As Père Barthélemy turned out of the gusty, dusty street, where the wind had been tugging rudely at his old soutane, and into Mère Bazane’s yard, he stepped into peace. Smiling, he flicked the dust off his sleeve with delicate fingers, looking at the tubs under the apple-trees, at the little gray shanty, and at the sign over the door. It seemed to him that the tarnished letters were full of little, gaping mouths, ready to snap at a possible customer. Some penniless student had painted the sign for her, long ago; “La Blanchisseuse Dorée,” in a fat flourish of gold. “Long ago,” said Père Barthélemy, with something of a sigh, “when she was not called the White-foot for nothing.”

But there she was, toiling at her tubs, and Père Barthélemy knew she needed smiles from him, not sighs.

“The peace of God be upon you, Mère Bazane.”

“And upon you, mon père.” The little woman looked up from her reverie with a quick smile, and her eyes, in her small, weather-beaten face, were still as blue as wild flax. “It is a beautiful day, mon père.”

“Dusty and gusty in the streets.”

“Ah, the streets, my father! I am out of them here, and glad to be so. Sometimes a bird comes to the apple-trees, and when they are in leaf I look up among their boughs and think I am in my old home again. We had an orchard there.”

“A beautiful one, my friend?” Père Barthélemy’s keen, brown eyes were very soft.

“An orchard is always beautiful, my father.”

“That is true. And how is your good husband to-day?”

The accustomed mist of grief dimmed the blue eyes of the Golden Washerwoman. “Ah, my father, he is no better; he will never be better. Ah, the poor child, how he suffers! All last night I was rubbing him with oils. But I mind nothing, if I can keep my strength and get him all he needs. He is much younger than I.” Her little, knotted hands shook upon the side of the tub. “I weep in the night when I think of it. What if I should die first, and leave him uncared for?”

Something, that might have been admiration, rippled over the priest’s calm, brown face. “I am not old, Mère Bezane. Will you trust me? While I live I will never forget him.”

“Ah, mon père!” Her hands shook still more. “That is good, that is of a heavenly kindness. But no one can understand him but I, no one does him justice, no one can guess his sufferings. And he speaks to me with such affection! Only this morning, he said, ‘Hola! my little, old cabbage,’ he said, ‘make me some good soup.’ The brave heart! Will you not see him?”

“I have no time, and I must not hinder you when you are so busy.”

“Yes, I am busy, thank the saints. It is a lady’s dress, my father, and the work upon it is wonderful.” Her fingers sought the fine lace, wistfully. “But before it came to me it received, not a washing, but a massacre.”

That evening, Monsieur le Curé went to see his friend, the doctor.

Le Docteur Simon was hard at work among his hollyhocks when Père Barthélemy leaned over the gate. “Ha!” said he, pointing a trowel at his visitor. “I can see where you have been! You have been with our Blanchisseuse Dorée.”

“Yes,” said the curé, quietly, “and I have come to ask you—is there anything the matter with that villainous husband of hers?”

“I do not know,” said Simon, gruffly, making the earth fly, like a digging terrier.

“There were bruises on her arm again,” said Père Barthélemy, slowly. “I have thought much of that matter, my friend.”

“So have I.” The doctor spoke from a shower of flying earth. “And I will tell you this. The brute will die, if he dies at all, from eating, and lying still. Unless by the judgment of God. But that is your department.”

“Our poor little Golden Washerwoman! How long is she to endure?”

“Till her heart breaks. You have all influence. Why do you not have the brute removed?”

“I have thought much, Simon. And I have thought—I have guessed—that it would not be for her happiness.”

“Ha!” said the doctor, again, with a look at the curé. “Ha. This Love!”

“Just so, my friend. We cannot meddle with it.”

The doctor grunted among his hollyhocks. “Yes, this Love. I have seen many manifestations; many symptoms of it. The heroic symptom has never shown itself so plainly as in the case of our Blanchisseuse Dorée. Name of a name! If I were you, my dear, I should never be surprised to see a hale young angel or two helping her with the wringing, and half the powers of heaven on guard among her apple trees.”

“And there is no hope for her release?”

“Speaking as a doctor, no. As a man”—the doctor was small, and of a wicked, selfish humour—“as a man, I am so greatly tempted to tell the pig to drink his liniments someday—”

Père Barthélemy laughed. “He is of my flock, and I say that a long purgatory is his only chance. Well, well! What would she say if she heard us?”

“Those sort of creatures always live long. Perhaps you can tell me why. These slugs are manifold as my good intentions, and will have a like fate. Remember our Blanchisseuse in your prayers.”

But for once, the doctor was wrong. La Blanchisseuse’s husband died, quite suddenly, and she was a widow. Upon Père Barthélemy came the weight of her wild grief.

