at, with his open glassy eyes and his distorted face, and the
moonlight gleaming on his grinning teeth. The Missioner shuddered.

"I can't guess," he whispered, as if speaking to Tavish. "I can't
guess--quite--what made you do it, Tavish. But you haven't died without
telling me. I know it. It's there--in your pocket."

He listened again, and his lips moved. He bent over him, on one knee,
and averted his eyes as he searched the pockets of Tavish's heavy coat.
Against the dead man's breast he found it, neatly folded, about the size
of foolscap paper--several pages of it, he judged, by the thickness of
the packet. It was tied with fine threads of _babiche_, and in the
moonlight he could make out quite distinctly the words, "For Father
Roland, God's Lake--Personal." Tavish, after all, had not made himself
the victim of sudden fright, of a momentary madness. He had planned the
affair in a quite business-like way. Premeditated it with considerable
precision, in fact, and yet in the end he had died with that stare of
horror and madness in his face. Father Roland spread the blanket over
him again after he had placed the packet in his own coat. He knew where
Tavish's pick and shovel were hanging at the back of the cabin and he
brought these tools and placed them beside the body. After that he
rejoined David and the Cree.

They were still searching, and finding nothing.

"I have been looking through his clothes--out there," said the
Missioner, with a shuddering gesture which intimated that his task had
been as fruitless as their own. "We may as well bury him. A shallow
grave, close to where his body lies. I have placed a pick and a shovel
on the spot." He spoke to David: "Would you mind helping Mukoki to dig?
I would like to be alone for a little while. You understand. There are
things...."

"I understand, Father."

For the first time David felt something of the awe of this thing that
was death. He had forgotten, almost, that Father Roland was a servant of
God, so vitally human had he found him, so unlike all other men of his
calling he had ever known. But it was impressed upon him now, as he
followed Mukoki. Father Roland wanted to be alone. Perhaps to pray. To
ask mercy for Tavish's soul. To plead for its guidance into the Great
Unknown. The thought quieted his own emotions, and as he began to dig in
the hard snow and frozen earth he tried to think of Tavish as a man, and
not as a monster.

In the cabin Father Roland wa