CHAPTER XI HOLY CROSS

CHAPTER XI

HOLY CROSS

"Raise the stone, and ye shall find me; cleave the wood, and there am I."

The stars were shining frostily, in a clear sky, when the Boy crawled out from under his snow-drift in the morning. He built up the fire, quaking in the bitter air, and bustled the breakfast.

"You seem to be in something of a hurry," said the Colonel, with a yawn stifled in a shiver.

"We haven't come on this trip to lie abed in the morning," his pardner returned with some solemnity. "I don't care how soon I begin caperin' ahead with that load again."

"Well, it'll be warmin', anyway," returned the Colonel, "and I can't say as much for your fire."

It was luck that the first forty miles of the trail had already been traversed by the Boy. He kept recognising this and that in the landscape, with an effect of good cheer on both of them. It postponed a little the realization of their daring in launching themselves upon the Arctic waste, without a guide or even a map that was of the smallest use.

Half an hour after setting off, they struck into the portage. Even with a snow-blurred trail, the Boy's vivid remembrance of the other journey gave them the sustaining sense that they were going right. The Colonel was working off the surprising stiffness with which he had wakened, and they were both warm now; but the Colonel's footsoreness was considerable, an affliction, besides, bound to be worse before it was better.

The Boy spoke with the old-timer's superiority, of his own experience, and was so puffed up, at the bare thought of having hardened his feet, that he concealed without a qualm the fact of a brand-new blister on his heel. A mere nothing that, not worth mentioning to anyone who remembered the state he was in at the end of that awful journey of penitence.

It was well on in the afternoon before it began to snow again, and they had reached the frozen lake. The days were lengthening, and they still had good light by which to find the well-beaten trail on the other side.

"Now in a minute we'll hear the mission dogs. What did I tell you?" Out of the little wood, a couple of teams were coming, at a good round pace. They were pulled up at the waterhole, and the mission natives ran on to meet the new arrivals. They recognised the Boy, and insisted on making the Colonel, who was walking very lame, ride to the mission in the strongest sled, and they took turns helping the dogs by pushing from behind. The snow was falling heavily again, and one of the Indians, Henry, looking up with squinted eyes, said, "There'll be nothing left of that walrus-tusk."

"Hey?" inquired the Boy, straining at his sled-rope and bending before the blast. "What's that?"

"Don't you know what makes snow?" said Henry.

"No. What does?"

"Ivory whittlings. When they get to their carving up yonder then we have snow."

What was happening to the Colonel?

The mere physical comfort of riding, instead of serving as packhorse, great as it was, not even that could so instantly spirit away the weariness, and light up the curious, solemn radiance that shone on the Colonel's face. It struck the Boy that good old Kentucky would look like that when he met his dearest at the Gate of Heaven--if there was such a place.

The Colonel was aware of the sidelong wonder of his comrade's glance, for the sleds, abreast, had come to a momentary halt. But still he stared in front of him, just as a sailor in a storm dares not look away from the beacon-light an instant, knowing all the waste about him abounds in rocks and eddies and in death, and all the world of hope and safe returning is narrowed to that little point of light.

After the moment's speculation the Boy turned his eyes to follow the Colonel's gaze into space.

"The Cross! the Cross!" said the man on the sled. "Don't you see it?"

"Oh, that? Yes."

At the Boy's tone the Colonel, for the first time, turned his eyes away from the Great White Symbol.

"Don't know what you're made of, if, seeing that... you needn't be a Church member, but only a man, I should think, to--to--" He blew out his breath in impotent clouds, and then went on. "We Americans think a good deal o' the Stars and Stripes, but that up yonder--that's the mightier symbol."

"Huh!" says the Boy. "Stars and Stripes tell of an ideal of united states. That up there tells of an ideal of United Mankind. It's the great Brotherhood Mark. There isn't any other standard that men would follow just to build a hospice in a place like this."

At an upper window, in a building on the far side of the white symbol, the travellers caught a glimpse, through the slanting snow, of one of the Sisters of St. Ann shutting in the bright light with thick curtains.

_"Glass!"_ ejaculated the Colonel.

One of the Indians had run on to announce them, and as they drew up at the door--that the Boy remembered as a frame for Brother Paul, with his lamp, to search out iniquity, and his face of denunciation--out came Father Brachet, brisk, almost running, his two hands outstretched, his face a network of welcoming wrinkles. No long waiting, this time, in the reception-room. Straight upstairs to hot baths and mild, reviving drinks, and then, refreshed and already rested, down to supper.

With a shade of anxiety the Boy looked about for Brother Paul. But Father Wills was here anyhow, and the Boy greeted him, joyfully, as a tried friend and a man to be depended on. There was Brother Etienne, and there were two strange faces.

Father Brachet put the Colonel on his right and the Boy on his left, introducing: "Fazzer Richmond, my predecessor as ze head of all ze Alaskan missions," calmly eliminating Greek, Episcopalian, and other heretic establishments. "Fazzer Richmond you must have heard much of. He is ze great ausority up here. He is now ze Travelling Priest. You can ask him all. He knows everysing."

In no wise abashed by this flourish, Father Richmond shook hands with the Big Chimney men, smiling, and with a pleasant ease that communicated itself to the entire company.

It was instantly manifest that the scene of this Jesuit's labours had not been chiefly, or long, beyond the borders of civilization. In the plain bare room where, for all its hospitality and good cheer, reigned an air of rude simplicity and austerity of life--into this somewhat rarefied atmosphere Father Richmond brought a whiff from another world. As he greeted the two strangers, and said simply that he had just arrived, himself, by way of the Anvik portage, the Colonel felt that he must have meant from New York or from Paris instead of the words he added, "from St. Michael's."

He claimed instant kinship with the Colonel on the strength of their both being Southerners.

"I'm a Baltimore man," he said, with an accent no Marylander can purge of pride.

"How long since you've been home?"

"Oh, I go back every year."

"He goes all over ze world, to tell ze people--"

"--something of the work being done here by Father Brachet--and all of them." He included the other priests and lay-brothers in a slight circular movement of the grizzled head.

And to collect funds! the Colonel rightly divined, little guessing how triumphantly he achieved that end.