“O, mon père, he is gone, he is gone! Dead before me, and he so much younger! You should have seen him when he came courting me. Such a fine lad, and even then I was plain and hard-favoured. I cannot believe it. O Mother of Sorrows, give him back to me! I was weak, I was wicked. When he called me, sometimes I came slowly. My legs were stiff with rheumatism, but I should have hastened. And often I fell asleep when I was rubbing him. O, my father, how shall I live without him?”

“She will not live,” said the curé. But the doctor said: “Wait. That grief must find healing.”

The Golden Washerwoman awoke, at last, to a sense of other things than her loneliness. She need be the Golden Washerwoman no more. There was the insurance to meet the dues for which she had striven for years, urged and helped by Père Barthélemy. La Blanchisseuse Dorée was rich, mon Dieu, as rich as any lonely woman need be. My faith, she had money in the bank. Regardez la!

“I will buy mourning,” she said, “such mourning as will become my age.”

So she bought cheap, black materials, and made them up herself, after long-forgotten fashion-plates of twenty years before. A little monument in grief, veiled in crape, she attended mass and spoke long to the priest who loved her. “She begins to take an interest in her dresses,” said he to his friend the doctor. In the luxury of buying, Mère Bazane found a little comfort.

And presently, the crape upon her gown gave place to black lace, very deep, and of a heavy pattern, the like of which had never been seen in the parish. She bought a chain of large jet beads, linked with gold. A brooch of black enamel, roped with gold, bore a little blackish portrait of her husband. There was a dreadful mourning ring upon one of her little, knotted fingers. The flock of Père Barthélemy wondered and admired.

Upon the day when the old sign, “La Blanchisseuse Dorée” disappeared from above her door, and she herself appeared in penetrating purple ribbons, Monsieur le Curé went to see her.

“The peace of God be upon you, Mère Bazane.”

The Golden Washerwoman, smaller and more meagre than ever before, rustled her heavy, black draperies upon the floor, and wept upon Père Barthélemy’s hand.

“How is it with you, Mère Bazane?”

“Well, well, mon père. The emptiness of the heart is terrible, and the nights are full of a voice that does not call me, that will never call me again. Sometimes I look for my tubs under the trees, and for a little I am desolate that I need them no more. And then—”

“And then?”

“Then I go and buy things, my father.” She raised brave, blue eyes, like the eyes of a child. “It helps me to forget, it fills the emptiness, seest thou? I have never bought things before. When I washed the fine dresses of rich ladies, I used to lay the lace against my hands, because I loved it. It was beautiful. And I had never had anything that was beautiful.” She smoothed the deep, black flounce of her dress with a little hand that was always tremulous now. “This is beautiful, too, but it has no colour. Colour warms me like a fire, mon père; fills me like a food. Is it a sin?”

“It is no sin, my friend.”

“Come then, and I will show. At first I was afraid. That was a sin, to be afraid of thee.”

She went to a little wooden chest, and raised the lid. It was as if a rainbow had flashed suddenly into the dark, damp room. La Blanchisseuse Dorée laid her tremulous hands upon a silk web of pure colour within, and drew it out—pale blue, the colour of spring skies. Upon that she shook a length of rose-coloured satin, damasked in a pattern of butterflies. And then a glow of crimson silk, worked in tiny silver flowers.

“When my mourning is ended,” she explained, fondling the gorgeous fabrics, feverishly, “I can wear these. Meantime, I buy them, my father.”

Something nearer tears than laughter took Père Barthélemy by the throat, as he thought of the little washerwoman dressed in these silks.

“She will waste all her money,” he said, anxiously, to Le Docteur Simon, “buying these things.”

“Let her,” answered the doctor, “if it makes her happy.”

“It does not make her happy,” said Père Barthélemy, quietly. He knew his Blanchisseuse Dorée.

As time went on, the Golden Washerwoman broke further from the bounds of decorous mourning. The flock was interested, if a little scandalized. She adopted the royal colour of grief, and upon it played infinite variations, in which she trotted to church, like an army with banners. The two men who honoured her were troubled.

“If you had not touched wine for thirty years, it would not take much to make you drunk,” said Le Docteur Simon.

“She is searching feverishly for happiness,” said Père Barthélemy.

When Mère Bazane appeared in a purple dress, with large white spots, the curé was taking a hard-earned rest among the hills. But he heard of it. And on his return, he went straight to her house.

As he turned out of the dusty street, he saw her under the apple trees, toiling above her old tubs. She was singing as she worked, in a worn, sweet voice, of a fair Isabeau of long ago, who walked in her garden. And above her head the leafless apple boughs stretched a gray web of shadows, and the old sign creaked in the wind.

“Mère Bazane!”

“Ah, mon père! Ah, mon père, I need nothing now to complete my happiness. It is by the blessing of God that you are returned. I die of joy.”

“But—my dear, you are working again?”

“Ah, my father, there is need!” She spoke as if in triumph, and her blue eyes gleamed among the gentle wrinkles.

“Need? Your money—?”

“Safe in the bank, and there it will stay. Come, my father, and see!” She led him to the open door, and pointed within.

