relief the Missioner
snatched it up.

"I thought I had lost my key," he laughed, a bit nervously; then he
added, with a deep breath: "It's snowing to-night. A heavy snow, and
there will be good sledging for a few days. God knows I don't want you
to leave me, but if it must be--we should take advantage of this snow.
It will be the last. Mukoki and I will go with you as far as the
Reindeer Lake country, two hundred miles northwest. David--_must_ you
go?"

It seemed to David that two tiny fists were pounding against his breast,
where the picture lay.

"Yes, I must go," he said. "I have quite made up my mind to that. I must
go."

CHAPTER XV

Ten days after that night when he had gone into the mystery-room at the
Chateau, David and Father Roland clasped hands in a final farewell at
White Porcupine House, on the Cochrane River, 270 miles from God's Lake.
It was something more than a hand-shake. The Missioner made no effort to
speak in these last moments. His team was ready for the return drive and
he had drawn his travelling hood close about his face. In his own heart
he believed that David would never return. He would go back to
civilization, probably next autumn, and in time he would forget. As he
said, on their last day before reaching the Cochrane, David's going was
like taking a part of his heart away. He blinked now, as he dropped
David's hand--blinked and turned his eyes. And David's voice had an odd
break in it. He knew what the Missioner was thinking.

"I'll come back, _mon Pere_," he called after him, as Father Roland
broke away and went toward Mukoki and the dogs. "I'll come back next
year!"

Father Roland did not look back until they were started. Then he turned
and waved a mittened hand. Mukoki heard the sob in his throat. David
tried to call a last word to him, but his voice choked. He, too, waved a
hand. He had not known that there were friendships like this between
men, and as the Missioner trailed steadily away from him, growing
smaller and smaller against the dark rim of the distant forest, he felt
a sudden fear and a great loneliness--a fear that, in spite of himself,
they would not meet again, and the loneliness that comes to a man when
he sees a world widening between himself and the one friend he has on
earth. His one friend. The man who had saved him from himself, who had
pointed out the way for him, who had made him fight. More than a friend;
a father. He did not stop the broken sound