"I have long since decided that you marry
well; for instance, the Hudson's Bay factor's daughter."

Laurence broke into a fresh, rollicking laugh. "What, uncle," he
said, "little Ida McIntosh? Marry that little yellow-haired fluff
ball, that kitten, that pretty little dolly?"

"Stop," said Father Paul. Then with a low, soft persuasiveness, "She
is _white_, Laurence."

My lover started. "Why, uncle, what do you mean?" he faltered.

"Only this, my son: poor Esther comes of uncertain blood; would it
do for you--the missionary's nephew, and adopted son, you might
say--to marry the daughter of a pagan Indian? Her mother is
hopelessly uncivilized; her father has a dash of French
somewhere--half-breed, you know, my boy, half-breed." Then, with
still lower tone and half-shut, crafty eyes, he added: "The blood is
a bad, bad mixture, _you_ know that; you know, too, that I am very
fond of the girl, poor dear Esther. I have tried to separate her
from evil pagan influences; she is the daughter of the Church; I
want her to have no other parent; but you never can tell what lurks
in a caged animal that has once been wild. My whole heart is with
the Indian people, my son; my whole heart, my whole life, has been
devoted to bringing them to Christ, _but it is a different thing to
marry with one of them_."

His small old eyes were riveted on Laurence like a hawk's on a rat.
My heart lay like ice in my bosom.

Laurence, speechless and white, stared at him breathlessly.

"Go away somewhere," the old man was urging; "to Winnipeg, Toronto,
Montreal; forget her, then come back to Ida McIntosh. A union of the
Church and Hudson's Bay will mean great things, and may ultimately
result in my life's ambition, the civilization of this entire tribe,
that we have worked so long to bring to God."

I listened, sitting like one frozen. Could those words have been
uttered by my venerable teacher, by him whom I revered as I would
one of the saints in his own black book? Ah, there was no mistaking
it. My white father, my life-long friend who pretended to love me,
to care for my happiness, was urging the man I worshipped to forget
me, to marry with the factor's daughter--because of what? Of my red
skin; my good, old, honest pagan mother; my confiding French-Indian
father. In a second all the care, the hollow love he had given me
since my childhood, were as things that never existed. I hated that
old mission priest as I hated his white man's hell. I h