There was something grimly and tragically humorous in this.

It would never know of the consuming purity of his worship for little children, and old people--and women.
It would laugh at the religion he had built up for himself, and it would cackle tauntingly if he dared to say he was not wholly bad.

For it believed he was bad, and it believed he had killed Jed Hawkins, and he knew that seven hundred men were anxious to get him, dead or alive.
But was he bad?
He took the matter up one evening, with Peter.
"If I'm bad, mebby it isn't all my fault, Pied-Bot," he said.

"Mebby it's this--" and he swept his arms out to the gathering night.

"I was born in the open, on a night just like this is going to be.