for the bringer of meat is welcome at any fire. - Louis L'Amour

So simple a thing, a lighted fire, yet it was a symbol of man's first great step toward civilization, and it was his instinctive return to reality when times of trouble came.

Our world is made up of a myriad of microcosms, of tiny worlds, each with its own habitues, every one known to the others.

Yet Tanneman was a man grown up to danger and trouble, knowing nothing else, and for the first time he was acting with conscious, deliberate purpose.