Upon the floor sat a fat, dark child, some three years old. He had pulled the end of the rose-coloured satin out of the chest, and wrapped himself in it. He gazed at Mère Bazane and the curé with sullen, dark eyes, set rather close in a small, heavy face.

“See him, the beautiful! He is the orphan of my dear husband’s nephew. Now I am so rich, they have let me take him to bring up. Shall I not be rich for his sake? Mon Dieu, how I will work and save!”

Her voice trembled with her little, knotted, fluttering hands. She moved to draw the silk away. “Give it to me, my angel.”

The angel wrapped himself in the rich folds tighter than ever, and screamed harshly, like a fierce bird that has no words. La Blanchisseuse Dorée looked up, flushed and panting. “See,” she said, proudly, “already he wants all the fine things he sees, and fights for them. Is he not clever? Such a determined mind for his age. And he shall have all he wants, the little one. Mon Dieu! how I will wash and bleach. I will never grow tired.”

The child, released, wrapped himself again in the soft satin, and resumed his sullen, steady stare. Père Barthélemy stood, chilled and silent, seeing the whole tragedy of sacrifice renewed. He saw the small, dark thing for ever asking, demanding, claiming. La Blanchisseuse forever toiling to supply, until—until she was cast aside, like a worn-out husk. He shrank from the child, as from a little full-fed vampire.

And then the true thought burst winged from his heart,

“She has her reward already,” he thought.

“I shall cut up my dresses to make things for him,” said the Golden Washerwoman, happily, “and spend no more money, no indeed. He will want it all, all. And he shall have it. Mon Dieu, how I will work.”

Père Barthélemy’s eyes were dim as he raised his hand and made the sign of the cross. “Of such are the kingdom of heaven,” he said, softly.

But he did not say them of the child, as the Golden Washerwoman thought.

Sitting in the sun outside the skin-house, old Eetah will tell you of the time they lost a Spring on the Little Moon.

As in most other places, they only have one Spring a year there. But it comes so late, and is so short, they love it even more than other folk. When the sun comes back from the south, bringing the wildfowl with it; when the ice melts a little on the long, long, gravel beaches; when the moss turns green, and the saxifrage and stone-crop bud, then it is Spring on the Little Moon, and everybody is glad.

But one winter, Ka-leet lent a harpoon to the angekok.

It was a lovely harpoon. The haft was walrus-ivory, cunningly fitted and carved with hunting stories. The blade was hammered hoop iron from a whale ship. “I’ll lend you this,” said Ka-leet, “till the Spring. Then you must give it back to me. But you may use it till the Spring comes.”

The angekok went back to his snow house, and thought. He wanted to keep that harpoon. So he went out and travelled south till he met the Spring. He caught it and put it in a skin bag, and carried it home with him, and hung it up in a dark corner of his snow house. The Spring went to sleep in the bag, and no one on the Little Moon saw a sign of it; the birds did not come back, nor the seal, nor the salmon. It was winter all the time, and the people stayed in their snow houses and were sick for lack of the sun.

“We will go south,” they said, “and find new places to hunt in, before we die of hunger.” But the wicked angekok went out and called the Winter down from the North. Out of the North came the Winter; it came in the shape of a great bear, made of ice, cold, blue-green, glittering ice all through. Only within its body a great, still heart, a heart that never beat, shone like a frozen star. The Bear sat down between the Little Moon and the south, and no one could pass that way.

All the men of the tribe gathered together, the strong hunters and the wise old men; and they stood in a half-circle in front of the Bear, and threw darts and harpoons, and great stones at him. But the weapons could not pierce him, nor the stones hurt him.

Then the women came, and they gathered drift-wood, and precious sticks, and spear-handles from this house and that; and they brought the biggest soapstone cooking-lamps, and lighted them and lighted fires, to see if they might melt the Bear. But the great Bear, that was the Winter, bent his nose to the snow, and breathed once. All the flames went out, and the ashes were covered with ice, and everyone ran away. They were frightened. Even the angekok began to be frightened, for he could not get rid of the Bear he had called. The people went back to their houses and stayed there, very quiet, waiting to die. They were afraid, as they had never been before. If a man crawled to the entrance of his igloo and looked out, he saw only the Bear sitting in front of the village, resting his nose on the snow. The starlight and the aurora shone on his icy pelt, so that sometimes he was blue, sometimes rosy, and sometimes golden as fire. But he was always there, so that presently no one even bothered to go and look.

The only one who still went to look was Mit-kah, the little daughter of Ka-leet.

Mit-kah was the littlest, brownest, merriest thing that ever lived within thirty degrees of the Pole. She was not afraid of anything, and she had many thoughts. Gentle thoughts flowered in her heart as thick as stone-crop flowers in the sun. She used to crawl out of Ka-leet’s house and look at the Bear; and then she would go and listen outside the magic house, the angekok’s house, because she always heard music there. It was the Spring, singing in its sleep in the skin bag, but no one else heard it, not even the angekok. Then she would go away by herself, and think.

