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yed her directions. March was wearing away tediously. The river was not yet open, and the belated boats with needed supplies were moored far down the river. Many of the reduced settlers were dependent on the meat the Indians brought them for sustenance. The mud made the roads almost impassable; for the frost lay in a solid bed six inches below the surface, and all above that was semiliquid muck. Snow and rain alternated, and the frightful disease did not cease its ravages. The priest got little sleep. Now he was at the bed of a little half-breed child, smoothing the straight black locks from the narrow brow; now at the cot of some hulking trapper, who wept at the pain, but died finally with a grin of bravado on his lips; now in a foul tepee, where some grave Pawnee wrapped his mantle about him, and gazed with prophetic and unflinching eyes into the land of the hereafter. The little school that the priest started had been long since abandoned. It was only the preservation of life that one thought of in these days. And recklessness had made the men desperate. To the ravages of disease were added horrible murders. Moral health is always low when physical health is so. Give a nation two winters of grippe, and it will have an epidemic of suicide. Give it starvation and small-pox, and it will have a contagion of murders. There are subtle laws underlying these things,--laws which the physicians think they can explain; but they are mistaken. The reason is not so material as it seems. But spring was near in spite of falling snow and the dirty ice in the river. There was not even a flushing of the willow twigs to tell it by, nor a clearing of the leaden sky,--only the almanac. Yet all men were looking forward to it The trappers put in the feeble days of convalescence, making long rafts on which to pile the skins dried over winter,--a fine variety, worth all but their weight in gold. Money was easily got in those days; but there are circumstances under which money is valueless. Father de Smet thought of this the day before Easter, as he plunged through the mud of the winding street in his bearskin gaiters. Stout were his legs, firm his lungs, as he turned to breathe in the west wind; clear his sharp and humorous eyes. He was going to the little chapel where the mission school had previously been held. Here was a rude pulpit, and back of it a much-disfigured virgin, dressed in turkey-red calico. Two cheap candles in th
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