t the silent, smiling, dark-skinned,
cool-headed and cool-handed Rockwell stepped in, and won for himself the
gratitude of all--from Monseigneur Lourde, the beloved Catholic priest,
to Tekewani, the chief. This accident was followed by an epidemic.

That was at the time, also, when Fleda Druse returned from Winnipeg
where she had been at school for one memorable and terrible six months,
pining for her father, defying rules, and crying the night through for
"the open world," as she called it. So it was that, to her father's
dismay and joy in one, she had fled from school, leaving all her things
behind her; and had reached home with only the clothes on her back and a
few cents in her pocket.

Instantly on her return she had gone among the stricken people as
fearlessly as Rockwell had done, but chiefly among the women and
children; and it was said that the herbal medicine she administered
was marvellous in its effect--so much so that Rockwell asked for the
prescription, which she declined to give.

Thus it was that the French Canadian mothers with daughters of their
own, bright-eyed brunettes, ready for the man-market, regarded with
toleration the girl who took their children away for picnics down the
river or into the woods, and brought them back safe and sound at the end
of the day. Not that they failed to be shocked sometimes, when, on her
wild Indian pony, Fleda swept through Manitou like a wind and out into
the prairie, riding, as it were, to the end of the world. Try as they
would, these grateful mothers of Manitou, they could not get as near to
Fleda Druse as their children did, and they were vast distances from her
father.

"There, there, look at him," said old Madame Thibadeau to her neighbour
Christine Brisson--"look at him with his great grey-beard, and his eyes
like black fires, and that head of hair like a bundle of burnt flax! He
comes from the place no man ever saw, that's sure."

"Ah, surelee, men don't grow so tall in any Christian country,"
announced Christine Brisson, her head nodding sagely. "I've seen the
pictures in the books, and there's nobody so tall and that looks like
him--not anywhere since Adam."

"Nom de pipe, sometimes-trulee, sometimes, I look up there at where he
lives, and I think I see a thousand men on horses ride out of the woods
behind his house and down here to gobble us all up. That's the way I
feel. It's fancy, but I can't help that." Dame Thibadeau rested her
hands--on her h