She thought a great deal about two things. She wondered why, if they were all dying for want of the Spring, it was not possible to go and borrow some Spring from someone else, as they had borrowed oil once from the Big Moon people when their own stores failed. And she was sorry for the Bear.

She thought he looked very cold and unhappy, sitting there with his nose in the snow, so far away from his home. And one night, when she saw him, all gray in the bitter starlight, she pulled her best hood out of the bag she kept her clothes in, and crept out and went and put it on the Bear to keep his ears warm.

It was a lovely hood, made of finest sealskin, with a long tail behind, and worked in patterns of red and white feathers. It was quite a little hood, but, somehow, it fitted the Bear; it must have stretched. Mit-kah reached up and pulled it well over his stony, icy ears, and tied it under his chin, all bearded with icicles. It froze on immediately, and Mit-kah was a little sorry to think she’d never be able to get it off again. But she thought the great Bear looked at her gratefully out of his ice-eyes, and his still, glittering heart beat once.

“Well, his head is warmer,” said little Mit-kah, “but his poor feet must be very cold.”

Day and night, the great Bear, that was the Winter, sat in front of the village in the snow. And, at last, the thought of his cold toes worried Mit-kah so, that she took a set of new dog-shoes her father had just made, and crept out, and fitted them on the Bear.

The shoes were little, and the Bear was huge, but somehow they went on; and he held up one foot after another, like a puppy, and little Mit-kah tied the thongs about his frosty legs. This time, he turned his terrible, gleaming head, and looked at her, and his frozen heart beat twice, flaming like a star. And Mit-kah went away and sat behind the angekok’s house, listening to the music; it was sweeter than ever, for the Spring in the skin bag was dreaming in its sleep.

Then she thought that the Bear must be hungry, sitting there for no reason at all, and never going away to catch fish; so she took her own dinner of dried salmon and fish-oil, and put it in a bowl and offered it to the Bear.

He ate it, every scrap, and Mit-kah watched him. She forgot her own hunger, it was so wonderfully interesting to see the bits of fish going down inside the Bear, who was, of course, transparent. When he had finished it, his great heart beat three times, and he got up and shook himself. Then he looked thoughtfully at Mit-kah, who was standing, just a little speck, between his front dog-shoes.

“No one has ever done anything kind to me before,” said the great Bear, who was the Winter, and his voice was like the clanging of sledge-runners on ice, “nor even said anything kind. Why were you kind, little Mit-kah?”

“I don’t know,” said Mit-kah, with her thumb in her mouth. It is wrong to speak with your thumb in your mouth but she did not know any better.

“That’s the best sort of kindness,” said the Bear, very gently, “and the least I can do in return, is to go away. But is there anything I can do for you first?”

“You might tell me where the Spring is,” answered Mit-kah.

“Hanging up in a bag in your angekok’s house,” said the Bear. “Didn’t you know?”

“No,” said Mit-kah, “I didn’t, and thank you very much for telling me. I’ll just go straight away and let it out.” For she was not afraid of anything.

“I’m afraid that won’t do,” replied the Bear, apologetically. “You see, it’s so cold from my being about here so long, that if you let the Spring out of the bag, it’ll just die.”

“Then couldn’t I go and borrow some elsewhere?”

“N—n—no, I’m afraid that won’t do, either.” The Bear shook his head, regretfully. “You see, there’s never more than enough to go round, as it is.”

“Then what am I to do?” asked Mit-kah, sadly.

“I don’t know, unless you could find something even warmer than the Spring, to warm the bag before it wakes up. Look here, I don’t know much about such things, but if you came home with me, the Old Woman could tell you.”

“What Old Woman?”

The Bear looked surprised. “Why, the Old Sky Woman. She housekeeps for the lot of us, you know—all the Weathers and the Seasons. If there’s anything warmer than the Spring, she could tell you of it. Wonderful things she has at home! But perhaps you would be afraid to come with me?”

“Why should I be afraid?” said Mit-kah.

The Bear stretched his terrible head, and snuffed the air towards the North Star. “Many fear me, but not all,” he said. “Come if you will, little Mit-kah.”

Then he made himself all flat in the snow, and she climbed upon his neck, and held on by the long tail of the hood. And the Bear got up, and went swiftly away, northwards; very swiftly he ran, glisading over the glittering snow, and wherever he went, there it became cold as death. But little Mit-kah was quite warm.

When Ka-leet looked for her and could not find her, he went away from the lamp, and lay in a corner, weeping. For he thought she had wandered away and died. Nothing comforted him, not even when they told him that the Bear was gone. And as yet the Spring did not come.

Meanwhile, Mit-kah and the Bear went north and north, so far that they could go no farther, till they came to the place where the Bear lived, and the igloo of the Old Sky Woman. Never had Mit-kah seen such a house; it cricked her neck to look at the top of the entrance-tunnel, and as for the living-place behind, it had neither top nor bottom, nor beginning nor end. It was like a cloud. Here the Old Sky Woman sat over a great cooking-pot and a clear fire; and about her the Stars and the Weathers, the Winds and the Seasons, went in and out; but she sat still and cooked.

