INDEPENDENCE
He might appreciate the dear creatures much better on his return; he might hatch out wonderful schemes for their advantage during his absence. But that would be a side-issue. The power that possessed him was the desire to own himself for a while, even as his ancestors, whose spirits had, he believed, laid this upon him, had owned themselves, before the Tribal idea had been evolved.
Morally his action was unassailable; his personal God had dictated it. Materially, his justification for his departure from the normal was the greasy, inconspicuous packet of iron rations on his shoulder, the trouble he had taken to get them, and the extent to which he was prepared not to break into them except as a last resort. For, without that material, backed by those purposes, his visions of his Totem, Spirit, or God would
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