He fell silent, sitting with his head bent forward, his gnarled hands
folded on his knees before him. A far-away look had come into his
eyes, a fixed expression of calmness, as though they slept with the
lids parted. Granger watched the hands, mutilated and ruined, with
three fingers missing from the right, and two from the left; and yet,
despite their brokenness, he thought how beautiful they were. There
was scarcely a part of the priest's body that had not been at some
time shattered with service. It had never occurred to Granger that
Pere Antoine, like most other men in the district, had a past which
did not belong to Keewatin--memories of a happier time to which he
might sometimes look back with the painfulness of regret. Antoine had
been there so long that there was no man who remembered the day when
first he arrived. He seemed as natural to the landscape as the Last
Chance River itself. And now suddenly, in an electric moment of
sympathy, his past had revealed itself.

Granger watched and waited, hoping that presently he would explain. It
occurred to him as a discovery that he had no knowledge of the
priest's real name or of his family. At his nationality he could only
guess, supposing him to be a Frenchman or a French-Canadian. How
incurious he had been! And, in this case, lack of curiosity had meant
lack of kindness; he blamed himself. He, like all Keewatin, was ready
in time of crisis to draw upon the old man's strength, but beyond that
he had never shown him real friendship--he had never been conscious of
any desire to hear about the man himself. And now he had learned that
this man also had a tragedy, and, like himself, had loved a woman who
was now long since dead. He wanted to ask him questions, that so he
might make up for omitted kindnesses; but he was restrained when he
looked upon the grey dreamy countenance, for it was evident that le
Pere was wandering in the idealised meadows of a bygone
pleasantness--a country which was known only to himself. So Granger
returned his eyes to the portrait which he had taken from the dead
man's hand, and, gazing upon it, tried his best to fill in the blanks
in his little knowledge of the woman he had loved.

He constructed for himself a picture of an ivied manor-house, terraced
and with an old-world garden lying round about it, where her childhood
had been spent and where she had grown to girlhood. He told himself
that there must have been a river somewhere near,