The Bear, that was the Winter, went in to the fire, and lay down beside it in his place. Then, for the first time, Mit-kah was frightened, and looked, and did not know what she saw; and listened, and did not know what she heard, only she knew that a hand came down sometimes and stirred the stuff in the pot; and that across the fire a caribou buck lifted his head and looked at her, and his eyes were softer than sleep, and there were stars in his antlers. “That is the South-west Wind,” said the Bear to her, softly. “He is the only one at home. He is kind. Don’t be afraid.” But Mit-kah crouched low on the Bear’s neck and hid her face.

Then the Old Sky Woman stooped her head from the cloudy roof of her igloo, and asked what Mit-kah wanted. “Mother,” said the Bear, very respectfully, “she wants to know if there is anything warmer than the Spring. The Little Moon angekok has caught their Spring and hung it up in a skin bag in his house, and there it sleeps. If it woke without warmth, it will die in the cold. Is there anything warmer than the Spring? I am Winter. I know nothing about such things.”

“Yes,” said the Old Sky Woman, “there is one thing warmer than Spring. It is the fire under my cooking-pot. It is called Love, and you’ll find it anywhere, but it’s hard to put your hand on sometimes.”

“I am Winter,” said the Bear, again, “I know nothing about Love. I have only one gift, and that is Sleep. But will you give her some of your fire, Mother?”

“Yes,” answered the Old Sky Woman, “she shall have some of my fire. But she must carry it in her hands, and go away from here quickly, or it will go out, and I can’t have it wasted.”

“Hold out your hands, Mit-kah,” said the Bear, softly, “you shall have some of the fire that is warmer than Spring, and with it, you shall wake the Spring. Hold out your hands, and do not fear, it will not burn you.”

Then Mit-kah held out her little brown hands, joined together, and the Old Sky Woman took the great spoon with which she stirred in her pot, and lifted in it a tiny ember from the fire, and laid it in Mit-kah’s hands. It did not burn her. It shone in a clear flame between her curved hands, and it was warm as sunlight, and sweet as willow-buds. Mit-kah laughed with happiness, and was not afraid.

“Carry it like that,” said the Old Sky Woman, “or you will lose it. And take it away quickly.”

Then the great Buck, who was the South-west Wind, rose and came round the fire, and the stars in his antlers were like fish in a net. “You are swift, Brother,” he said to the Bear, “but you are not so swift as I. I will take Mit-kah home.” His voice was soft as running water when the rivers break free, and Mit-kah looked into his eyes, and the flame of Love that she carried in her hands was reflected in his eyes like two more stars.

“Go with the Wind, little Mit-kah,” said the Bear, drowsily. “He is swifter than I, but he does not love you so well. Do not forget me, little Mit-kah.”

“I will not forget you,” said Mit-kah. She slid from the Bear’s neck, and stood in front of him, gazing into his eyes. It was like gazing into one of the blue pools that form in the ice on warm days; but far down in them, the flame she carried was reflected. Then the Bear shut his eyes lazily, and went to sleep by the fire. And the Old Sky Woman lifted Mit-kah and set her on the back of the Caribou Buck, and he bore her out of the igloo and southward over the snow.

Mit-kah, carrying the flame, had nothing to hold on by, but she did not need anything. The Bear had been smooth and swift, but the great Buck fled like a cloud, and his antlers caught new stars from the sky as a net catches fish. With him, went the sound of rain and the melting of waters and the rushing wings of birds. And so they came to the Little Moon.

The Buck knelt down and made himself all small, and Mit-kah slid from his neck and stood before him, and thanked him prettily, but he did not pay much attention to her, though his eyes were so soft and kind. Before she had finished, he had risen and snuffed the air and stamped the earth with his forefoot; then he fled away, moving like a cloud under the stars, and which went with him and which stayed in the sky, Mit-kah could not tell. She went soberly down to her village, carrying the fire.

She stood in the midst of the dark snow-houses and called aloud to her people. One by one they answered her, and came crawling out. Ka-leet was the first, and he ran to Mit-kah, and would have taken her in his arms, but he saw the fire in her little brown hands, and was afraid. “Are you Mit-kah?” he said, “or are you a ghost?” “Are you dead, or have you come back to die with us?”

“I am not dead,” said Mit-kah, “I have come back to wake the Spring for you.”

Then, the flame as still as a flower in her hands, she went to the house of the angekok, all the people following her. She crawled into the house, the people following her, Ka-leet the first. When the angekok saw her come in, carrying the small, bright flame, he fell on his face. But Mit-kah paid no attention to him. For out of the bag on the wall came a single clear, sweet note, like the mating call of a bird.

“That is the Spring waking!” cried Mit-kah.

