cle of
middle-aged and worthy gentlemen were sadly ignorant of the North.

Whereupon, recognizing the trend of his thought, the Reverend Wesley
Thompson turned upon himself with a bitter accusation of self-seeking,
and besought earnestly the gift of an humble spirit from Above.

But the deadly pin-points of discontent and discouragement were still
pricking him when he fell asleep.

CHAPTER V

FURTHER ACQUAINTANCE

Mike Breyette took a last look over his shoulder as the current and the
thrust of two paddles carried the canoe around the first bend. Thompson
stood on the bank, watching them go.

"Bagosh, dat man hees gon' have dam toff time, Ah theenk," Breyette
voiced his conviction. "Feller lak heem got no beesness for be here
'tall."

"He didna have tae come here," MacDonald answered carelessly. "An' he
disna have tae stay."

"Oh, sure, Ah know dat, me," Mike agreed. "All same hees feel bad."

Which was a correct, if brief, estimate of Mr. Thompson's emotions as he
stood on the bank watching the gray canoe slip silently out of his ken.
That gave him a keener pang, a more complete sense of loss, than he had
ever suffered at parting with any one or anything. It was to him like
taking a last look before a leap in the dark. Thrown entirely upon his
own resources he felt wholly inadequate, found his breast filled with
incomprehensible misgivings. The work he had come there to do seemed to
have lost much of its force as a motive, as an inspiration. He felt
himself--so far as his mission to Lone Moose was concerned--in the
anomalous position of one compelled to make bricks without straw.

He was, in a word, suffering an acute attack of loneliness.

That was why the empty space of the clearing affected him with a
physical shrinking, why the neatly arranged interior of his cabin seemed
hollow, abandoned, terribly dispiriting. He longed for the sound of a
human voice, found himself listening for such a sound. The stillness was
not like the stillness of a park, nor an empty street, nor any of the
stillnesses he had ever experienced. It was not a kindly, restful
stillness,--not to him. It was the hollow hush of huge spaces emptied of
all life. Life was at his elbow almost but he could not make himself
aware of that. The forested wilderness affected him much as a small
child is affected by the dark. He was not afraid of this depressing
sense of emptiness, but it troubled him.

Before nine o'clock in the foreno