minute sending me back to the life I hate, and
the oblivion I loathe. I can't lie here, and see you and Captain
McTavish ruined. The Indian part of me says, 'Yes, take it; no one
will ever know.' But the McTavish of me rebels, and I can't do it."

"Yes, yes," cried the commissioner feverishly, "but about the
certificate? What about that?"

"I was getting to it, sir. Years ago, I don't know how many, my
mother and I were living in a little cabin by a lake during the
winter. I was small then, and did not realize the significance of
things. One night, we heard faint noises in the woods near by,
and my mother went out to see what made them. She found Burns
Riley, the missionary, half-insane with suffering, his features
frozen, and almost at the point of starvation. He had had a similar
adventure to Captain McTavish's this winter.

"My mother saw his plight, and the vague plan that had been in her
mind took shape. There, in the snow, she forced the missionary at
the price of his miserable life to agree to write that certificate,
and, as soon as his fingers could hold the pen and dip it in the
soot-ink of the chimney, he did it, and before him sat the food
that his words would purchase. Burns Riley was a square man, but
his life was at stake, for my mother would have turned him out
into the snow as he was, if he had not done as she wished--and
he knew it."

"But why didn't he come and tell me?" demanded McTavish.

"Because he was on his way to a mission, at Fort Chimo, on the
Koksook River, near Ungava Bay. He didn't come back until shortly
before he died, and he never saw you. No doubt he was afraid to
trust the story of the disgrace of his cloth to a messenger. That,
Mr. McTavish, is the story of the certificate. I'm glad I've told
it; I'm glad I've relinquished my claims; I'm glad that I am still
as honest as the best blood in me. But now," he added drearily,
"what is there for me? Commissioner, you have done me the irreparable
wrong of making me what I am. All our two lives there can never be
any righting of that wrong. I am a half-breed, and must forever
yearn vainly for better things that I know I can never attain."

During his words, which were evenly spoken, without excitement,
but with intense feeling, the head of Douglas McTavish remained
sunk upon his breast. He realized now the irreparable injury that
his youth had wrought, and in the depths of his heart he admired
this heroic half-breed, who, in the exer