on the door-latch. The radiance from the opened door of
the square, old-fashioned stove shimmered over her fur cap and
intensified the broad scarlet stripes of her mackinaw. In black
corduroy trousers, full and bagging as a moujik's, she stood at ease,
her feet small and dainty even in the heavy caribou-hide boots.

"_Bon soir, monsieur_," she said. "In two days we go with you to
camp--me--_and_ Antoine."

"Wait!" he cried, but she had opened the door. He rose with a start,
and, ignoring the intense cold, followed her till the stinging breath
of the North stabbed him with the recollection of its immutable power.
All about him the night was radiant. Of a sudden the sky was hung with
banners--banners that rippled and folded and unfolded, banners of
rainbows, long, shaking loops of red and silver, ghosts of lost
emeralds and sapphires, oriflammes that fluttered in the heavens,
swaying across the world in mysterious majesty. Immensity, Silence,
Mystery--The Northern Lights! "Aurora!" he called into the night,
"Aurora--Borealis!"

The Cure of Portage Dernier drove up to the log-cabin office and shook
himself from his blankets; his _soutane_ was rolled up around his
waist and secured with safety-pins; his solid legs were encased in the
heaviest of woollen trousers and innumerable long stockings. His
appearance was singularly divided--clerical above, under the long
wool-lined cape, and "lay" below. Though the thermometer showed a
shockingly depressed figure, the stillness and the warmth of the sun,
busy at diamond-making in the snow, gave the feeling of spring.

The sky was inconceivably blue. The hard-frozen world was one
immaculate glitter, the giant evergreens standing black against its
brightness. The sonorous ring of axes on wood, the gnawing of saws,
the crunching of runners, the crackling crash of distant trees falling
to the woodsmen's onslaughts--Bijou Falls logging-camp was a vital
centre of joyous activity.

The Cure grinned and rubbed his mittened hands. "H--Hola!" he called.

At his desk in the north window Crossman heard the hail, and went to
the door. At sight of the singular padded figure his face lifted in a
grin. "Come in, Father," he exclaimed; "be welcome."

"Ah," said the Priest, his pink face shining with benevolence, "I
thank you. Where is my friend, that good Jakapa? I am on my monthly
circuit, and I thought to see what happens at the Falls of the Bijou."
He stepped inside the cabin and advanced