"Alaska is so remote," said the Travelling Priest, as if in apology for popular ignorance, "and people think of it so... inadequately, shall we say? In trying to explain the conditions up here, I have my chief difficulty in making them realise the great distances we have to cover. You tell them that in the Indian tongue Alaska means "the great country," they smile, and think condescendingly of savage imagery. It is vain to say we have an area of six hundred thousand square miles. We talk much in these days of education; but few men and no women can count! Our Eastern friends get some idea of what we mean, when we tell them Alaska is bigger than all the Atlantic States from Maine to Louisiana with half of great Texas thrown in. With a coast-line of twenty six thousand miles, this Alaska of ours turns to the sea a greater frontage than all the shores of all the United States combined. It extends so far out towards Asia that it carries the dominions of the Great Republic as far west of San Francisco as New York is east of it, making California a central state. I try to give Europeans some idea of it by saying that if you add England, Ireland, and Scotland together, and to that add France, and to that add Italy, you still lack enough to make a country the size of Alaska. I do not speak of our mountains, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen thousand feet high, and our Yukon, flowing for more than two thousand miles through a country almost virgin still."

"You travel about up here a good deal?"

"He travels _all_ ze time. He will not rest," said Father Brachet as one airing an ancient grievance.

"Yes, I will rest now--a little. I have been eight hundred miles over the ice, with dogs, since January 1."

The Boy looked at him with something very like reverence. Here was a man who could give you tips!

"You have travelled abroad, too," the Colonel rather stated than asked.

"I spent a good deal of my youth in France and Germany."

"Educated over there?"

"Well, I am a Johns Hopkins man, but I may say I found my education in Rome. Speaking of education"--he turned to the other priests--"I have greatly advanced my grammar since we parted." Father Brachet answered with animation in French, and the conversation went forward for some minutes in that tongue. The discussion was interrupted to introduce the other new face, at the bottom of the table, to the Big Chimney men: "Resident Fazzer Roget of ze Kuskoquim mission."

"That is the best man on snow-shoes in Central Alaska," said Father Richmond low to the Colonel, nodding at the Kuskoquim priest.

"And he knows more of two of ze native dialects here zan anyone else," added the Father Superior.

"You must forgive our speaking much of the Indian tongues," said Father Richmond. "We are all making dictionaries and grammars; we have still to translate much of our religious instruction, and the great variety in dialect of the scattered tribes keeps us busy with linguistic studies."

"Tomorrow you must see our schools," said Father Brachet.

But the Boy answered quickly that they could not afford the time. He was surprised at the Colonel's silence; but the Boy didn't know what the Colonel's feet felt like.

Kentucky ain't sorry, he said to himself, to have a back to his chair, and to eat off china again. Kentucky's a voluptuary! I'll have to drag him away by main force; and the Boy allowed Father Richmond to help him yet more abundantly to the potatoes and cabbage grown last summer in the mission garden!

It was especially the vegetables that lent an element of luxury to the simple meal. The warm room, the excellent food, better cooked than any they had had for seven months, produced a gentle somnolence. The thought of the inviting look of the white-covered bed upstairs lay like a balm on the spirits of men not born to roughing it. As the travellers said an early and grateful good-night, the Boy added sleepily something about the start at dawn.

Father Brachet answered, "Morning will bring counsel, my son. I sink ze bleezzar-r will not let us lose you so soon."

They overslept themselves, and they knew it, in that way the would-be early riser does, before ever he looks into the accusing face of his watch. The Boy leapt out of bed.

"Hear that?" The wind was booming among the settlement buildings. "Sounds as if there was weather outside." A glance between the curtains showed the great gale at its height. The snow blew level in sheets and darkened the air.

"Well," said the Colonel, splashing mightily in the ice-cold water, "I don't know as I mind giving my feet twenty-four hours' time to come to their senses."

A hurried toilet and they went downstairs, sharp-set for breakfast after the long, refreshing sleep.

Father Richmond was writing on his knee by the stove in the reception-room.

"Good-morning--good-morning." He rang the bell.

"Well, what did we tell you? I don't think you'll get far today. Let these gentlemen know when breakfast is ready," he said, as Christopher put his head in. He looked at his watch. "I hope you will find everything you need," he said; and, continuing to talk about the gale and some damage it had done to one of the outbuildings, he went into the entry, just beyond the reception-room door, and began to put on his furs.

"_You are_ not going out in such weather!" the Colonel called after him incredulously.

"Only as far as the church."

"Oh, is there church today?" inquired the Boy more cheerfully than one might expect.

The Colonel started and made a signal for discretion.

"Blest if it isn't Sunday!" he said under his breath.

"He doesn't seem dead-set on our observing it," whispered the Boy.

The Colonel warmed himself luxuriously at the stove, and seemed to listen for that summons from the entry that never came. Was Father Richmond out there still, or had he gone?

"Do they think we are heathens because we are not Jesuits?" he said under his breath, suddenly throwing out his great chest.

"Perhaps we ought to... Hey? They've been awfully considerate of _us--_"

The Colonel went to the door. Father Richmond was struggling with his snow-boots.

"With your permission, sir," says the Colonel in his most magnificent manner, "we will accompany you, or follow if you are in haste."

"With all my heart. Come," said the priest, "if you will wait and breakfast with us after Mass."

It was agreed, and the immediate order was countermanded. The sound of a bell came, muffled, through the storm.

With thoughts turning reluctantly from breakfast, "What's that?" asked the Boy.

"That is our church bell." The Father had helped the Colonel to find his parki.

"Oh--a--of course--"

"A fine tone, don't you think? But you can't tell so well in this storm. We are fond of our bell. It is the first that ever rang out in the Yukon valley. Listen!"

They stood still a moment before opening the front door. The Boy, seeing the very look of a certain high-shouldered gray stone "St. Andrew's" far away, and himself trotting along beside that figure, inseparable from first memories, was dimly aware again, as he stood at the Jesuit's door, in these different days, of the old Sunday feeling invading, permeating his consciousness, half reluctant, half amused.

The Colonel sat in a rural church and looked at the averted face of a woman.

Only to the priest was the sound all music.

"That language," he said, "speaks to men whatever tongue they call their own. The natives hear it for miles up the river, and down the river, and over the white hills, and far across the tundra. They come many miles to Mass--"

He opened the door, and the gale rushed in.

"I do not mean on days like this," he wound up, smiling, and out they went into the whirling snow.

The church was a building of logs like the others, except that it was of one story. Father Brachet was already there, with Father Wills and Brother Etienne; and, after a moment, in came Brother Paul, looking more waxen and aloof than ever, at the head of the school, the rear brought up by Brother Vincent and Henry.

In a moment the little Mother Superior appeared, followed by two nuns, heading a procession of native women and girls. They took their places on the other side of the church and bowed their heads.

"Beautiful creature!" ejaculated the Colonel under his breath, glancing back.

