nd stood out
into the sweep of the Atlantic, where to a time-honoured form, the
minister and the girl plighted their troth, symbolized it by the gift
of a ring, and ratified it by the authority of the state, in the name
of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

This is a good enough story to end with, but there are other
outstanding personalities I must mention.

There is Bishop Holmes,[1] who resides at Athabasca Landing, and who
has had many interesting experiences among the redskins. Like all true
northmen, the Bishop speaks in a quiet, low tone, admirably adapted to
the art of narrative. Once for weeks, he took charge of a Weetigo or
Weendigo Indian, in order to protect him from relatives who sought to
take his life. The man believed himself to be a cannibal, for in some
strange way the idea had been suggested to him. After a time, the
hallucination passed away, and the man returned to the camp.

Until comparatively recent years, the untutored redmen believed that
people who were insane or in delirium were either obsessed or possessed
of an evil spirit, and that it was necessary to kill them in order to
prevent this spirit from entering into others. The plight of the
relatives in these cases was pitiable; they could not allow a violently
insane man or woman at large, and the killing was usually performed
with great grief. This custom has fallen into desuetude, for, since
the advent of the Mounted Police, the perpetrators are treated as
murderers and accordingly hanged. The most arduous duty of the police
is the bringing in of demented Indians or white prospectors from the
North. It is a task that has, in turn, driven a stalwart redcoat
insane. One's nerves are apt to snap when, for weeks, you sleep o'
nights in the snow roped to a maniac.

And there was Rev. Henry Irwin, better known as Father Pat. He was a
railroad priest on the Canadian Pacific, and, because of his unselfish
work among them, became the idol of men. There are some misguided folk
who think of a priest as a feeble, microcephalous body with a black
coat, a shovel hat, and a superb ignorance of the ways of the world.
There are, we own, some priests like this, but Father Pat was not one
of them. Indeed, his dress and deportment were such as to often cause
scandal to good church folk who were not so conversant with his noble
deeds and self-abnegation as were the railroad navvies and gold-miners.
Father Pat had only been married a year when his