young, or in tigers as they sport upon the sands of the desert. This boy
had seen his father shoot a splendid moose, and as it lay dying, drop
down and kiss it in the neck for sheer love of its handsomeness. Death is
no insult. It is the law of the primitive world--war, and love in war.

They sat there for a long time, not speaking, each busy in his own way:
the boy full of imaginings, strange, half-heathen, half-angelic feelings;
the man roaming in that savage, romantic, superstitious atmosphere which
belongs to the north, and to the north alone. At last the boy lay back on
the pillow, his finger still in the bullet-hole of the pelt. His eyes
closed, and he seemed about to fall asleep, but presently looked up and
whispered: "I haven't said my prayers, have I?"

The father shook his head in a sort of rude confusion.

"I can pray out loud if I want to, can't I?"

"Of course, Dominique." The man shrank a little.

"I forget a good many times, but I know one all right, for I said it when
the bird was singing. It isn't one out of the book Father Corraine sent
mother by Pretty Pierre; it's one she taught me out of her own head.
P'r'aps I'd better say it."

"P'r'aps, if you want to." The voice was husky. The boy began:

"O bon Jesu, who died to save us from our sins, and to lead us to Thy
country, where there is no cold, nor hunger, nor thirst, and where no one
is afraid, listen to Thy child. . . . When the great winds and rains come
down from the hills, do not let the floods drown us, nor the woods cover