e's Mission for the hope of their future. The sight of them
warmed her spirit out of the cold depths of her own personal grief, and
left her yearning.

The last of the children vanished within the shelter of the surrounding
woods, where the homes of their parents had been set up. Then movement
in the clearing ceased. All was still in the early evening light. The
soft charm, the peace of the Mission, which had been the outward and
visible sign of her understanding of home all her years, settled once
more, and with it fell the bitter, haunting memory of the tragedy of
seven months ago.

To Jessie Mowbray the tragedy of the life about her had suddenly become
the seriousness of it. In one night she had been robbed of all the
buoyant optimism of youth. As yet she had failed to achieve the smile
of courage under the buffet, just as she had never yet discovered that
the real spirit of life is to achieve hard knocks with the same ready
smile which should accompany acts of kindliness.

Her father had been her hero. And she had been robbed of her hero by
the ruthless hands of the very savages whom it was her daily mission to
help towards enlightenment. The bitterness of it had sunk deeply into
a sensitive heart. She lacked the experiences of life of her mother.
She lacked the Christian fortitude of Father Jose. She knew nothing of
the iron nerve of Murray, or the youthful selfishness of her brother
Alec. So she shrank under the burden of bereavement, and fostered a
loyal resentment against her father's slayers.

The chill of the northern evening was already in the air. The sunlight
fell athwart the great fringe of foliage which crowned the lank trunks
of primordial pine woods. It lit the clearing with a mellow radiance,
and left the scene tempered with a shadowed beauty, which in all
Jessie's girlhood had never failed to appeal to her. Now it passed her
by. She saw only the crude outline of the great log home, which, for
her, had been desolated. About her were the equally crude Mission
buildings, with Father Jose's hut a few yards away. Then there was the
light smoke haze from the Indian camp-fires, rising heavily on the
still air, and a smell of cooking was painfully evident. Here and
there a camp dog prowled, great powerful brutes reared to the burden of
the trail. The sound of human voice, too, came from the woodlands,
chanting the droning song of labor which the squaws love to voice
without tune or mean