should be that he was doing penance for the Pymeuts, but he
couldn't smile with that offended archangel in front of him.

"Thirty miles over the ice, in the face of a norther, hasn't been so
'easy' even for me. And I'm not old, nor sick--no, nor frightened,
Brother Paul."

He flung up his head, but his heart failed him even while he made the
boast. Silently, for a moment, they confronted each other.

"Where are you bound for?"

"I--a--" The Boy had a moment of wondering if he was expected to answer
"Hell," and he hesitated.

"Are you on your way up the river?"

"No--I" (was the man not going to let them rest their wicked bones
there a single night?)--"a--I--"

The frozen river and the wind-racked wood were as hospitable as the
beautiful face of the brother. Involuntarily the Boy shivered.

"I came to see the Father Superior."

He dropped back into a chair.

"The Father Superior is busy."

"I'll wait."

"And very tired."

"So'm I."

"--worn out with the long raging of the plague. I have waited till he
is less harassed to tell him about the Pymeuts' deliberate depravity.
Nicholas, too!--one of our own people, one of the first pupils of the
school, a communicant in the church; distinguished by a thousand
kindnesses. And this the return!"

"The return is that he takes his backsliding so to heart, he can't rest
without coming to confess and to beg the Father Superior--"

"I shall tell the Father Superior what I heard and saw. He will agree
that, for the sake of others who are trying to resist temptation, an
example should be made of Nicholas and of his father."

"And yet you nursed the old man and were kind to him, I believe, after
the offense."

"I--I thought you had killed him. But even you must see that we cannot
have a man received here as Nicholas was--the most favoured child of
the mission--who helps to perpetuate the degrading blasphemies of his
unhappy race. It's nothing to you; you even encourage--"

"'Pon my soul--" But Brother Paul struck in with an impassioned
earnestness:

"We spend a life-time making Christians of these people; and such as
you come here, and in a week undo the work of years."

"I--_I?_"

"It's only eighteen months since I myself came, but already I've
seen--" The torrent poured out with never a pause. "Last summer some
white prospectors bribed our best native teacher to leave us and become
a guide. He's a drunken wreck now somewhere up on the Yukon Flats. You
tak