e for the asking--but she
makes it impossible to ask! I could not do it. Better try _la
Longue Traverse_ than take advantage of her pity--she'd surely get
into trouble. What wonderful eyes she has. She thinks I am a
brute--how she sobbed, as though her little heart had broken.
Well, it was the only way to destroy her interest in me. I had to
do it. Now she will despise me and forget me. It is better that
she should think me a brute than that I should be always haunted by
those pleading eyes." The door of the distant church house opened
and closed. He smiled bitterly. "To be sure, I haven't tried
that." he acknowledged. "Their teachings are singularly apropos to
my case--mercy, justice, humanity--yes, and love of man. I'll try
it. I'll call for help on the love of man, since I cannot on the
love of woman. The love of woman--ah----yes."

He set his feet reflectively toward the chapel.

Chapter Nine

After a moment he pushed open the door without ceremony, and
entered. He bent his brows, studying the Reverend Archibald Crane,
while the latter, looking up startled, turned pink.

He was a pink little man, anyway, the Reverend Archibald Crane, and
why, in the inscrutability of its wisdom, the Church had sent him
out to influence strong, grim men, the Church in its inscrutable
wisdom only knows. He wore at the moment a cambric English
boating-hat to protect his bald head from the draught, a full
clerical costume as far as the trousers, which were of lavender,
and a pair of beaded moccasins faced with red. His weak little
face was pink, and two tufts of side-whiskers were nearly so. A
heavy gold-headed cane stood at his hand. When he heard the door
open he exclaimed, before raising his head, "My, these first flies
of the season do bother me so!" and then looked startled.

"Good-evening," greeted Ned Trent, stopping squarely in the centre
of the room.

The clergyman spread his arms along the desk's edge in
embarrassment.

"Good-evening," he returned, reluctantly. "Is there anything I can
do for you?" The visitor puzzled him, but was dressed as a
_voyageur_. The Reverend Archibald immediately resolved to treat
him as such.

"I wish to introduce myself as Ned Trent," went on the Free Trader
with composure, "and I have broken in on your privacy this evening
only because I need your ministrations cruelly."

"I am rejoiced that in your difficulties you turn to the
consolations of the Church," r