"A strange man!
The saints be with you!" That last had seemed to him almost a warning.
He looked at Father Roland's broad back; for the first time he noticed
how heavy and powerful his shoulders were for his height. Then the
forest swallowed them--a vast, white, engulfing world of silence and
mystery. What did it hold for him? What did it portend? His blood was
stirred by an unfamiliar and subdued excitement. An almost unconscious
movement carried one of his mittened hands to his breast pocket. Through
the thickness of his coat he could feel it--the picture. It did not seem
like a dead thing. It beat with life. It made him strangely unafraid of
what might be ahead of him.

Back at the door of the cabin Thoreau stood with one of his big arms
encircling Marie's slim shoulders.

"I tell you it is like taking the life of a puppy, _ma cherie_," he was
saying. "It is inconceivable. It is bloodthirsty. And yet...."

He opened the door behind them.

"They are gone," he finished. "_Ka Sakhet_--they are gone--and they will
not come back!"

CHAPTER IX

In spite of the portentous significance of this day in his life David
could not help seeing and feeling in his suddenly changed environment,
as he puffed along behind Father Roland, something that was neither
adventure nor romance, but humour. A whimsical humour at first, but
growing grimmer as his thoughts sped. All his life he had lived in a
great city, he had been a part of its life--a discordant note in it, and
yet a part of it for all that. He had been a fixture in a certain lap of
luxury. That luxury had refined him. It had manicured him down to a fine
point of civilization. A fine point! He wanted to laugh, but he had need
of all his breath as he _clip-clip-clipped_ on his snow shoes behind the
Missioner. This was the last thing in the world he had dreamed of, all
this snow, all this emptiness that loomed up ahead of him, a great world
filled only with trees and winter. He disliked winter; he had always
possessed a physical antipathy for snow; romance, for him, was environed
in warm climes and sunny seas. He had made a mistake in telling Father
Roland that he was going to British Columbia--a great mistake.
Undoubtedly he would have kept on. Japan had been in his mind. And now
here he was headed straight for the north pole--the Arctic Ocean. It was
enough to make him want to laugh. Enough to make any sane person laugh.
Even now, only half a mile from Thoreau's