I understand him. He's a product of a life that
moulds in pretty harsh form. He doesn't mean half he says."

"I'd say few of us do--when we let our feelings go." Father Adam smiled
back into the eyes which seemed to hold him fascinated. "You see,
Laval's much what we all are. He's got a tough job to put through, and
he does his utmost. He's a big man, a brave man, a--yes, perhaps--a
harsh man. But he couldn't do his job as he's paid to do it if he
weren't all those things." He shook his head. "No, I guess we can't play
with fire long without getting a heap of scars." He shrugged. "But after
all I suppose it's just--life. We've got to eat, and we want to live. We
don't need to judge too harshly."

"No. That's how I feel about the boys--he so condemned."

The girl turned away gazing pensively over the forest. Father Adam was
free to regard her without restraint. With her turning the whole
expression of his eyes had changed. Incredulous amazement had replaced
his smiling ease.

"Would you care to come along through the woods to my shanty, Miss
McDonald?" he said, almost diffidently, at last. "Maybe I've a cup of
coffee there. And I'd say coffee's the most welcome thing on earth in
these forests. It's a pretty humble shanty but, if you feel like
talking things, why, I guess we can sit around there awhile."

The girl snatched at the invitation.

"I was just hoping you'd say something that way," she laughed readily.
"I'd give worlds for a cup of coffee, and I guess the folks in the
forests of Quebec know more about coffee in half a second than we city
folk know in a year. Which way?"

"It's only a few yards. You'd best follow me."

* * * * *

The girl stood amazed. She was even horrified. She was gazing in through
the opening of the merest shelter, a shelter built of green boughs with
roof and sides of interlaced foliage. True it was densely interlaced,
but no sort of distorted imagination could have translated the result
into anything but a shelter. Habitation was out of the question. She
stared at the primitive, less than aboriginal home, of the priestly man.
She stared round her at the undergrowth upon which were spread his brown
coarse blankets airing. She looked down at the smouldering fire between
two granite stones upon which a tin of coffee was simmering and emitting
its pleasant aroma upon the woodland air. It was too crude, too utterly
lacking in comfort and even the bare nec