She stood under the skin bag, where the angekok had kept the Spring, and raised the flame towards it. And the flame left her hands and floated upwards, and enclosed the skin bag in a tender light, a warmth and a shining. Then the bag opened, and out of it came the waking Spring.

What was it like? I don’t know. Light, and swiftness, and joy, leaves, wings, and little stars—the memory of all these, and the hope of all that are to come, Mit-kah let loose from the bag. Outside, the sun came back from the south like a swan; the ice melted, the salmon leaped in the rivers, the moss greened, and a thousand tiny flowers opened under the rocks. The people all ran out to look, but Ka-leet stayed behind in the angekok’s house, holding his little daughter in his arms.

In all hearts, also, the winter was past. And the angekok got up and put a good face on it and returned the harpoon.

“Bob, is this Lake Lemaire?”

Bob Lemaire, leaning against a wind-twisted tamarack on the ridge above the portage, looked long and very long at the desolate country spread out beneath them. Then he looked at a map, drawn on parchment in faded ink, which he had just unfolded from a waterproof case. “I can’t identify it,” he confessed at last, “but I think—”

“If you say another word,” groaned Barrett, “about the reliability of your grandfather, I—I’ll heave rocks at you.” Lemaire smiled slowly, and the smile transfigured his lean, serious face; he folded the map and replaced it in the little case “Well,” he answered, comfortingly, “we can’t mistake P’tite Babiche, anyway, when we come to it.”

“If the thing exists. . . Oh, I know your grandfather said he found it, and stuck it on his map. But no one else has ever found it since.”

“No one else,” said Lemaire, quietly, “has been so far west from the Gran’ Babiche.”

He looked again at the land, one of the most desolate in the world, across which they must go. Lake, rapid, river; rock, scrub, pine, and caribou moss—here the world held only these things, repeated to infinity. But as Lemaire’s grave eyes rested on them, those eyes showed nothing but stillness and a strange content. And Barrett, who had been watching his friend and not the new chain of lakes ahead, cried suddenly, “Bob, I believe you like it!”

“Yes, I like it—if like is the word.”

“O gosh! And you never saw it till five years ago?”

“No.”

“And your father never saw it at all?”

“No. He married young, you know, and had no money. He worked in an office all his life. My mother said he used to talk in his sleep of—all this—which he had never seen. And when I saw it, it just seemed to—come natural.” He smiled again. “We’ve three—four—more portages,” he went on, “before we camp.”

“And it’s along of having Forbes Lemaire for a grandfather,” groaned Barrett, as he limped after Lemaire’s light stride, down the rocky slope to the little beach where they had left their canoe.

They launched the canoe, thigh deep in the rush of the ice-clear water, and put out into yet another of that endless chain of unknown and uncharted lakes whose course they were following. Only one map in the world showed these lakes, those low iron hills, that swamp—the map made by Bob Lemaire’s grandfather fifty years before; as far as was known, only one white man before themselves had ever tried the journey from the Gran’ Babiche due west to the P’tite Babiche, that mythical river; and that had been Forbes Lemaire. As Barrett said, it was a tour personally conducted by the ghost of a grandfather.

Another wet portage—tripping and sliding under a low cliff among fallen shale and willow bushes—another lake, as wide, as lonely, as the former one. So for three hours. And then the afternoon shut down in drive on drive of damp gray mist; and they edged the canoe inshore, and beached it at last upon a dun ridge of sand, the shadows of dwarfed bullpines promising firing.

Too tired to speak, they made their camp, deftly, as long practice had taught them. Tinned beef, flapjacks and coffee had power, however, to change the very aspect of the weather. And Barrett, smoking the pipe of repletion, under a wisp of tent, had time to admire the Japanese effect of the writhed pines in the fog, to hear a sort of wild music in the voices of rain and water, and to meditate on the chances of an ouananiche for the morning’s meal.

The shadows of the fog were changing to the shadows of night, and the silent Lemaire rose and flung wood on the fire. It sent out a warm glow; and as if it had been a signal, a living shadow crept from the shadow of the rocks, and very timidly approached the light.

Both men rose with an exclamation; for they had not seen a human being for nearly a month. Barrett said, “An Indian,” and sank back on his blanket, leaving Lemaire to ask questions. Lemaire went round the fire, and stooped over the queer huddled shadow on the ground.

“Well?” Barrett called after him at last.

“A Montagnais,” Lemaire answered after a pause, some trouble in his voice. “About the oldest old Indian I’ve ever seen; they aren’t long-lived. . . . . . He seems a bit wrong in the head. He doesn’t seem to know his name or where he comes from. But—he says he’s going to a big encampment many day’s journey west. He says he’s been following us. He says he’s a friend of mine.”

“Is he?”

“I never saw him before. . . That’s all I can get out of him. He’s probably been cast off by his tribe. Why? Oh, too old to be useful.”

“Cruel brutes.”

