He would stalk the shy deer and carry meat to his cave and broil the flesh over his tiny campfire--don't tell me that the boy in any normal young man would not rise enthusiastically to that bait! But there were other times, when Marion was not there; when Jack was alone with the stars and the dark bulk of the wooded slopes beneath him; times when the adventure paled and grew bleak before his soul, so that he shrank from it appalled.

Times when he could not shut out the picture of the proud, stately Mrs.Singleton Corey, hiding humiliated and broken of spirit in a sanatorium, shamed before the world because he was her son.

Not all the secret caves the mountains held could dull the pain of that thought when it assailed him in the dark stillness of the peak.
For Jack was her true offspring in pride, if no more.

He had been a sensitive youngster who had resented passionately his mother's slights upon his vague memory of the dad who had given him his adventurous spirit and his rebellion against the restraints of mere convention, which was his mother's dearest god.

Unknown to Mrs.Singleton Corey, he had ardently espoused the cause of his wandering dad, and had withdrawn his love from the arrogant lady-mother, who never once spoke affectionately of the man Jack loved.