e the frightened hunters could lift the friar from the ground.

"Are you hurt, Father?" they all asked, supporting him, and finding it
impossible to keep from laughing as he sat up, with his reverend face
skinned and his capote nearly torn off.

"Not unto death," responded Father Membre, brushing grass and dirty hoof
prints from his garment. "But it hath been greatly impressed on my mind
that this ox-savage is no fit beast for the plow. Nor will I longer
counsel our women to coax the wild cows to a milking. It is well to
adapt to our needs the beasts of a country," said Father Membre, wiping
blood from his face. "But this buffalo creature hath disappointed me!"

La Salle was prostrated through the month of November. But by Christmas
he was able to set out on a final search from which he did not intend
to return until he found the Mississippi. All hands in the fort were
busied on the outfit necessary for the party. Clothes were made of sails
recovered from one of the wrecked vessels. Eighteen men were to follow
La Salle, among them his elder brother, the Abbe Cavelier. Some had on
the remains of garments they had worn in France, and others were dressed
in deer or buffalo skins. He had bought five horses of the Indians to
carry the baggage.

At midnight on Christmas Eve everybody crowded into the small fortress
chapel. The priests, celebrating mass, moved before the altar in such
gold-embroidered vestments as they had, and the light of torches
illuminated the rough log walls. Those who were to stay and keep the
outpost, literally lost in the wilderness, were on their knees weeping.
Those who were to go knelt also, with the dread of an awful uncertainty
in their minds. The faithful ones foresaw worse than peril from forests
and waters and savages, for La Salle could not leave behind all the
villains with whom he was obliged to serve himself. He alone showed the
composure of a man who never despairs. If he had positively known that
he was setting out upon a fatal journey,--that he was undertaking his
last march through the wilderness,--the mass lights would still have
shown the firm face of a man who did not turn back from any enterprise.
The very existence of these people who had come out to the New World
with him depended on his success. Whatever lay in the road he had to
encounter it. The most splendid lives may progress and end through what
we call tragedy; but it is better to die in the very stress of achievement
th