ng,
that of deep respect for the labours of this celebrated missionary,
whose life had been a continuous effort to help the unbefriended
Indian into the new but inevitable paths of self-support, and to
shield him from the rapacity of the cold incoming world now surging
around him. After the presentation, over a good cigar, the Father
told some inimitable stories of Indian life on the plains in the
old days, which to my great regret are too lengthy for inclusion
here. One incident, however, being _apropos_ of himself, must find
place. Turning the conversation from materialism, idealism, and the
other "isms" into which it had drifted, he spoke of the fears so
many have of ghosts, and even of a corpse, and confessed that, from
early training, he had shared this fear until he got rid of it in an
incident one winter at Lac Ste. Anne. He had been sent for during
the night to administer extreme unction to a dying half-breed girl
thirteen miles away. Hitching his dogs to their sled he sped on,
but too late, for he was met on the trail by the girl's relatives,
bringing her dead body wrapped in a buffalo skin, and which
they asked him to take back with him and place in his chapel
pending service. He tremblingly assented, and the body was
duly tied to his sled, the relatives returning to their homes.
He was alone with the corpse in the dense and dark forest, and
felt the old dread, but reflecting on his office and its duties,
he ran for a long distance behind the sled until, thoroughly
tired, he stepped on it to rest. In doing this he slipped and
fell upon the corpse in a spasm of fear, which, strange to say,
when he recovered from it, he felt no more. The shock cured him,
and, reaching home, he placed the girl's body in the chapel
with his own hands. It reminded him, he said, of a Community
at Marseilles whose Superior had died, but whose money was
missing. The new Superior sent a young priest who had a great
dread of ghosts down to the crypt below the church to open the
coffin and search the pockets of the dead. He did so, and found
the money; but in nailing on the coffin lid again, a part of
his soutane was fastened down with it. The priest turned to go,
advanced a step, and, being suddenly held, dropped dead with
fright. These gruesome stories were happily followed by an hour
or two of song and pleasantry in Mr. McKenna's tent, ending in
"Auld Lang Syne" and "God Save the Queen." It was a unique occasion
in which to wind up