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.
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