at they were right; that if he stayed
where he could live an easy life, a fat and easy life he would lead; that
in a few years he would be good for nothing except to eat and sleep--no
more. One day, waking suddenly from a bad dream of himself so fat as to be
drawn about on a dray by monstrous fat oxen with rings through their
noses, led by monkeys, he began to wonder what he should do--the hardest
thing to do; for only the hardest life could possibly save him from
failure, and, in spite of all, he really did want to make something of his
life. He had been reading the story of Sir John Franklin's Arctic
expedition, and all at once it came home to him that the only thing for
him to do was to go to the Far North and stay there, coming back about
once every ten years to tell the people in the cities what was being done
in the wilds. Then there came the inspiration to write his poem on Sir
John Franklin, and he had done so, winning the college prize for poetry.
But no one had seen any change in him in those months; and, indeed, there
had been little or no change, for he had an equable and practical, though
imaginative, disposition, despite his avoirdupois, and his new purpose did
not stir him yet from his comfortable sloth.

And in all the journey west and north he had not been stirred greatly from
his ease of body, for the journey was not much harder than playing cricket
every day, and there were only the thrill of the beautiful air, the new
people, and the new scenes to rouse him. As yet there was no great
responsibility. He scarcely realized what his life must be until one
particular day.

Then Sleeping Beauty waked wide up, and from that day lost the name. Till
then he had looked and borne himself like any other traveller,
unrecognized as a parson or "mikonaree." He had not had prayers in camp
_en route_, he had not preached, he had held no meetings. He was as yet
William Rufus Holly, the cricketer, the laziest dreamer of a college
decade. His religion was simple and practical; he had never had any morbid
ideas; he had lived a healthy, natural, and honorable life, until he went
for a mikonaree, and, if he had no cant, he had not a clear idea of how
many-sided, how responsible, his life must be--until that one particular
day.

This is what happened then.

From Fort O'Call, an abandoned post of the Hudson's Bay Company on the
Peace River, nearly the whole tribe of the Athabasca Indians in
possession of the post now had