“I will not burden you with a detailed account of what followed, Miss Stone,” Acey Smith went on. “The experiment was gone on with at once, but by degrees, Carlstone first submitting his hands and face to the solution. When it was over and he surveyed himself in a glass he could scarcely believe it was himself that was reflected there, the metamorphosis was so great. Thus transformed, and wearing white man’s apparel, young Carlstone went back among the Indians, pretending to be a trapper lost in the woods. His real identity was suspected by none of the tribe.
“The realisation of what this change might mean inspired Alexander Carlstone with the first hazy elements of what afterwards became a daring scheme. He was filled with a savage rejoicing that came not entirely from vanity over his white skin, but from the knowledge that this transformation would make him unrecognisable as Alexander Carlstone, the outcast of civilisation. At the bottom of it all, though he himself did not fully realise it at the time, was a restless ambition, a consuming desire for power and the opportunity to exert that power to avenge his wrongs.”
“I once contended with you,” continued the man to whom Josephine Stone listened as one in a dream, “that there is in all of us at least two personalities—the Man That Is and the Man That Might Have Been. The Man That Is is the man begot of environment and circumstances; the Man That Might Have Been is the ideal we cherished in hopeful youth. For it is circumstance that fashions our careers for us, no matter how cozy-corner philosophers may argue to the contrary, just as the hills and harder rock formations divert the courses of streams in their search for yonder lake and the ultimate sea. Oftentimes, an even-flowing, placid stream is thus suddenly transformed into a turbulent rapids, dealing destruction to all that enters the path of its fury. The analogy holds good with humankind.
“In this case, Alexander Carlstone, who had dreamed of becoming a famous actor in the world of the mimic drama, became Acey Smith the Timber Pirate, a protagonist in a drama of real life, always with a grim climax of revenge in view. As I see it now, I have always been acting a self-proscribed part, putting into it the same intensity I might have otherwise concentrated on the theatrical stage. Acey Smith is the man that was made by circumstances—the Man That Is. For, as you have no doubt surmised, Miss Stone, I was first Alexander Carlstone and afterwards Acey Smith.