"What else wad it be this time o' year?" Dougal rumbled. "Tell us
somethin' we dinna ken. Wha's yon cam' wi' ye?"

"Man, but the heat makes ye crabbed," MacDonald returned with naïve
candor. "Yon's a meenister."

"Bagosh, yes," Breyette chuckled. "Dat ees de man of God w'at you see.
He's com' for save soul hon' de Eenjun hon' Lone Moose. Bagosh, we're
have som' fon weet heem dees treep."

"He's a loon," MacDonald paused with a forefinger in the bowl of his
pipe. "He doesna know a moccasin from a snowshoe, scarce. I'd like tae
be aboot when 'tis forty below--an' gettin' colder. I'm thinkin' he'd
relish a taste o' hell-fire then, for a change--eh, Mike?"

The two of them went off into a fit of silent laughter, for the abysmal
ignorance of Wesley Thompson concerning practical things, his awkward
length of body, his student's pallor that the Athabasca sun had played
such havoc with, his blue eyes that looked so often with trepidation or
amazement on the commonplaces of their world, his general incapacity and
blind belief that an all-wise Providence would personally intervene to
make things go right when they went wrong, had not struck these two
hardy children of the solitudes as other than a side-splitting joke.

"He rises i' the mornin'," MacDonald continued, "win' a word frae the
Book aboot the Lord providin', an' he'd starve if nabody was by t' cook
his meal. He canna build a fire wi'oot scorchin' his fingers. He lays
hold o' a paddle like a three months' babby. He bids ye pit yer trust i'
the Lord, an' himself rises up wi' a start every time a wolf raises the