for twenty years in Upper Canada; and of some of the
Indians, the Ojibways of Moose Island, I have heard a great deal;
perhaps you know them?"

The priest's eye brightened, but next moment he sighed.

"The very place!" he said. "Unhappy people! But I am forgetting that
you, madame, are not likely to share my feelings on the subject."

"I do not know," Mrs. Costello answered, "that we should be wholly
disagreed. I have heard, I may almost say I know myself, much of your
mission there."

"Is it possible? Can any good remain still?"

"One of your old pupils died lately, and in his last hours he remembered
nothing so well as your teaching."

Her voice shook; this sudden mention of her husband, voluntary as it
was, agitated her strongly. Father Paul saw it and wondered, but
appeared to see nothing.

"Poor boys! You console me, madame, for many sad thoughts. I was a young
man then, and, as you see, I am now a very old one, but I have known few
more sorrowful days than the one when I left Moose Island."

"Yet it must have been a hard and wearisome life?"

"Hard?--Yes--but not wearisome. We were ready to bear the hardness as
long as we hoped to see the fruit of our labours. I thought there had
been no fruit, or very little; but you prove to me that I was too
faithless."

Mrs. Costello remained a moment silent. She was much inclined to trust
her guest with that part of her story which referred to Christian--no
doubt he was in the habit of keeping stranger secrets than hers.

While she hesitated he spoke again.

"But the whole face of the country must have changed since I knew it.
Did you live in that neighbourhood?"

"For several years--all the first years of my married life, I lived on
Moose Island itself, and my daughter--come to me a moment, Lucia,--was
born there."

She took Lucia's hand and drew her forward. The remaining daylight fell
full upon her dark hair and showed the striking outlines of her face and
graceful head.

Father Paul looked in amazement--looked from the daughter to the mother,
and the mother to the daughter, not knowing what to think or say.

Mrs. Costello relieved his embarrassment.

"My marriage was a strange one," she said. "The old pupil of whom I
spoke to you just now, was my husband."

"Your husband, madame? Do I understand you? Mademoiselle's father then
was--"

"An Indian."

He remained dumb with astonishment, not willing to give vent to the
exclamations of surprise and