ough the door,
when he heard the soft crunching of feet in the snow. A gray shadow,
swift as the wind, Baree disappeared. David scarcely knew when he went.
He was looking into the face of Father Roland. He backed into the cabin,
without speaking, and the Missioner entered. He was smiling. He had, to
an extent, recovered himself. He threw off his mittens and rasped his
hands over the fire in an effort at cheerfulness. But there was
something forced in his manner, something that he was making a terrific
fight to keep under. He was like one who had been in great mental
stress for many days instead of a single hour. His eyes burned with the
smouldering glow of a fever; his shoulders hung loosely as though he had
lost the strength to hold them erect; he shivered, David noticed, even
as he rubbed his hands and smiled.

"Curious how this has affected me, David," he said apologetically. "It
is incredible, this weakness of mine. I have seen death many scores of
times, and yet I could not go and look on his face again. Incredible!
Yet it is so. I am anxious to get away. Mukoki will soon be coming with
the dogs. A devil, Mukoki says. Well, perhaps. A strange man at best. We
must forget this night. It has been an unpleasant introduction for you
into our North. We must forget it. We must forget Tavish." And then, as
if he had omitted a fact of some importance, he added: "I will kneel at
his graveside before we go."

"If he had only waited," said David, scarcely knowing what words he was
speaking, "if he had waited until to-morrow, only, or the next day...."

"Yes; if he had waited!"

The Missioner's eyes narrowed. David heard the click of his jaws as he
dropped his head so that his face was hidden.

"If he had waited," he repeated, after David, "if he had only waited!"
And his hands, spread out fan-like ever the stove, closed slowly and
rigidly as if gripping at the throat of something.

"I have friends up in that country he came from," David forced himself
to say, "and I had hoped he would be able to tell me something about
them. He must have known them, or heard of them."

"Undoubtedly," said the Missioner, still looking at the top of the
stove, and unclenching his fingers as slowly as he had drawn them
together, "but he is dead."

There was a note of finality in his voice, a sudden forcefulness of
meaning as he raised his head and looked at David.

"Dead," he repeated, "and buried. We are no longer privileged even to
g