to the stove with
outstretched hands. "I have not the pleasure," he said tentatively.

"My name is Crossman," the other answered. "I am new to the North."

"Ah, so? I am the Cure of Portage Dernier, but, as you see, I must
wander after my lambs--very great goats are they, many of them, and
the winter brings the logging. So I, too, take to the timber. My
team," he waved an introducing hand at the two great cross-bred
sled-dogs that unhooked from their traces had followed him in and now
sat gravely on their haunches, staring at the fire. "You are an
overseer for the company?" suggested the Cure, politely curious--"or
perhaps you cruise?"

Crossman shook his head. "No, _mon pere_. I came up here to get well."

"Ah," said the Cure, sympathetically tapping his lung. "In this air of
the evergreens and the new wood, in the clean cold--it is the world's
sanatorium--you will soon be yourself again."

Crossman smiled painfully. "Perhaps _here_"--he laid a long, slender
finger on his broad chest--"but I heal not easily of the great world
sickness--the War. It has left its mark! The War, the great malady of
the world."

"You are right." Meditatively the Priest threw aside his cape and
began unfastening the safety-pins that held up his cassock. "You say
well. It strikes at the _heart_."

Crossman nodded.

"Yet it passes, my son, and Nature heals; as long as the hurt be in
Nature, Nature will take care. And you have come where Nature and God
work together. In this great living North Country, for sick bodies and
sick souls, the good God has His good sun and His clean winds." He
nodded reassurance, and Crossman's dark face cleared of its brooding.

"Sit down, Father." He advanced a chair.

"So," murmured the Cure, continuing his thought as he sank into the
embrace of thong and withe. "So you were in the War, and did you take
hurt there, my son?"

Crossman nodded. "Trench pneumonia, and then the rat at the lung; but
of shock, something also. But I think it was not concussion, as the
doctors said, but _soul_-shock. It has left me, Father, like
Mohammed's coffin, suspended. I think I have lost my grip on the
world--and not found my hold on another."

"Shock of the soul," the Priest ruminated. "Your soul is bruised, my
son. We must take care of it." His voice trailed off. There was
silence in the little office broken only by the yawn and snuffle of
the sled-dogs.

Suddenly the door swung open. In the embrasure stood Auror