His wife had gone he knew not where, his child was wasting to death, and
he had for his sorrows no inner consolation. He had ever had that touch
of mystical imagination inseparable from the far north, yet he had none
of that religious belief which swallowed up natural awe and turned it to
the refining of life, and to the advantage of a man's soul. Now it was
forced in upon him that his child was wiser than himself; wiser and
safer. His life had been spent in the wastes, with rough deeds and
rugged habits, and a youth of hardship, danger, and almost savage
endurance had given him a half-barbarian temperament, which could strike
an angry blow at one moment and fondle to death at the next.

When he married sweet Lucette Barbond his religion reached little
farther than a belief in the Scarlet Hunter of the Kimash Hills and
those voices that could be heard calling in the night, till their time
of sleep be past and they should rise and reconquer the north.

Not even Father Corraine, whose ways were like those of his Master,
could ever bring him to a more definite faith. His wife had at first
striven with him, mourning yet loving. Sometimes the savage in him had
broken out over the little creature, merely because barbaric tyranny was
in him--torture followed by the passionate kiss. But how was she
philosopher enough to understand the cause!

When she fled from their hut one bitter day, as he roared some wild
words at her, it was because her nerves had all been shaken from
threatened death by wild beasts, (of this he did not know) and his
violence drove her mad. She had run out of the house, and on, and on,
and on--and she had never come back. That was weeks ago, and there had
been no word nor sign of her since. The man was now busy with it all, in
a slow, cumbrous way. A nature more to be touched by things seen than by