Page:Edison Marshall--Shepherds of the wild.djvu/205

Rh Greenwood Club. His hands and face had been brown before, now they were almost as dark as those of Pete, his late guide. A fast walk over the ridges did not fatigue him now. He was lean and hard as hickory, the muscles rippled under his toughened skin, the sweet, mountain air rushed deep in his lungs. It was almost recreation: never in his old life had he known the buoyancy, the tireless strength, the simple joy of living vibrant and alive in every nerve. There was a curious change in his eyes, too. The little blood-splotches had quite gone from the whites, and they were a firm, pale blue. The corneas looked slightly more hard and bright, and the lines that dissipation had enscribed were almost gone.

"Go for two weeks," the Old Colonel had said. " And Lord knows—it might make a man of you."

Two weeks! Three months had already passed, and whether Alice knew it or not, that remote possibility that the Old Colonel had hoped for had already come true. Hugh had done a man's work: the degree had been won. For the law that was true in the earth's young days is true to-day; it endures when scorn has spent itself and false pride is humbled: that by toil and conflict alone shall men find their place, their honor, and their happiness. Hugh knew now, as he watched his sheep, that this was the world of the warrior, not the weakling; of those