His companion turned his head sharply just in time to see Sister Winifred come last into the church, holding by either hand a little child. Both men watched her as she knelt down. Between the children's sallow, screwed-up, squinting little visages the calm, unconscious face of the nun shone white like a flower.

The strangers glanced discreetly about the rude little church, with its pictures and its modest attempt at stained glass.

"No wonder all this impresses the ignorant native," whispered the Colonel, catching himself up suddenly from sharing in that weakness.

Without, the wild March storm swept the white world; within another climate reigned--something of summer and the far-off South, of Italy herself, transplanted to this little island of civilisation anchored in the Northern waste.

"S'pose you've seen all the big cathedrals, eh?"

"Good many."

There was still a subdued rustling in the church, and outside, still the clanging bell contended with the storm.

"And this--makes you smile?"

"N--no," returned the older man with a kind of reluctance. "I've seen many a worse church; America's full of 'em."

"Hey?"

"So far as--dignity goes--" The Colonel was wrestling with some vague impression difficult for him to formulate. "You see, you can't build anything with wood that's better than a log-cabin. For looks--just _looks_--it beats all your fancy gimcracks, even brick; beats everything else hollow, except stone. Then they've got candles. We went on last night about the luxury of oil-lamps. They don't bring 'em in here!"

"_We_ do in our prairie and Southern country churches."

"I know. But look at those altar lights." The Boy was too busy looking at Sister Winifred. "I tell you, sir, a man never made a finer thing than a tall wax candle."

"Sh! Mustn't talk in church."

The Colonel stared a moment at the Boy's presumption, drew himself up a little pompously, and crossed his arms over his huge chest.

"Why, they've got an organ!" The Boy forgot his strict views on church etiquette as the sudden sweetness swelled in the air. Brother Paul, with head thrown back and white face lifted, was playing, slowly, absently, like one who listens to some great choir invisible, and keeps their time with a few obedient but unnecessary chords. And yet--

"The fella can play," the Colonel admitted.

The native choir, composed entirely of little dark-faced boys, sang their way truly through the service, Father Brachet celebrating Mass.

"Brother Paul's ill, isn't he? Look!" The lay-brother had swayed, and drooped forward over the keyboard, but his choir sang steadily on. He recovered himself, and beckoned one of the boys to his side. When he rose, the child nodded and took the organist's place, playing quite creditably to the end. Brother Paul sat in the corner with bowed head.

Coming out, they were in time to confront Sister Winifred, holding back the youngest children, eager to anticipate their proper places in the procession.

The Boy looked fixedly at her, wondering. Suddenly meeting The clear eyes, he smiled, and then shrank inwardly at his forwardness. He could not tell if she remembered him.

The Colonel, finding himself next her at the door, bowed, and stood back for her to pass.

"No," she said gently; "my little children must wait for the older ones."

"You have them under good discipline, madam." He laid his hand on the furry shoulder of the smallest.

The Boy stood behind the Colonel, unaccountably shy in the presence of the only white woman he had seen in nearly seven months. She couldn't be any older than he, and yet she was a nun. What a gulf opened at the word! Sister Winifred and her charges fell into rank at the tail of the little procession, and vanished in the falling snow. At breakfast the Colonel would not sit down till he was presented to Brother Paul.

"Sir," he said in his florid but entirely sincere fashion, "I should like to thank you for the pleasure of hearing that music to-day. We were much impressed, sir, by the singing. How old is the boy who played the organ?"

"Ten," said Brother Paul, and for the first time the Boy saw him smile. "Yes, I think he has music in him, our little Jerome."

"And how well _all_ your choir has the service by heart! Their unison is perfect."

"Yes," said Father Brachet from the head of the table, "our music has never been so good as since Paul came among us." He lifted his hand, and every one bowed his head.

After grace Father Richmond took the floor, conversationally, as seemed to be his wont, and breakfast went on, as supper had the night before, to the accompaniment of his shrewd observations and lively anecdotes. In the midst of all the laughter and good cheer Brother Paul sat at the end of the board, eating absently, saying nothing, and no one speaking to him.

Father Richmond especially, but, indeed, all of them, seemed arrant worldlings beside the youngest of the lay-brethren. The Colonel could more easily imagine Father Richmond walking the streets of Paris or of Rome, than "hitting the Yukon trail." He marvelled afresh at the devotion that brought such a man to wear out his fine attainments, his scholarship, his energy, his wide and Catholic knowledge, in travelling winter after winter, hundreds of miles over the ice from one Indian village to another. You could not divorce Father Richmond in your mind from the larger world outside; he spoke with its accent, he looked with his humourous, experienced eyes. You found it natural to think of him in very human relations. You wondered about his people, and what brought him to this.

Not so with Brother Paul. He was one of those who suggest no country upon any printed map. You have to be reminded that you do not know his birthplace or his history. It was this same Brother Paul who, after breakfast and despite the Pymeut incident, offered to show the gold-seekers over the school. The big recitation-room was full of natives and decidedly stuffy. They did not stay long. Upstairs, "I sleep here in the dormitory," said the Brother, "and I live with the pupils--as much as I can. I often eat with them," he added as one who mounts a climax. "They have to be taught _everything_, and they have to be taught it over again every day."

"Except music, apparently."

"Except music--and games. Brother Vincent teaches them football and baseball, and plays with them and works with them. Part of each day is devoted to manual training and to sport."

He led the way to the workshop.

"One of our brothers is a carpenter and master mechanic."

He called to a pupil passing the door, and told him the strangers would like to inspect the school work. Very proudly the lad obeyed. He himself was a carpenter, and showed his half-finished table. The Boy's eye fell on a sled.

"Yes," said the lad, "that kind better. Your kind no good." He had evidently made intimate acquaintance with the Boy's masterpiece.

"Yours is splendid," admitted the unskilled workman.

"Will you sell it?" the Colonel asked Brother Paul.

"They make them to sell," was the answer, and the transaction was soon effected.

* * * * *

"It has stopped snowing and ze wind is fallen," said Father Brachet, going to the reception-room window an hour or so after they had come in from dinner.

The Colonel exchanged looks with the Boy, and drew out his watch.

"Later than I thought."

"Much," the Colonel agreed, and sat considering, watch in hand.

"I sink our friends must see now ze girls' school, and ze laundry, hein?"

"To be sure," agreed Father Richmond. "I will take you over and give you into the hands of our Mother Superior."

