good woman, and--well, she died.

"It was bitter cold the night of my return, and I had been away months,
and the dogs were limping sore when I came to the fort. The Indians and
breeds looked on me in silence, and I felt the fear of I knew not what,
but I said nothing till the dogs were fed and I had eaten as a man with
work before him should. Then I spoke up, demanding the word, and they
shrank from me, afraid of my anger and what I should do; but the story
came out, the pitiful story, word for word and act for act, and they
marvelled that I should be so quiet.

"When they had done I went to the Factor's house, calmer than now in the
telling of it. He had been afraid and called upon the breeds to help
him; but they were not pleased with the deed, and had left him to lie on
the bed he had made. So he had fled to the house of the priest. Thither
I followed. But when I was come to that place, the priest stood in my
way, and spoke soft words, and said a man in anger should go neither to
the right nor left, but straight to God. I asked by the right of a
father's wrath that he give me past, but he said only over his body, and
besought with me to pray. Look you, it was the church, always the
church; for I passed over his body and sent the Factor to meet my woman-
child before his god, which is a bad god, and the god of the white men.

"Then was there hue and cry, for word was sent to the station below, and
I came away. Through the Land of the Great Slave, down the Valley of the
Mackenzie to the never-opening ice, over the White Rockies, past the
Great Curve of the Yukon, even to this place did I come. And from that
day to this, yours is the first face of my father's people I have looked
upon. May it be the last! These people, which are my people, are a
simple folk, and I have been raised to honor among them. My word is