"Revenge! But you still live!" repeated Lafond in wonder.
"And is it that you think the taking of life is revenge?" cried Durand, with sudden energy. "They who take their revenge in killing are actually the merciful ones, and they cheat no one but themselves."
"Yes?" asked Lafond, his soul in the question.
The other turned in surprise at his companion's vehemence. He saw a stolid; dark-skinned man gazing impassively into the fire.
"They are fools," went on Durand bitterly, after a moment; "just fools. These others were of more ingenuity; they knew what would hurt, what would avenge them better than the killing."
"I do not understand," said the half-breed, feeling his way slowly, for the fear of damming this flow of confidence. He looked away, for his eye glowed, though his voice was steady. "W'at is it? If one kills, if one takes that life, w'at is worse?"
"Worse, worse?" cried Durand, flinging his hands impotently upward. "A thousand things!" He suddenly became calm, and turned to Lafond with impressive forefinger. "Listen, my friend. Life is a little thing. Anyone can take it who has a gun, or a knife, or even a stone. But the true revenge is in finding out what it is that each man prizes the most, and then taking it from him. And that requires power! power! power!
"Few there are who have not something they prize more than life," he added gloomily. The fire died from his eye. He became once again the timid old butterfly hunter, pushing blindly out into the wilderness, wondering at himself for thus exposing an old wound to a chance passer; and yet perhaps feeling in some dim fashion--so inscrutable are the instincts of these half-childish natures--that in so doing he was following for a moment the lines of greater destinies than his own.
And certainly, long after the dipper had swung below the pole star, Lafond sat staring into the ashes of the fire, just as four days since he had stared into the ashes of a brave and chivalrous life. In his history there were the two crucial hours--one after the greatest battle of the plains; the other after a dozen sentences exchanged with a half-crazy old entomologist. From the potent reflections induced by these one hundred and twenty minutes it resulted that Michaïl Lafond became civilized and a seeker for wealth in the development of the young country. In wealth he saw power; in power the ability to give or take away.