"Why, it's much warmer," said the Boy as they went by the cross; and Father Richmond greeted the half-dozen native boys, who were packing down the fresh snow under their broad shoes, laughing and shouting to one another as they made anew the familiar mission trails.

The door of the two-story house, on the opposite side of the settlement, was opened by Sister Winifred.

"Friends of ours from the White Camp below."

She acknowledged the nameless introduction, smiling; but at the request that followed, "Ah, it is too bad that just to-day--the Mother Superior--she is too faint and weak to go about. Will you see her, Father?"

"Yes, if you will show these strangers the school and laundry and--"

"Oh, yes, I will show them."

She led the way into the cheerful schoolroom, where big girls and little girls were sitting about, amusing themselves in the quiet of a long Sunday afternoon. Several of the younger children ran to her as she came in, and stood holding fast to the folds of her black habit, staring up at the strangers, while she explained the kind of instruction given, the system, and the order reigning in each department. Finally, she persuaded a little girl, only six years old, to take her dusky face out of the long flowing veil of the nun, and show how quickly she could read a sentence that Sister Winifred wrote on the blackboard. Then others were called on, and gave examples of their accomplishments in easy arithmetic and spelling. The children must have been very much bored with themselves that stormy Sunday, for they entered into the examination with a quite unnatural zest.

Two of the elder girls recited, and some specimens of penmanship and composition were shown. The delicate complexion of the little nun flushed to a pretty wild-rose pink as these pupils of hers won the Colonel's old fashioned compliments.

"And they are taught most particularly of all," she hastened to say, "cooking, housekeeping, and sewing."

Whereupon specimens of needlework were brought out and cast like pearls before the swine's eyes of the ignorant men. But they were impressed in their benighted way, and said so.

"And we teach them laundry-work." She led the way, with the children trooping after, to the washhouse. "No, run back. You'll take cold. Run back, and you shall sing for the strangers before they go."

She smiled them away--a happy-faced, clean little throng, striking contrast to the neglected, filthy children seen in the native villages. As they were going into the laundry, Father Richmond came out of the house, and stopped to point out to the Colonel a snow-covered enclosure--"the Sisters' garden"--and he told how marvellously, in the brief summer, some of the hardier vegetables flourished there.

"They spring up like magic at the edge of the snow-drifts, and they do not rest from their growing all night. If the time is short, they have twice as much sunlight as with you. They drink it in the whole summer night as well as all the day. And over here is the Fathers' garden." Talking still, he led the way towards a larger enclosure on the other side of the Cross.

Sister Winifred paused a moment, and then, as they did not turn back, and the Boy stood waiting, she took him into the drying-room and into the ironing-room, and then returned to the betubbed apartment first invaded. There was only one blot on the fairness of that model laundry--a heap of torn and dirty canvas in the middle of the floor.

The Boy vaguely thought it looked familiar, before the Sister, blushing faintly, said: "We hope you won't go before we have time to repair it."

"Why, it's our old sled-cover!"

"Yes; it is very much cut and torn. But you do not go at once?"

"Yes, to-morrow."

"Oh! Father Brachet thought you would stay for a few days, at least."

"We have no time."

"You go, like the rest, for gold?"

"Like the rest."

"But you came before to help poor Nicholas out of his trouble."

"He was quite able to help himself, as it turned out."

"Why will you go so far, and at such risk?" she said, with a suddenness that startled them both.

"I--I--well, I think I go chiefly because I want to get my home back. I lost my home when I was a little chap. Where is your home?"

"Here."

"How long have you been here?"

"Nearly two years."

"Then how can you call it home?"

"I do that only that I may--speak your language. Of course, it is not my real home."

"Where is the real home?"

"I hope it is in heaven," she said, with a simplicity that took away all taint of cant or mere phrase-making.

"But where do you come from?"

"I come from Montreal."

"Oh! and don't you ever go back to visit your people?"

"No, I never go back."

"But you will some time?"

"No; I shall never go back."

"Don't you _want_ to?"

She dropped her eyes, but very steadfastly she said:

"My work is here."

"But you are young, and you may live a great, great many years."

She nodded, and looked out of the open door. The Colonel and the Travelling Priest were walking in Indian file the new-made, hard-packed path.

"Yes," she said in a level voice, "I shall grow old here, and here I shall be buried."

"I shall never understand it. I have such a longing for my home. I came here ready to bear anything that I might be able to get it back."

She looked at him steadily and gravely.

"I may be wrong, but I doubt if you would be satisfied even if you got it back--now."

"What makes you think that?" he said sharply.

"Because"--and she checked herself as if on the verge of something too personal--"you can never get back a thing you've lost. When the old thing is there again, you are not as you were when you lost it, and the change in you makes the old thing new--and strange."

"Oh, it's plain I am very different from you," but he said it with a kind of uneasy defiance. "Besides, in any case, I shall do it for my sister's sake."

"Oh, you have a sister?"

He nodded.

"How long since you left her?"

"It's a good while now."

"Perhaps your sister won't want that particular home any more than you when you two meet again." Then, seeming not to notice the shade on her companion's face: "I promised my children they should sing for you. Do you mind? Will your friend come in, too?" And, looking from the door after the Colonel and the Father as they turned to rejoin them: "He is odd, that big friend of yours," she said--quite like a human being, as the Boy thought instantly.

"He's not odd, I assure you."

"He called me 'madam.'" She spoke with a charming piqued childishness.

"You see, he didn't know your name. What is your name?"

"Sister Winifred."

"But your real name?" he said, with the American's insistence on his own point of view.

"That is my only name," she answered with dignity, and led the way back into the schoolroom. Another, older, nun was there, and when the others rejoined them they made the girls sing.

"Now we have shown you enough," said Father Richmond, rising; "boasted to you enough of the very little we are able to accomplish here. We must save something for to-morrow."

"Ah, to-morrow we take to the trail again," said the Colonel, and added his "Good-bye, madam."

Sister Winifred, seeing he expected it, gave him her hand.

"Good-bye, and thank you for coming."

"For your poor," he said shyly, as he turned away and left a gift in her palm.

"Thank you for showing us all this," the Boy said, lingering, but not daring to shake hands. "It--it seems very wonderful. I had no idea a mission meant all this."

"Oh, it means more--more than anything you can _see_."

"Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

In the early evening the reception-room was invaded by the lads' school for their usual Sunday night entertainment. Very proudly these boys and young men sang their glees and choruses, played the fiddle, recited, even danced.

"Pity Mac isn't here!"

"Awful pity. Sunday, too."

