trail. Tavish has told me a lot about it. A queer
man--this Tavish. We hit his cabin on our way to God's Lake."

"Did he ever tell you," said David, with an odd quiver in his
throat--"Did he ever tell you of a stream, a tributary stream, called
Firepan Creek?"

"Firepan Creek--Firepan Creek," mumbled the Little Missioner. "He has
told me a great many things, this Tavish, but I can't remember that.
_Firepan Creek_! Yes, he did! I remember, now. He had a cabin on it one
year, the year he had small-pox. He almost died there. I want you to
meet Tavish, David. We will stay overnight at his cabin. He is a strange
character--a great object lesson." Suddenly he came back to David's
question. "What do you want to know about Stikine River and Firepan
Creek?" he asked.

"I was reading something about them that interested me," replied David.
"A _very_ wild country, I take it, from what Tavish has told you.
Probably no white people."

"Always, everywhere, there are a few white people," said Father Roland.
"Tavish is white, and he was there. Sixty years ago, in the gold rush,
there must have been many. But I fancy there are very few now. Tavish
can tell us. He came from there only a year ago this last September."

David asked no more questions. He turned his attention entirely to his
fish. In that same moment there came an outburst from the foxes that
made Thoreau grin. Their yapping rose until it was a clamorous demand.
Then the dogs joined in. To David it seemed as though there must be a
thousand foxes out in the Frenchman's pens, and at least a hundred dogs
just beyond the cabin walls. The sound was blood-curdling in a way. He
had heard nothing like it before in all his life; it almost made one
shiver to think of going outside. The chorus kept up for fully a minute.
Then it began to die out, and David could hear the chill clink of
chains. Through it all Thoreau was grinning.

"It's two hours over feeding time for the foxes, and they know it,
m'sieur," he explained to David. "Their outcry excites the huskies, and
when the two go together--_Mon Dieu_! it is enough to raise the dead."
He pushed himself back from the table and rose to his feet. "I am going
to feed them now. Would you like to see it, m'sieu?"

Father Roland answered for him.

"Give us ten minutes and we shall be ready," he said, seizing David by
the arm, and speaking to Thoreau. "Come with me, David. I have something
waiting for you."

They went into the Li