's firewater had commenced to touch with its poisonous
finger the lives and lodges of his beloved people. The curse began
to spread, until it grew into a menace to the community. It was the
same old story: the white man had come with the Bible in one hand,
the bottle in the other. George Mansion had striven side by side
with Mr. Evans to overcome the dread scourge. Together they fought
the enemy hand to hand, but it gained ground in spite of all their
efforts. The entire plan of the white liquor dealer's campaign was
simply an effort to exchange a quart of bad whiskey for a cord of
first-class firewood, or timber, which could be hauled off the
Indian Reserve and sold in the nearby town markets for five or
six dollars; thus a hundred dollars worth of bad whiskey, if
judiciously traded, would net the white dealer a thousand dollars
cash. And the traffic went on, to the depletion of the Indian
forests and the degradation of the Indian souls.

Then the Canadian Government appointed young Mansion special forest
warden, gave him a "V. R." hammer, with which he was to stamp
each and every stick of timber he could catch being hauled off
the Reserve by white men; licensed him to carry firearms for
self-protection, and told him to "go ahead." He "went ahead." Night
after night he lay, concealing himself in the marshes, the forests,
the trails, the concession lines, the river road, the Queen's
highway, seizing all the timber he could, destroying all the
whisky, turning the white liquor traders off Indian lands, and
fighting as only a young, earnest and inspired man can fight. These
hours and conditions began to tell on his physique. The marshes
breathed their miasma into his blood--the dreaded fever had him in
its claws. Lydia was a born nurse. She knew little of thermometers,
of charts, of technical terms, but her ability and instincts in the
sick-room were unerring; and, when her husband succumbed to a
raging fever, love lent her hands an inspiration and her brain a
clarity that would have shamed many a professional nurse.

For hours, days, weeks, she waited, tended, watched, administered,
labored and loved beside the sick man's bed. She neither slept nor
ate enough to carry her through the ordeal, but love lent her
strength, and she battled and fought for his life as only an
adoring woman can. Her wonderful devotion was the common talk of
the country. She saw no one save Mr. Evans and the doctors. She
never left the sick-roo