Brother Etienne sang some French military songs, and it came out that he had served in the French army. Father Roget sang, also in French, explaining himself with a humourous skill in pantomime that set the room in a roar.

"Well," said the Colonel when he stood up to say good-night, "I haven't enjoyed an evening so much for years."

"It is very early still," said Father Brachet, wrinkling up his face in a smile.

"Ah, but we have to make such an early start."

The Colonel went up to bed, leaving the Boy to go to Father Richmond's room to look at his Grammar of the Indian language.

The instant the door was shut, the priest set down the lamp, and laid his hands on the young man's shoulders.

"My son, you must not go on this mad journey."

"I must, you know."

"You must _not_. Sit there." He pushed him into a chair. "Let me tell you. I do not speak as the ignorant. I have in my day travelled many hundreds of miles on the ice; but I've done it in the season when the trail's at its best, with dogs, my son, and with tried native servants."

"I know it is pleasanter that way, but--"

"Pleasanter? It is the way to keep alive."

"But the Indians travel with hand-sleds."

"For short distances, yes, and they are inured to the climate. You? You know nothing of what lies before you."

"But we'll find out as other people have." The Boy smiled confidently.

"I assure you, my son, it is madness, this thing you are trying to do. The chances of either of you coming out alive, are one in fifty. In fifty, did I say? In five hundred."

"I don't think so, Father. We don't mean to travel when--"

"But you'll have to travel. To stay in such places as you'll find yourself in will be to starve. Or if by any miracle you escape the worst effects of cold and hunger, you'll get caught in the ice in the spring break-up, and go down to destruction on a floe. You've no conception what it's like. If you were six weeks earlier, or six weeks later, I would hold my peace."

The Boy looked at the priest and then away. _Was_ it going to be so bad? Would they leave their bones on the ice? Would they go washing by the mission in the great spring flood, that all men spoke of with the same grave look? He had a sudden vision of the torrent as it would be in June. Among the whirling ice-masses that swept by--two bodies, swollen, unrecognisable. One gigantic, one dressed gaily in chaparejos. And neither would lift his head, but, like men bent grimly upon some great errand, they would hurry on, past the tall white cross with never a sign--on, on to the sea.

"Be persuaded, my son."

Dimly the Boy knew he was even now borne along upon a current equally irresistible, this one setting northward, as that other back to the south. He found himself shaking his head under the Jesuit's remonstrant eyes.

"We've lost so much time already. We couldn't possibly turn back--now."

"Then here's my Grammar." With an almost comic change of tone and manner the priest turned to the table where the lamp stood, among piles of neatly tied-up and docketed papers.

He undid one of the packets, with an ear on the sudden sounds outside in the passage.

"Brother Paul's got it in the schoolhouse."

Brother Paul! He hadn't been at the entertainment, and no one seemed to have missed him.

"How did Sister Winifred know?" asked another voice.

"Old Maria told her."

Father Richmond got up and opened the door.

"What is it?"

"It's a new-born Indian baby." The Father looked down as if it might be on the threshold. "Brother Paul found it below at the village all done up ready to be abandoned."

"Tell Sister Winifred I'll see about it in the morning."

"She says--pardon me, Father--she says that is like a man. If I do not bring the little Indian in twenty minutes she will come herself and get it."

Father Richmond laughed.

"Good-night, my son"; and he went downstairs with the others.

* * * * *

"Colonel, you asleep?" the Boy asked softly.

"No."

He struggled in silence with his mucklucks. Presently, "Isn't it frightfully strange," he mused aloud. "Doesn't it pull a fella up by the roots, somehow, to see Americans on this old track?"

The Colonel had the bedclothes drawn up to his eyes. Under the white quilt he made some undistinguishable sound, but he kept his eyes fastened on his pardner.

"Everything that we Americans have done, everything that we are, is achieved by the grace of goin' bang the other way." The Boy pulled off a muckluck and threw it half across the room. "And yet, and yet--"

He sat with one stocking-foot in his hand and stared at the candle.

"I wonder, Colonel, if it _satisfies_ anybody to be a hustler and a millionaire."

"Satisfies?" echoed the Colonel, pushing his chin over the bed-clothes. "Who expects to be satisfied?"

"Why, every man, woman and child on the top o' the earth; and it just strikes me I've never, personally, known anybody get there but these fellas at Holy Cross."

The Colonel pushed back the bedclothes a little farther with his chin.

"Haven't you got the gumption to see why it is this place and these men take such a hold on you? It's because you've eaten, slept, and lived for half a year in a space the size of this bedroom. We've got so used to narrowing life down, that the first result of a little larger outlook is to make us dizzy. Now, you hurry up and get to bed. You'll sleep it off."

* * * * *

The Boy woke at four o'clock, and after the match-light, by which he consulted his watch, had flickered out, he lay a long time staring at the dark.

Silence still reigned supreme, when at last he got up, washed and dressed, and went downstairs. An irresistible restlessness had seized hold of him.

He pulled on his furs, cautiously opened the door, and went out--down, over the crisp new crust, to the river and back in the dimness, past the Fathers' House to the settlement behind, then to the right towards the hillside. As he stumbled up the slope he came to a little burial-ground. Half hidden in the snow, white wooden crosses marked the graves. "And here I shall be buried," she had said--"here." He came down the hill and round by the Sisters' House.

That window! That was where a light had shone the evening they arrived, and a nun--Sister Winifred--had stood drawing the thick curtains, shutting out the world.

He thought, in the intense stillness, that he heard sounds from that upper room. Yes, surely an infant's cry.

A curious, heavy-hearted feeling came upon him, as he turned away, and went slowly back towards the other house.

He halted a moment under the Cross, and stared up at it. The door of the Fathers' House opened, and the Travelling Priest stood on the threshold. The Boy went over to him, nodding good-morning.

"So you are all ready--eager to go from us?"

"No; but, you see--"

"I see."

He held the door open, and the Boy went in.

"I don't believe the Colonel's awake yet," he said, as he took off his furs. "I'll just run up and rouse him."

"It is very early"--the priest laid his hand on the young man's arm--"and he will not sleep so well for many a night to come. It is an hour till breakfast."

Henry had lit the fire, and now left it roaring. The priest took a chair, and pushed one forward for his guest.

The Boy sat down, stretched his legs out straight towards the fire, and lifting his hands, clasped them behind his head. The priest read the homesick face like a book.

"Why are you up here?" Before there was time for reply he added: "Surely a young man like you could find, nearer home, many a gate ajar. And you must have had glimpses through of--things many and fair."

"Oh, yes, I've had glimpses of those things."

