shut, the priest set down the lamp, and laid
his hands on the young man's shoulders.

"My son, you must not go on this mad journey."

"I must, you know."

"You must _not_. Sit there." He pushed him into a chair. "Let me tell
you. I do not speak as the ignorant. I have in my day travelled many
hundreds of miles on the ice; but I've done it in the season when the
trail's at its best, with dogs, my son, and with tried native
servants."

"I know it is pleasanter that way, but--"

"Pleasanter? It is the way to keep alive."

"But the Indians travel with hand-sleds."

"For short distances, yes, and they are inured to the climate. You? You
know nothing of what lies before you."

"But we'll find out as other people have." The Boy smiled confidently.

"I assure you, my son, it is madness, this thing you are trying to do.
The chances of either of you coming out alive, are one in fifty. In
fifty, did I say? In five hundred."

"I don't think so, Father. We don't mean to travel when--"

"But you'll have to travel. To stay in such places as you'll find
yourself in will be to starve. Or if by any miracle you escape the
worst effects of cold and hunger, you'll get caught in the ice in the
spring break-up, and go down to destruction on a floe. You've no
conception what it's like. If you were six weeks earlier, or six weeks
later, I would hold my peace."

The Boy looked at the priest and then away. _Was_ it going to be so
bad? Would they leave their bones on the ice? Would they go washing by
the mission in the great spring flood, that all men spoke of with the
same grave look? He had a sudden vision of the torrent as it would be
in June. Among the whirling ice-masses that swept by--two bodies,
swollen, unrecognisable. One gigantic, one dressed gaily in chaparejos.
And neither would lift his head, but, like men bent grimly upon some
great errand, they would hurry on, past the tall white cross with never
a sign--on, on to the sea.

"Be persuaded, my son."

Dimly the Boy knew he was even now borne along upon a current equally
irresistible, this one setting northward, as that other back to the
south. He found himself shaking his head under the Jesuit's remonstrant
eyes.

"We've lost so much time already. We couldn't possibly turn back--now."

"Then here's my Grammar." With an almost comic change of tone and
manner the priest turned to the table where the lamp stood, among piles
of neatly tied-up and docketed papers.

He