“Not so cruel as some white men,” said Lemaire, half to himself. He had come back to the firelight, and was rummaging among their stores, none too plentiful. He returned to the old Indian, carrying food; and presently Barrett heard snapping sounds, as of a hungry dog feeding. Lemaire came again to his nook under the tent; and Barrett smoked out his pipe in silence. Then, as he knocked the ashes, fizzling, into a little pool of rain, he said gently, “Bob, what makes you so uncommonly good to the Indians?”

Quiet Lemaire did not attempt to evade the direct question. But a rather shy flush rose to his dark, lean cheeks as he said diffidently, “I suppose—because I feel my family—any one of my name—owes ’em something.”

“The grandfather again, eh?”

“Yes. . . . Men had no souls in those days, Barrett. I think the tremendous loneliness—the newness—the lack of responsibility—something killed their souls. . . . . . Wait.”

Leaning forward, he flung more wood on the fire. And the red light flickered on his strong and gentle face. He glanced at his friend, and went on abruptly. “I’ve my grandfather’s maps and journals, you know—what my father called the shameful records of his fame. He was absolutely explicit in ’em. I never saw them in father’s lifetime, but he left them to me, saying I could read them or not, as I liked. I was very proud of them. I read them. And upon my word—though from them I got the hints that may lead us to the rediscovery of the Lost Babiche—I’m almost sorry I did. It leaves a bad taste in the mind, if you know what I mean, to think that one’s father’s father was such a heroic scoundrel.”

“A bad record, Bobby?”

“Bad even for those days. Listen to me. While he was on this very expedition we’re on now, he was taken sick. He was very sick, and going to be worse. He knew what it was. He was near the big summer camp of a tribe of Indians that had been very kind to him, coast Indians, come inland for the caribou hunting; he went to them. He was sick, and they took him in, and nursed him. And all the time he knew what it was he had. It was the smallpox.

“You know what La Picotte is in the wilds. They’ve a song about it still, down along the Lamennais. . . For of all that tribe, only one family, they say, escaped. All the others died; they died as if the Angel of Destruction had come among them with his sword—they died like flies, they died in heaps. And over the bones of the dead the tepees stood for years, ragged, blowing in the winds. And then the skins rotted, and the bare poles stood, gleaming white, over the rotting bones that covered an acre of ground, they say. No one ever went to that place any more. It was cursed. . . because of my grandfather.”

“Monsieur Forbes made his get-away?”

“Yes, or I shouldn’t be telling you about it.” Lemaire summoned a smile, but his eyes were sombre. “And so I guess—that’s one reason why. One among many.”

“You’re a likeable old freak,” murmured Barrett affectionately, “but—you ain’t responsible, you know!”

“As I look at it, we’re all responsible.”

“Well—anyway, I wouldn’t give that old scarecrow too much of our grubstake, old man. We’ve none too much, if the Babiche doesn’t turn up according to schedule.”

“Probably we won’t see any more of him. He’ll be gone by the morning.”

He was gone with the morning. But as day followed weary day, and there was still no sign of the lakes narrowing to the long-sought river, Barrett was increasingly conscious that the old man was close upon their trail. Sometimes, in the brief radiance of the September dawns, he would see, far and far behind on the wrinkled silver water, a warped canoe paddling feebly. They always hauled away, by miles, from that decrepit canoe. But always, some time in the dark hours, it crept up again. Sometimes, he would see, in the sunset, a wavering thread of smoke arising from the site of their last-camp-but-one. It irritated him at last; the thought of that ragged, cranky canoe, paddled by the ragged, dirty, old imbecile, forever following them—creeping, creeping, under the great gaunt stars, creeping, creeping, under the flying dawns, the stormy moons; when he found Lemaire leaving little scraps of precious tobacco, a pinch of flour in a screw of paper, or a fresh-caught fish beside the trodden ashes of their cooking-place, he exploded.

“I can’t help it,” Lemaire apologized, “I know I’m all kinds of a fool, Barrett. But the poor old wretch is nearly blind—from long-ago smallpox, I should think. He can’t catch things for himself much.”

Barrett, aware that wisdom was on his side, yet felt sorry for his explosion. He said nothing more. Soon he forgot the matter, having much else to think about.

For the Lost Babiche, the once-discovered river, did not “turn up according to schedule.”

The chain of lakes they had been following turned due south. They left them, and, after a terrible portage, launched the canoe in a stream that ran west. Here their progress was very slow, for there were rapids, and consequent portages, every mile or so. This stream, instead of feeding another lake, died out in impassable quaking mosses. They saw a range of low hills some four or five miles ahead; so again they left the canoe and struck out for them on foot, half-wading, half-walking. It was exhausting work. At last they climbed the barren spurs and saw beyond, under a flaring yellow sunset, a world of interlacing waterways, unvisited and unknown, that seemed then as if they smoked under the vast clouds and spirals of wildfowl settling homeward to the reeds. The two men watched that wonderful sight in silence.

