in life, as it was largely intended that
life should be in the beginning of things. And I want you to understand it,
because in your books you possess a power which should be well directed.
When I received your last letter I hunted up the best man I knew as guide
and companion for you--old Rameses, down at the Mission. He is called
Rameses because he looks like the old boy himself. You said you wanted to
learn Cree, and he'll teach it to you. He will teach you a lot of other
things, and when you look at him, especially at night beside the campfire,
you will find something in his face which will recall what I have said, and
make you think of the first people."

Roscoe, at thirty-two, had not lost his boy's enthusiasm in life, in spite
of the fact that he had studied too deeply, and had seen too much, and had
begun fighting for existence while still in bare feet. From the beginning
it seemed as though some grim monster of fate had hovered about him, making
his path as rough as it could, and striking him down whenever the
opportunity came. His own tremendous energy and ambition had carried him to
the top.

He worked himself through college, and became a success in his way. But at
no time could he remember real happiness. It had almost come to him, he
thought, a year before--in the form of a girl; but this promise had passed
like the others because, of a sudden, he found that she had shattered the
most precious of all his ideals. So he picked himself up, and, encouraged
by his virile optimism, began looking forward again. Bad luck had so worked
its hand in the moulding of him that he had come to live chiefly in
anticipation, and though this bad luck had played battledore and
shuttlecock with him, the things which he anticipated were pleasant and
beautiful. He believed that the human race was growing better, and that
each year was bringing his ideals just so much nearer to realization. More
than once he had told himself that he was living two or three centuries too
soon. Ransom, his old college chum, had been the first to suggest that he
was living some thousands of years too late.

He thought of this a great deal during the first pleasant weeks of the
autumn, which he and old Rameses spent up in the Lac la Ronge and Reindeer
Lake country. During this time he devoted himself almost entirely to the
study of Cree under Rameses' tutelage, and the more he learned of it the
more he saw the truth of what Ransom had told him once