sign of the cross; for his memory was with a dark-eyed, soft-cheeked
habitant girl of the parish of Saint Gabrielle, whom he had left behind
seven years before, and had never seen since. Word had come from the
parish priest that she was dying, and though he wrote back in his homely
patois of his grief, and begged that the good father would write again,
no word had ever come. He thought of her now as one for whom the candles
had been lighted and masses had been said.

But Jeff Hyde's eyes were bright, and suffering as he was, the heart in
him was brave and hopeful. He was thinking of a glorious Christmas Day
upon the Madawaska River three years agone; of Adam Henry, the blind
fiddler; of bright, warm-hearted Pattie Chown, the belle of the ball, and
the long drive home in the frosty night.

Late Carscallen was thinking of a brother whom he had heard preach his
first sermon in Edinburgh twenty years before. And Late Carscallen, slow
of speech and thought, had been full of pride and love of that brilliant
brother. In the natural course of things, they had drifted apart, the
slow and uncouth one to make his home at last in the Far North, and to be
this night on his way to the Barren Grounds. But as he stood with the cup
to his lips he recalled the words of a newspaper paragraph of a few
months before. It stated that "the Reverend James Carscallen, D.D.,
preached before Her Majesty on Whitsunday, and had the honour of lunching
with Her Majesty afterwards." Remembering that, Late Carscallen rubbed
his left hand joyfully against his blanketed leg and drank.

Cloud-in-the-Sky's thoughts were with the present, and his "Ugh!" of
approval was one of the senses purely. Instead of drinking to absent
friends he looked at the sub-factor and said: "How!" He drank to the
subfactor.