ad grown upon David that to see Tavish had become his one great
mission in the North. What adventure lay beyond that meeting he did not
surmise. All his thoughts had centred in the single desire to let Tavish
look upon the picture. To-night, after the Missioner had joined Mukoki
in the silk tent buried warmly under the mass of cut balsam, he sat a
little longer beside the fire, and asked himself questions which he had
not thought of before. He would see Tavish. He would show him the
picture. And--what then? Would that be the end of it? He felt, for a
moment, uncomfortable. Beyond Tavish there was a disturbing and
unanswerable problem. The Girl, if she still lived, was a thousand miles
from where he was sitting at this moment; to reach her, with that
distance of mountain and forest between them, would be like travelling
to the end of the world. It was the first time there had risen in his
mind a definite thought of going to her--if she were alive. It startled
him. It was like a shock. Go to her? Why? He drew forth the picture from
his coat pocket and stared at the wonder-face of the Girl in the light
of the blazing logs. _Why?_ His heart trembled. He lifted his eyes to
the grayish film of smoke rising between him and the balsam-covered
tent, and slowly he saw another face take form, framed in that
wraith-like mist of smoke--the face of a golden goddess, laughing at
him, taunting him. _Laughing--laughing_!... He forced his gaze from it
with a shudder. Again he looked at the picture of the Girl in his hand.
"_She knows. She understands. She comforts me._" He whispered the words.
They were like a breath rising out of his soul. He replaced the picture
in his pocket, and for a moment held it close against his breast.

The next day, as the swift-thickening gloom of northern night was
descending about them again, the Missioner halted his team on the crest
of a boulder-strewn ridge, and pointing down into the murky plain at
their feet he said, with the satisfaction of one who has come to a
journey's end:

"There is Tavish's."

CHAPTER XI

They went down into the plain. David strained his eyes, but he could see
nothing where Father Roland had pointed except the purplish sea of
forest growing black in the fading twilight. Ahead of the team Mukoki
picked his way slowly and cautiously among the snow-hidden rocks, and
with the Missioner David flung his weight backward on the sledge to keep
it from running upon the dogs. I