fines and heavy
imprisonments for anyone caught hauling Indian timber off the
Reserve, or hauling whiskey on to it. Then the Government rubbed
its fat palms together, settled itself in its easy chair, and
snored again.

I? Oh, I went on with my operations.

And at Christmas time Tom Barrett arrived on the scene. Not much of
an event, you'd say if you saw him, still less if you heard him.
According to himself, he knew everything and could do everything in
the known world; he was just twenty-two and as obnoxiously fresh a
thing as ever boasted itself before older men.

He was the old missionary's son and had come up from college at
Montreal to help his father preach salvation to the Indians on
Sundays, and to swagger around week-days in his brand new
clerical-cut coat and white tie.

He enjoyed what is called, I believe, "deacon's orders." They tell
me he was recently "priested," to use their straight English Church
term, and is now parson of a swell city church. Well! they can have
him. I'll never split on him, but I could tell them some things
about Tom Barrett that would soil his surplice--at least in my
opinion, but you never can be sure when even religious people will
make a hero out of a rogue.

The first time I ever saw him he came into "Jake's" one night,
quite late. We were knocked clean dumb. "Jake's" isn't the place
you would count on seeing a clerical-cut coat in.

It's not a thoroughly disreputable place, for Jake has a decent
enough Indian wife; but he happens also to have a cellar which has
a hard name for illicit-whiskey supplies, though never once has the
law, in its numerous and unannounced visits to the shanty, ever
succeeded in discovering barrel or bottle. I consider myself a
pretty smart man, but Jake is cleverer than I am.

When young Barrett came in that night, there was a clatter of hiding
cups. "Hello, boys," he said, and sat down wearily opposite me,
leaning his arms on the table between us like one utterly done out.

Jake, it seemed, had the distinction of knowing him; so he said
kind of friendly-like,

"Hello, parson--sick?"

"Sick? Sick nothing," said Barrett, "except sick to death of this
place. And don't 'parson' me! I'm 'parson' on Sundays; the rest of
the six days I'm Tom Barrett--Tom, if you like."

We were dead silent. For myself, I thought the fellow clean
crazy; but the next moment he had turned half around, and with a
quick, soft, coaxing movement, for all the world l