d opened it and the locket itself was in his hand. And
then, his breath coming in a sudden, hissing spurt between his teeth, he
was looking upon the face of the woman. Again in Cree he spoke to
Mukoki, asking him for his knife. The Indian drew it from his sheath and
watched in silence while Father Roland accomplished his work of
destruction. The Missioner's teeth were set tight. There was a strange
gleam of fire in his eyes. An unspoken malediction rose out of his soul.
The work was done! He wanted to hurl the yellow trinket, shaped so
sacrilegiously in the image of a heart, as far as he could fling it into
the forest. It seemed to burn his fingers, and he held for it a personal
hatred. But it was for Marie! Marie would prize it, and Marie would
purify it. Against her breast, where beat a heart of his beloved
Northland, it would cease to be a polluted thing. This was his thought
as he replaced it in the casket and retraced his steps to the fox pens.

Thoreau was tossing fish into the last pen when Father Roland came up.
David was not with him. In answer to the Missioner's inquiry he nodded
toward the thicker growth of the forest where as yet his axe had not
scarred the trees.

"He said that he would walk a little distance into the timber."

Father Roland muttered something that Thoreau did not catch, and then, a
sudden brightness lighting up his eyes:

"I am going to leave you to-day."

"To-day, _mon Pere_!" Thoreau made a muffled exclamation of
astonishment. "To-day? And it is fairly well along toward noon!"

"He cannot travel far." The Missioner nodded in the direction of the
unthinned timber. "It will give us four hours, between noon and dark. He
is soft. You understand? We will make as far as the old trapping shack
you abandoned two winters ago over on Moose Creek. It is only eight
miles, but it will be a bit of hardening for him. And, besides...."

He was silent for a moment, as if turning a matter over again in his own
mind.

"I want to get him away."

He turned a searching, quietly analytic gaze upon Thoreau to see whether
the Frenchman would understand without further explanation.

The fox breeder picked up the empty gunny sack.

"We will begin to pack the sledge, _mon Pere_. There must be a good
hundred pounds to the dog."

As they turned back to the cabin Father Roland cast a look over his
shoulder to see whether David was returning.

Three or four hundred yards in the forest David stood in a mu