as the standing straw in an unreaped field in winter; but having become
like the hooded pine, that keepeth green in frost, and hath the bounding
blood in all its icy branches.

And whence they came and wherefore was as thus:

A French Canadian once lived in Lonely Valley. One day great fortune
came to him, because it was given him to discover the mine St. Gabriel.
And he said to the woman who loved him, "I will go with mules and much
gold, that I have hewn and washed and gathered, to a village in the East
where my father and my mother are. They are poor, but I will make them
rich; and then I will return to Lonely Valley, and a priest shall come
with me, and we will dwell here at Whiteface Mountain, where men are men
and not children." And the woman blessed him, and prayed for him, and
let him go.

He travelled far through passes of the mountains, and came at last where
new cities lay upon the plains, and where men were full of evil and of
lust of gold. And he was free of hand and light of heart; and at a place
called Diamond City false friends came about him, and gave him champagne
wine to drink, and struck him down and robbed him, leaving him for dead.

And he was found, and his wounds were all healed: all save one, and that
was in the brain. Men called him mad.

He wandered through the land, preaching to men to drink no wine, and
to shun the sight of gold. And they laughed at him, and called him Pere
Champagne.

But one day much gold was found at a place called Reef o' Angel; and
jointly with the gold came a plague which scars the face and rots the
body; and Indians died by hundreds and white men by scores; and Pere
Champagne, of all who were not stricken down, feared nothing, and did
not flee, but went among the sick and dying, and did those deeds which
gold cannot buy, and prayed those prayers which were never sold. And who
can count how high the prayers of the feckless go!

When none was found to bury the dead, he gave them place himself beneath
the prairie earth,--consecrated only by the tears of a fool,--and for
extreme unction he had but this: "God be merciful to me, a sinner!"

Now it happily chanced that Pierre and Shon McGann, who travelled
westward, came upon this desperate battle-field, and saw how Pere
Champagne dared the elements of scourge and death; and they paused and
laboured with him--to save where saving was granted of Heaven, and to
bury when the Reaper reaped and would not stay his hand. A