; I’m sufficiently broad-minded not to blame you unreasonably, and I think I could like you in spite of it, just for what you have done for me; but that isn’t all.  There is something deeper.  You saved my life and I’m grateful, but you frighten me, always.  It is the cruelty in your strength, it is something away back in you—­lustful, and ferocious, and wild, and crouching.”

He smiled wryly.

“It is my local color, maybe—­absorbed from this country.  I’ll try to change, though, if you want me to.  I’ll let them rope and throw and brand me.  I’ll take on the graces of civilization and put away revenge and ambition and all the rest of it, if it will make you like me any better.  Why, I’ll even promise not to violate the person of our claim-jumper if I catch him; and Heaven knows that means that Samson has parted with his locks.”

“I think I could like you if you did,” she said, “but you can’t do it.  You are a savage.”

There are no clubs nor marts where men foregather for business in the North—­nothing but the saloon, and this is all and more than a club.  Here men congregate to drink, to gamble, and to traffic.

It was late in the evening when Glenister entered the Northern and passed idly down the row of games, pausing at the crap-table, where he rolled the dice when his turn came.  Moving to the roulette-wheel, he lost a stack of whites, but at the faro “lay-out” his luck was better, and he won a gold coin on the “high-card.”  Whereupon he promptly ordered a round of drinks for the men grouped about him, a formality always precedent to overtures of general friendship.