For
several minutes they stood gazing back at him. When they were ready to
go on David for a third time that day put on his snow shoes. His task
seemed less difficult. He was getting the "swing" of the shoes, and his
breath came more easily. At the end of half an hour Father Roland halted
the team again to give him a "winding" spell. Baree had come nearer. He
was not more than a quarter of a mile behind. It was three o'clock when
they struck off the lake into the edge of the forest to the northwest.
The sun had grown cold and pale. The snow crystals no longer sparkled so
furiously. In the forest there was gathering a gray, silent gloom. They
halted again in the edge of that gloom. The Missioner slipped off his
mittens and filled his pipe with fresh tobacco. The pipe fell from his
fingers and buried itself in the soft snow at his feet. As he bent down
for it Father Roland said quite audibly:
"_Damn!_"
He was smiling when he rose. David, also, was smiling.
"I was thinking," he said--as though the other had demanded an
explanation of his thoughts--"what a curious man of God you are, _mon
Pere_!"
The Little Missioner chuckled, and then he muttered, half to himself as
he lighted the tobacco, "True--very true.
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