word
as he turned and looked upon what Bucky Severn had done for the coming
of his bride. Father Brochet's hand touched the doctor's and it was
cold and trembling.

"How is he?" he asked.

"It is the bad malady," said Weyman softly. "The frost has touched his
lungs. One does not feel the effect of that until spring comes. Then--a
cough--and the lungs begin literally to slough away."

"You mean--"

"That there is no hope--absolutely none. He will die within two days."

As he spoke, the little priest straightened himself and lifted his
hands as if about to pronounce a benediction.

"Thank God!" he breathed. Then, as quickly, he caught himself. "No, I
don't mean that. God forgive me! But--it is best." Weyman stared
incredulously into his face.

"It is best," repeated the other, as gently as if speaking a prayer.
"How strangely the Creator sometimes works out His ends! I came
straight here from Split Lake. Marie La Corne died two weeks ago. It
was I who said the last prayer over her dead body!"

HIS FIRST PENITENT

In a white wilderness of moaning storm, in a wilderness of miles and
miles of black pine-trees, the Transcontinental Flier lay buried in the
snow. In the first darkness of the wild December night, engine and
tender had rushed on ahead to division headquarters, to let the line
know that the flier had given up the fight, and needed assistance. They
had been gone two hours, and whiter and whiter grew the brilliantly
lighted coaches in the drifts and winnows of the whistling storm. From
the black edges of the forest, prowling eyes might have looked upon
scores of human faces staring anxiously out into the blackness from the
windows of the coaches.

In those coaches it was growing steadily colder. Men were putting on
their overcoats, and women snuggled deeper in their furs. Over it all,
the tops of the black pine-trees moaned and whistled in sounds that
seemed filled both with menace and with savage laughter.

In the smoking-compartment of the Pullman sat five men, gathered in a
group. Of these, one was Forsythe, the timber agent; two were traveling
men; the fourth a passenger homeward bound from a holiday visit; and
the fifth was Father Charles. The priest's pale, serious face lit up in
surprise or laughter with the others, but his lips had not broken into
a story of their own. He was a little man, dressed in somber black, and
there was that about him which told his companions that within his