s round, rugged, weather-reddened face
without the big Stetson. He looked younger and yet older; his face, as
David saw it there in the lampglow, had something in the ruddy glow and
deeply lined strength of it that was almost youthful. But his thick,
shaggy hair was very gray. The train had begun to move. He turned to the
window for a moment, and then looked at David.

"We are under way," he said. "Very soon I will be getting off."

David sat down.

"It is some distance beyond the divisional point ahead--this cabin where
you get off?" he asked.

"Yes, twenty or twenty-five miles. There is nothing but a cabin and two
or three log outbuildings there--where Thoreau, the Frenchman, has his
fox pens, as I told you. It is not a regular stop, but the train will
slow down to throw off my dunnage and give me an easy jump. My dogs and
Indian are with Thoreau."

"And from there--from Thoreau's--it is a long distance to the place you
call home?"

The Little Missioner rubbed his hands in a queer rasping way. The
movement of those rugged hands and the curious, chuckling laugh that
accompanied it, radiated a sort of cheer. They were expressions of more
than satisfaction. "It's a great many miles to my own cabin, but it's
home--all home--after I get into the forests. My cabin is at the lower
end of God's Lake, three hundred miles by dogs and sledge from
Thoreau's--three hundred miles as straight north as a _niskuk_ flies."

"A _niskuk_?" said David.

"Yes--a gray goose."

"Don't you have crows?"

"A few; but they're as crooked in flight as they are in morals. They're
scavengers, and they hang down pretty close to the line of rail--close
to civilization, where there's a lot of scavenging to be done, you
know."

For the second time that night David found a laugh on his lips.

"Then--you don't like civilization?"

"My heart is in the Northland," replied Father Roland, and David saw a
sudden change in the other's face, a dying out of the light in his eyes,
a tenseness that came and went like a flash at the corners of his mouth.
In that same moment he saw the Missioner's hand tighten, and the fingers
knot themselves curiously and then slowly relax.

One of these hands dropped on David's shoulder, and Father Roland became
the questioner.

"You have been thinking, since you left me a little while ago?" he
asked.

"Yes. I came back. But you were asleep."

"I haven't been asleep. I have been awake every minute. I thought