ely from its own
province. But this Sergeant a Clive comes from the north; his speech
has no taste of the south in it, and indeed he owns to me that he is
a northerner. He says further that he comes from my own seminary of
Douai. And this again is correct; for I cross-questioned him on the
seminary, and he knows it as a hand knows its glove--the customs of
the place, the lectures, the books in use there. He has told me,
moreover, why he left it. . . . Dominique, you do right in misliking
your guest."

"I do not say, Father, that I mislike him. I fear him a little--I
cannot tell why."

"You do right, then, to fear him; and I will tell you why. He is an
atheist."

"An atheist? O--oh!"

"He has been of the true Faith. But he rejected me; he would make no
confession, but turned himself to the wall when I exhorted him.
_Voyons_--here is a Frenchman who talks English in his delirium; a
northerner serving in a regiment of the south; an infidel, from
Douai. Dominique, I do not like your guest."

"Nor I, Father, since you tell me that he is an atheist."

While they talked they had been lifting their voices insensibly to
the roar of the nearing rapids; and were now come to Bout de l'lsle
and the edge of peril. Below Bout de l'lsle the river divided to
plunge through the Roches Fendues, where to choose the wrong channel
meant destruction. Yet a mile below the Roches Fendues lay the
Cascades, with a long straight plunge over smooth shelves of rock and
two miles of furious water beyond. Yet farther down came the
terrible rapids of La Chine, not to be attempted. There the
_voyageurs_ would leave the canoe and reach Montreal on foot.

Father Launoy was a brave man. Thrice before he had let Dominique
lead him through the awful dance ahead, and always at the end of it
had felt his soul purged of earthly terrors and left clean as a
child's.

Dominique reached out a hand in silence and took the paddle from the
Etchemin, who crawled aft and seated himself with an expressionless
face. Then with a single swift glance astern to assure himself that
the other Indian was prepared, the young man knelt and crouched, with
his eyes on the V-shaped ripple ahead, for the angle of which they
were heading.

On this, too, the priest's eyes were bent. He gripped the gunwale as
the current lifted and swept the canoe down at a pace past control;
as it sped straight for the point of the smooth water, and so,
seeming to be warned