"I have been preaching all my life," Pierre answered drily.

"The devil's games: cards and law-breaking; and you sneer at men who try
to bring lost sheep into the fold."

"The fold of the Church--yes, I understand all that," Pierre answered. "I
have heard you and the priests of my father's Church talk. Which is
right? But as for me, I am a missionary. Cards, law-breaking--these are
what I have done; but these are not what I have preached."

"What have you preached?" asked the other, walking on into the
fast-gathering night, beyond the Post and the Indian lodges, into the
wastes where frost and silence lived.

Pierre waved his hand towards space. "This," he said suggestively.

"What's this?" asked the other fretfully.

"The thing you feel round you here."

"I feel the cold," was the petulant reply.

"I feel the immense, the far off," said Pierre slowly.

The other did not understand as yet. "You've learned big words," he said
disdainfully.

"No; big things," rejoined Pierre sharply--"a few."

"Let me hear you preach them," half snarled Sherburne.