querulous hearts prevail,
That have prayed for the peace of the Holy Grail?

"Adieu! Sometime shall the veil between
The things that are and that might have been
Be folded back for our eyes to see,
And the meaning of all shall be clear to me."

It had been but an acquaintance of five days while he fitted out for his
expedition, but in this brief time it had sunk deep into his mind that
life was now a thing to cherish, and that he must indeed come back; though
he had left England caring little if, in the peril and danger of his
quest, he ever returned. He had been indifferent to his fate till he came
to the Valley of the Saskatchewan, to the town lying at the foot of the
maple hill beside the great northern stream, and saw the girl whose life
was knit with the far North, whose mother's heart was buried in the great
wastes where Sir John Franklin's expedition was lost; for her husband had
been one of the ill-fated if not unhappy band of lovers of that
civilization for which they had risked all and lost all save immortality.
Hither the two had come after he had been cast away on the icy plains,
and, as the settlement had crept north, had gone north with it, always on
the outer edge of house and field, ever stepping northward. Here, with
small income but high hearts and quiet souls, they had lived and labored.

And when this newcomer from the old land set his face northward to an
unknown destination, the two women had prayed as the mother did in the old
days when the daughter was but a babe at her knee, and it was not yet
certain that Franklin and his men had been cast away forever. Something in
him--his great height, his strength of body, his clear, meditative eyes,
his brave laugh--reminded her of him, her husband, who, like Sir Humphrey
Gilbert, had said that it mattered little where men did their duty, since
God was always near to take or leave as it was His will. When Bickersteth
went, it was as though one they had known all their lives had passed; and
the woman knew also that a new thought had been sown in her daughter's
mind, a new door opened in her heart.

And he had returned. He was now looking down into the valley where the
village lay. Far, far over, two days' march away, he could see the cluster
of houses, and the glow of the sun on the tin spire of the little mission
church where he had heard the girl and her mother sing, till the hearts of
all were sw