“The higher law, I suppose,” said Burton, not just clear to what the doctor referred.
“Very well. That is just the way I figured it out. The law of man says, ‘Hand him over to the police.’ The law of God says, ‘Do unto others as ye would—.’ When the law of man conflicts with the law of God, the law of man is _ultra vires_. We must obey the higher law, and if men generally would do so fewer jails would be needed. So you see how you happen to have eczema.”
“I can’t thank you enough,” said Burton, the moisture gathering in his eyes. “I will repay—when I can.”
“That’s all right,” the good doctor assured him, but he turned his face away a little. “I helped you into the world, and I guess it’s my privilege to help you through it.”
“They say there is wealth in the doing, That royal and rich are the gains, But ’tisn’t the wealth I am wooing, So much as the life of the plains; For here in the latter day morning, Where Time to Eternity clings, Midwife to a breed in the borning, I behold the Beginning of things!”
Thirty hours later, in a forward seat of a colonist car, sat a young man with his face in bandages. A strong odour of disinfectants pervaded that section of the car, and other passengers avoided it as much as possible, but a doctor’s certificate that the trouble was not of a dangerous nature satisfied conductors and trainmen. For thirty hours the young man had fasted, and the interminable journey across the broad vest of the prairie country wore on in dull monotony. Villages, towns and cities had flashed by, and now they were in the great unsettled ranching country, where one may travel many townships without seeing sign of human life. Here and there, at great intervals, the eye caught a glimpse of numberless herds grazing on the rolling uplands; and at intervals greater still a horseman loomed high against the distant horizon. The two slender threads of steel seemed the only connecting link with modern civilization, and as they strung far into the endless West the very minds of the passengers underwent an evolution, a broadening, a disassociation with Established Things, and assumed an attitude of receptiveness toward That Which Shall Be. Here, at last, was the new West, the manless land, its bosom bared for a thousand miles to the hungry embrace of landless man.