"Well----"

"What I wanted most I never saw."

"You wanted----"

"To be--_sure_."

"Ah! it is one of the results of agnosticism."

The Boy never saw the smile.

"I've said--and I was not lying--that I came away to shorten the business of fortune-making--to buy back an old place we love, my sister and I; but----"

"Which does she love best, the old place or the young brother?"

"Oh, she cares about me--no doubt o' that." He smiled the smile of faith.

"Has she ... an understanding heart?"

"The most I know."

"Then she would be glad to know you had found a home for the spirit. A home for the body, what does it matter?"

In the pause, Father Brachet opened the door, but seemed suddenly to remember some imperative call elsewhere. The Boy jumped up, but the Superior had vanished without even "Good-morning." The Boy sat down again.

"Of course," he went on, with that touch of pedantry so common in American youth, "the difficulty in my case is an intellectual one. I think I appreciate the splendid work you do, and I see as I never saw before----" He stopped.

"You strike your foot against the same stone of stumbling over which the Pharisees fell, when the man whom Jesus healed by the way replied to their questioning: 'Whether He be a sinner or no, I know not. One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see.'"

"I don't deny that the life here has been a revelation to me. I'm not talkin' about creeds (for I don't know much about them, and I don't think it's in me to care much); but so far as the work here is concerned--" He paused.

"We can take little credit for that; it is the outcome of our Order."

The Boy failed to catch the effect of the capital letter.

"Yes, it's just that--the order, the good government! A fella would be a bigot if he couldn't see that the system is as nearly perfect as a human institution can be."

"That has been said before of the Society of Jesus." But he spoke with the wise man's tolerance for the discoveries of the young. Still, it was not to discuss the merits of his Order that he had got up an hour before his time. "I understand, maybe better than yourself, something of the restlessness that drove you here."

"You understand?"

The priest nodded.

"You had the excuse of the old plantation and the sister--"

The Boy sat up suddenly, a little annoyed.

The priest kept on: "But you felt a great longing to make a breach in the high walls that shut you in. You wanted to fare away on some voyage of discovery. Wasn't that it?". He paused now in his turn, but the Boy looked straight before him, saying nothing. The priest leaned forward with a deeper gravity.

"It will be a fortunate expedition, this, my son, _if thou discover thyself_--and in time!" Still the Boy said nothing. The other resumed more lightly: "In America we combine our travels with business. But it is no new idea in the world that a young man should have his Wanderjahr before he finds what he wants, or even finds acquiescence. It did not need Wilhelm Meister to set the feet of youth on that trail; it did not need the Crusades. It's as old as the idea of a Golden Fleece or a Promised Land. It was the first man's first inkling of heaven."

The Boy pricked his ears. Wasn't this heresy?

"The old idea of the strenuous, to leave home and comfort and security, and go out to search for wisdom, or holiness, or happiness--whether it is gold or the San Grael, the instinct of Search is deep planted in the race. It is this that the handful of men who live in what they call 'the world'--it is this they forget. Every hour in the greater world outside, someone, somewhere, is starting out upon this journey. He may go only as far as Germany to study philosophy, or to the nearest mountain-top, and find there the thing he seeks; or he may go to the ends of the earth, and still not find it. He may travel in a Hindu gown or a Mongolian tunic, or he comes, like Father Brachet, out of his vineyards in 'the pleasant land of France,' or, like you, out of a country where all problems are to be solved by machinery. But my point is, _they come_! When all the other armies of the world are disbanded, that army, my son, will be still upon the march."

They were silent awhile, and still the young face gave no sign.

"To many," the Travelling Priest went on, "the impulse is a blind one or a shy one, shrinking from calling itself by the old names. But none the less this instinct for the Quest is still the gallant way of youth, confronted by a sense of the homelessness they cannot think will last."

"That's it, Father! That's it!" the Boy burst out. "Homelessness! To feel that is to feel something urging you----" He stopped, frowning.

"----urging you to take up your staff," said the priest.

They were silent a moment, and then the same musical voice tolled out the words like a low bell: "But with all your journeying, my son, you will come to no Continuing City."

"It's no use to say this to me. You see, I am----"

"I'll tell you why I say it." The priest laid a hand on his arm. "I see men going up and down all their lives upon this Quest. Once in a great while I see one for whom I think the journey may be shortened."

"How shortened?"

A heavy step on the stair, and the Boy seemed to wake from a dream.

"Good-morning," said the Colonel, coming in cheerily, rubbing his hands.

"I am very jealous!" He glanced at the Boy's furs on the floor. "You have been out, seeing the rest of the mission without me."

"No--no, we will show you the rest--as much as you care for, after breakfast."

"I'm afraid we oughtn't to delay--"

But they did--"for a few minutes while zey are putting a little fresh meat on your sled," as Father Brachet said. They went first to see the dogs fed. For they got breakfast when they were at home, those pampered mission dogs.

"And now we will show you our store-house, our caches--"

While Father Brachet looked in the bunch for the key he wanted, a native came by with a pail. He entered the low building on the left, leaving wide the door.

"What? No! Is it really? No, not _really!_" The Colonel was more excited than the Boy had ever seen him. Without the smallest ceremony he left the side of his obliging host, strode to the open door, and disappeared inside.

"What on earth's the matter?"

"I cannot tell. It is but our cow-house."

They followed, and, looking in at the door, the Boy saw a picture that for many a day painted itself on his memory. For inside the dim, straw-strewn place stood the big Kentuckian, with one arm round the cow, talking to her and rubbing her nose, while down his own a tear trickled.

"Hey? Well, yes! Just my view, Sukey. Yes, old girl, Alaska's a funny kind o' place for you and me to be in, isn't it? Hey? Ye-e-yes." And he stroked the cow and sniffed back the salt water, and called out, seeing the Boy, "Look! They've got a thoroughbred bull, too, an' a heifer. Lord, I haven't been in any place so like home for a coon's age! You go and look at the caches. I'll stay here while Sambo milks her."

"My name is Sebastian."

"Oh, all right; reckon you can milk her under that name, too."

When they came back, the Colonel was still there exchanging views about Alaska with Sukey, and with Sebastian about the bull. Sister Winifred came hurrying over the snow to the cow-house with a little tin pail in her hand.

"Ah, but you are slow, Sebastian!" she called out almost petulantly. "Good-morning," she said to the others, and with a quick clutch at a respectful and submissive demeanour, she added, half aside: "What do you think, Father Brachet? They forgot that baby because he is good and sleeps late. They drink up all the milk."

