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"Wasn't the fool, you mean!"

"And so ... I went and took it! And I took from other quarters the same way. What I wanted I took. And when they all said I was busted in two, like a rotten stick, I fooled 'em, and laughed at the whole crowd. And now I'm whole again—and I've got what I want. That's me, Baby Devil! A man who goes his way and blazes his trail wide. A man you can't stop!"

"A cursed, insufferable, conceited ass, rather than wolf," snapped Deveril.

And still, in the rarest of high good humor, Timber-Wolf laughed, and his rich, deep voice went rumbling through the house.

"You're sore, Baby Devil. And you're envious."

"Not of you, Bruce Standing! You...."

"Let's chop out the Sunday-school stuff, Kid!" cried Standing impatiently. "I don't need your lecturings. Maybe I'm not what your puling moralists call a good man, and maybe I'm not 'clean-hearted and pure' and all that drivel. But, by God, I'm a man who's got his own code and who sticks to it, blow high, blow low! A code that, if more men followed it, would give us a world with more men in it and fewer mollycoddle pups!"