Indian walked away (we know that by his footprints), but returned
to the tent. The hunger and the cold had conquered. He took his
hunting-knife and slit the deerskin window and stepped inside. Then he
approached the pile of tweed trousers and selected a large pair, putting
down from the bunch of furs he had on his arms to the value of eight
skins--the price his father and grandfather had paid. He visited the
tobacco pile and helped himself, leaving four skins on the tobacco. When
he had taken tea he had all his heart desired, and having still a number
of skins left, he hung them upon a hook overhead and went away.

"When summer dawned and a clerk came to open the post, he saw the slit
in the window, and upon entering the tent saw the eight skins on the
stack of tweeds, the four skins on the tobacco, and the others on the
chest, and understood.

"Presently he saw the skins which the Indian had hung upon the hook,
took them down, counted them carefully, appraised them, and made an
entry in the Receiving Book, in which he credited
'Indian-cut-the-window, 37 skins.'

"Yesterday Dunraven came to the post and confessed.

"It was to reward him for his honesty that I gave him the fur coat and
looped the big brass baggage check in his buttonhole. _Voila!_"

The cure crossed his legs and then recrossed them, tossed his head from
side to side, drummed upon the closed book which lay in his lap, and
showed in any number of ways, peculiar to nervous people, his amazement
at the story and his admiration for the Indian.

"Little things like that," said the factor, filling his pipe, "make me
timid when talking to a Cree about 'being good.'"

* * * * *

When summer came, and with it the smell of flowers and the music of
running streams, the factor and his friend the cure used to take long
tramps up into the highlands, but the cure's state of health was a
handicap to him. The factor saw the telltale flush in the priest's face
and knew that the "White Plague" had marked him; yet he never allowed
the cure to know that he knew. That summer a little river steamer was
sent up from Athabasca Lake by the Chief Commissioner who sat in the
big office at Winnipeg, and upon this the factor and his friend took
many an excursion up and down the Peace. The friendship that had grown
up between the factor and the new cure formed the one slender bridge
that connected the Anglican and the Catholic camps. Even the "he