"Ah, there is very little now."

"Very little, Father," said Sebastian, returning to the task from which the Colonel's conversation had diverted him.

"I put aside some last night, and they used it. I send you to bring me only a little drop"--she was by Sebastian now, holding out the small pail, unmindful of the others, who were talking stock--"and you stay, and stay--"

"Give me your can." The Boy took it from her, and held it inside the big milk-pail, so that the thin stream struck it sharply.

"There; it is enough."

Her shawl had fallen. The Colonel gathered it up.

"I will carry the milk back for you," said the Boy, noticing how red and cold the slim hands were. "Your fingers will be frostbitten if you don't wrap them up." She pulled the old shawl closely round her, and set a brisk pace back to the Sisters' House.

"I must go carefully or I might slip, and if I spilt the milk--"

"Oh, you mustn't do that!"

She paused suddenly, and then went on, but more slowly than before. A glaze had formed on the hard-trodden path, and one must needs walk warily. Once she looked back with anxiety, and, seeing that the precious milk was being carried with due caution, her glance went gratefully to the Boy's face. He felt her eyes.

"I'm being careful," he laughed, a little embarrassed and not at first lifting his bent head. When, after an instant, he did so, he found the beautiful calm eyes full upon him. But no self-consciousness there. She turned away, gentle and reflective, and was walking on when some quick summons seemed to reach her. She stopped quite still again, as if seized suddenly by a detaining hand. Her own hands dropped straight at her sides, and the rusty shawl hung free. A second time she turned, the Boy thought to him again; but as he glanced up, wondering, he saw that the fixed yet serene look went past him like a homing-dove. A neglected, slighted feeling came over him. She wasn't thinking of him the least in the world, nor even of the milk he was at such pains to carry for her. What was she staring at? He turned his head over his right shoulder. Nothing. No one. As he came slowly on, he kept glancing at her. She, still with upturned face, stood there in the attitude of an obedient child receiving admonition. One cold little hand fluttered up to her silver cross. Ah! He turned again, understanding now the drift, if not the inner meaning, of that summons that had come.

"Your friend said something--" She nodded faintly, riverwards, towards the mission sign. "Did you feel like that about it--when you saw it first?"

"Oh--a--I'm not religious like the Colonel."

She smiled, and walked on.

At the door, as she took the milk, instead of "Thank you," "Wait a moment."

She was back again directly.

"You are going far beyond the mission ... so carry this with you. I hope it will guide you as it guides us."

On his way back to the Fathers' House, he kept looking at what Sister Winifred had given him--a Latin cross of silver scarce three inches long. At the intersection of the arms it bore a chased lozenge on which was a mitre; above it, the word "Alaska," and beneath, the crossed keys of St. Peter and the letters, "P.T.R."

As he came near to where the Colonel and his hosts were, he slipped the cross into his pocket. His fingers encountered Muckluck's medal. Upon some wholly involuntary impulse, he withdrew Sister Winifred's gift, and transferred it to another pocket. But he laughed to himself. "Both sort o' charms, after all." And again he looked at the big cross and the heaven above it, and down at the domain of the Inua, the jealous god of the Yukon.

Twenty minutes later the two travellers were saying good-bye to the men of Holy Cross, and making their surprised and delighted acknowledgments for the brand-new canvas cover they found upon the Colonel's new sled.

"Oh, it is not we," said Father Brachet; "it is made by ze Sisters. Zey shall know zat you were pleased."

Father Richmond held the Boy's hand a moment.

"I see you go, my son, but I shall see you return."

"No, Father, I shall hardly come this way again."

Father Brachet, smiling, watched them start up the long trail.

"I sink we shall meet again," were his last words.

"What does he mean?" asked the Colonel, a little high and mightily. "What plan has he got for a meeting?"

"Same plan as you've got, I s'pose. I believe you both call it 'Heaven.'"

The Holy Cross thermometer had registered twenty degrees below zero, but the keen wind blowing down the river made it seem more like forty below. When they stopped to lunch, they had to crouch down behind the sled to stand the cold, and the Boy found that his face and ears were badly frost-bitten. The Colonel discovered that the same thing had befallen the toes of his left foot. They rubbed the afflicted members, and tried not to let their thoughts stray backwards. The Jesuits had told them of an inhabited cabin twenty-three miles up the river, and they tried to fix their minds on that. In a desultory way, when the wind allowed it, they spoke of Minóok, and of odds and ends they'd heard about the trail. They spoke of the Big Chimney Cabin, and of how at Anvik they would have their last shave. The one subject neither seemed anxious to mention was Holy Cross. It was a little "marked," the Colonel felt; but he wasn't going to say the first word, since he meant to say the last.

About five o'clock the gale went down, but it came on to snow. At seven the Colonel said decidedly: "We can't make that cabin to-night."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm not going any further, with this foot--" He threw down the sled-rope, and limped after wood for the fire.

The Boy tilted the sled up by an ice-hummock, and spread the new canvas so that it gave some scant shelter from the snow. Luckily, for once, the wind how grown quite lamb-like--for the Yukon. It would be thought a good stiff breeze almost anywhere else.

Directly they had swallowed supper the Colonel remarked: "I feel as ready for my bed as I did Saturday night."

Ah! Saturday night--that was different. They looked at each other with the same thought.

"Well, that bed at Holy Cross isn't any whiter than this," laughed the Boy.

But the Colonel was not to be deceived by this light and airy reference. His own unwilling sentiments were a guide to the Boy's, and he felt it incumbent upon him to restore the Holy Cross incident to its proper proportions. Those last words of Father Brachet's bothered him. Had they been "gettin' at" the Boy?

"You think all that mission business mighty wonderful--just because you run across it in Alaska."

"And isn't it wonderful at all?"

The Boy spoke dreamily, and, from force of old habit, held out his mittened hands to the unavailing fire.

The Colonel gave a prefatory grunt of depreciation, but he was pulling his blankets out from under the stuff on the sled.

The Boy turned his head, and watched him with a little smile. "I'll admit that I always _used_ to think the Jesuits were a shady lot--"

"So they are--most of 'em."

"Well, I don't know about 'most of 'em.' You and Mac used to talk a lot about the 'motives' of the few I do know. But as far as I can see, every creature who comes up to this country comes to take something out of it--except those Holy Cross fellas. They came to bring something."

The Colonel had got the blankets out now, but where was the rubber sheet? He wouldn't sleep on it in this weather, again, for a kingdom, but when the thaws came, if those explorer fellas were right--

In his sense of irritation at a conscientious duty to perform and no clear notion of how to discharge it, he made believe it was the difficulty in finding the rubber sheet he didn't want that made him out of sorts.

