Today happiness had strangely come this gay-hearted freebooter's way, and he might have reached out, and seized it, and have kept it for his own.

But in the hour of his opportunity he had refused it--because he was an outlaw--because strong within him was a peculiar code of honor all his own.

There was nothing of man-made religion in the soul of Roger McKay.

Nature was his god; its manifestations, its life, and the air it gave him to breathe were the pages which made up the Book that guided him.

And within the last hour, since the sun had begun to drop behind the tips of the tallest trees, these things had told him that he was a fool for turning away from the one great thing in all life--simply because his own humors of existence had made him an outcast and hunted by the laws of men.