"It's bitter work, anyhow, this making beds with your fingers stiff and raw," he said.

"Is it?"

Dignity looked at Impudence sitting in the shelter, smiling.

"Humph! Just try it," growled the Colonel.

"I s'pose the man over the fire cookin' supper does _look_ better off than the 'pore pardner' cuttin' down trees and makin' beds in the snow. But he isn't."

"Oh, isn't he?" It was all right, but the Big Chimney boss felt he had chosen the lion's share of the work in electing to be woodman; still, it wasn't _that_ that troubled him. Now, what was it he had been going to say about the Jesuits? Something very telling.

"If you mean that you'd rather go back to the cookin'," the Boy was saying, "_I'm_ agreeable."

"Well, you start in to-morrow, and see if you're so agreeable."

"All right. I think I dote on one job just about as much as I do on t'other."

But still the Colonel frowned. He couldn't remember that excellent thing he had been going to say about Romanists. But he sniffed derisively, and flung over his shoulder:

"To hear you goin' on, anybody'd think the Jesuits were the only Christians. As if there weren't others, who--"

"Oh, yes, Christians with gold shovels and Winchester rifles. I know 'em. But if gold hadn't been found, how many of the army that's invaded the North--how many would be here, if it hadn't been for the gold? But all this Holy Cross business would be goin' on just the same, as it has done for years and years."

With a mighty tug the Colonel dragged out the rubber blanket, flung it down on the snow, and squared himself, back to the fire, to make short work of such views.

"I'd no notion you were such a sucker. You can bet," he said darkly, "those fellas aren't making a bad thing out of that 'Holy Cross business,' as you call it."

"I didn't mean business in that sense."

"What else could they do if they didn't do this?"

"Ask the same of any parson."

But the Colonel didn't care to.

"I suppose," he said severely, "you could even make a hero out of that hang-dog Brother Etienne."

"No, but he _could_ do something else, for he's served in the French army."

"Then there's that mad Brother Paul. What good would he be at anything else?"

"Well, I don't know."

"Brachet and Wills are decent enough men, but where else would they have the power and the freedom they have at Holy Cross? Why, they live there like feudal barons."

"Father Richmond could have done anything he chose."

"Ah, Father Richmond--" The Colonel shut his mouth suddenly, turned about, and proceeded to crawl under his blankets, feet to the fire.

"Well?"

No answer.

"Well?" insisted the Boy.

"Oh, Father Richmond must have seen a ghost."

"_What!_"

"Take my word for it. _He_ got frightened somehow. A man like Father Richmond has to be scared into a cassock."

The Boy's sudden laughter deepened the Colonel's own impression that the instance chosen had not been fortunate. One man of courage knows another man of courage when he sees him, and the Colonel knew he had damned his own argument.

"Wouldn't care for the job myself," the Boy was saying.

"What job?"

"Scarin' Father Richmond."

The Boy sat watching the slow wet snow-flakes fall and die in the fire. His clothes were pretty damp, but he was warm after a chilly fashion, as warmth goes on the trail.

The Colonel suddenly put his head out from under the marmot-skin to say discontentedly, "What you sittin' up for?"

"Oh ... for instance!" But aside from the pertness of the answer, already it was dimly recognised as an offence for one to stay up longer than the other.

"Can't think how it is," the Colonel growled, "that you don't see that their principle is wrong. Through and through mediaeval, through and through despotic. They make a virtue of weakness, a fetich of vested authority. And it isn't American authority, either."

The Boy waited for him to quiet down. "What's the first rule," demanded the Colonel, half sitting up, "of the most powerful Catholic Order? Blind obedience to an old gentleman over in Italy."

"I said last night, you know," the Boy put in quite meekly, "that it all seemed very un-American."

"Huh! Glad you can see that much." The Colonel drove his huge fist at the provision-bag, as though to beat the stiffnecked beans into a feathery yielding. "Blind submission don't come easy to most Americans. The Great Republic was built upon revolt;" and he pulled the covers over his head.

"I know, I know. We jaw an awful lot about freedom and about what's American. There's plenty o' free speech in America and plenty o' machinery, but there's a great deal o' human nature, too, I guess." The Boy looked out of the corner of his eye at the blanketed back of his big friend. "And maybe there'll always be some people who--who think there's something in the New Testament notion o' sacrifice and service."

The Colonel rolled like an angry leviathan, and came to the surface to blow. But the Boy dashed on, with a fearful joy in his own temerity. "The difference between us, Colonel, is that I'm an unbeliever, and I know it, and you're a cantankerous old heathen, and you _don't_ know it." The Colonel sat suddenly bolt upright. "Needn't look at me like that. You're as bad as anybody--rather worse. Why are you _here?_ Dazzled and lured by the great gold craze. An' you're not even poor. You want _more_ gold. You've got a home to stay in; but you weren't satisfied, not even in the fat lands down below."

"Well," said the Colonel solemnly, blinking at the fire, "I hope I'm a Christian, but as to bein' satisfied--"

"Church of England can't manage it, hey?"

"Church of England's got nothing to do with it. It's a question o' character. Satisfied! We're little enough, God knows, but we're too big for that."

The Boy stood up, back to the fire, eyes on the hilltops whitening in the starlight.

"Perhaps--not--all of us."

"Yes, sah, all of us." The Colonel lifted his head with a fierce look of most un-Christian pride. Behind him the hills, leaving the struggling little wood far down the slope, went up and up into dimness, reaching to the near-by stars, and looking down to the far-off camp fire by the great ice-river's edge.

"Yes, sah," the Colonel thundered again, "all that have got good fightin' blood in 'em, like you and me. 'Tisn't as if we came of any worn-out, frightened, servile old stock. You and I belong to the free-livin', hard-ridin', straight-shootin' Southerners. The people before us fought bears, and fought Indians, and beat the British, and when there wasn't anything else left to beat, turned round and began to beat one another. It was the one battle we found didn't pay. We finished that job up in '65, and since then we've been lookin' round for something else to beat. We've got down now to beatin' records, and foreign markets, and breedin' prize bulls; but we don't breed cowards--yet; and we ain't lookin' round for any asylums. The Catholic Church is an asylum. It's for people who never had any nerve, or who have lost it."

The Colonel turned about, wagged his head defiantly at the icy hills and the night, and in the after-stillness fell sound asleep in the snow.

“One work. Many languages. One reading experience.”