At last, “They’re gathering to go south,” said Lemaire briefly. And Barrett answered, “D’you know what date it is? It’s the day on which we said we’d turn back if we hadn’t found the Lost Babiche. It’s the fifteenth of September.”

“Well. . . are we going back?”

“Not till we’ve found our river,” cried Barrett, with half a laugh and half a curse. They gripped hands, smiling rather grimly. They made a miserable, fireless camp, and went back the next day, carrying canoe and supplies, in four toilsome trips, across the hills; repacking and relaunching the second day on a new lake, where in all probability no white man—but one—had ever before dipped paddle.

They had been in the wilderness so long that they had fallen into the habit of carrying on conversations as if the lapse of two or three days had been as many minutes. Barrett knew to what Lemaire referred when he said abruptly, “After all, it isn’t as if you were ignorant of the risks.”

“I guess I know just as much about them as you,” said Barrett, cheerily. “We’re taking chances on the grub, aren’t we? If we find the Lost Babiche before the game moves, we’ll be alright, though our own supplies won’t take us there. Once there, Bob, we’re pretty sure to find friendly Indians when we link up with the Silver Fork—which we do seventy miles down the P’tite Babiche if your grandpa’s map’s correct. Well there are a good many ‘if’s’ in the programme, but don’t you worry. We’ll get through or out, somehow. There’s always fish. I’ve a feeling that this country can’t go back on a Lemaire!”

They went on to a pleasant camp that night on a sandy islet overgrown with dwarf willow, and a wild-duck supper. The current of these new lakes went west with such increasing strength that Lemaire thought they were feeling the “pull” of some big river into which the system drained; and if so, it could be no river but the lost Babiche. They slept, all a-tingle with the fever of discovery and re-made maps in their dreams.

Behind them many miles, a wandering smoke arose from the ashes of their last camp. The old Indian, about whom they had almost forgotten, had gained on them while they packed their supplies over the hills. Now he was close upon them again.

The life of that old savage seemed thin and wavering as the smoke of the fire he made. All night he sat in the ashes, motionless as a stone. Only once, just before the fierce dawn, he rose to his feet with an inarticulate cry, stirred to some instinctive excitement. For in a moment the vast, chill dusk was filled with a musical thrill, a tremendous clamour and rush of life, as thousand by thousand after their kinds, teal and widgeon, mallard and sheldrake, lifted from the reeds and fled before the coming cold. As the old man dimly watched, two delicate things fell and touched his face; one was a feather, the second was a flake of snow.

In those few delicate flakes, Lemaire and Barrett seemed to feel for the first time the ever-present hostility of nature; with such a brief, exquisite touch were they first made aware of the powers against which they strove. The new waterways seemed to stretch interminably. Each time they cleared one of the deep-cut channels which linked lake with lake as regularly as a thread links beads, they looked ahead with the same question. Each time they saw the same expanse of gray water, low islets, barren shores; the country passed them changing and unchanging as a dream. They seemed to be moving in a dream, conscious of nothing but the pressure of the current on their paddles.

Then came the mist.

It shut them into a circle ten feet wide, a pearl-white prison. Outside the circle were shadows, wandering voices, trees as men walking. For two days they felt their way westward through this fog; two nights they shivered over a damp-wood fire, hearing nothing but water beading and dripping everywhere with a sound of grief. It strangely broke Lemaire’s steel nerve. On the second night he said, restlessly, “We must turn back to-morrow.”

“Bob!”

He flung out a tanned hand passionately. “I know. . . . But can’t you feel it? Things have turned against us. These things.” He pointed at the veiled sky, the milky water. “I daren’t go on. If we don’t find the river to-morrow, we’ll go back. And then. . . . the land will have done for me what it never did for my grandfather.”

“What, Bob, old fellow?”

“Beaten me,” said Lemaire, and rolled into his blankets without another word.

He woke next morning with the touch of clear sunlight on his eyelids. He leaped to his feet silently, without waking Barrett, and as he did so, ice broke and tinkled like glass where the edge of the blankets had lain in a little pool of moisture. The last of the fog was draining in golden smoke from the low, dark hills. He strode to the edge of the water, and stopped, shaking suddenly as if he were cold. Then he went to Barrett, and stooped over him.

“Hullo, Bob, is it morning?” Then, as he saw Lemaire’s face, “My God, what is it?”

Twice Lemaire tried to speak. Then he pointed eastward to three high rocky islands which lay across the water, exactly spaced, like the ruined spans of a great bridge which once had stretched from shore to shore.

“Barrett,” he said huskily, “We entered the Lost Babiche yesterday in the fog, and never knew. Those islands are ten miles down the river on Forbes Lemaire’s map.”

They faced each other in silence, too much moved to speak. Their hands met in a long grip. Then Barrett said suddenly, “Anything else.”

“Yes. It’s freezing hard.”

“But. . . we’ve won, Bob, we’ve won!”

“Not yet,” said the man whose fathers had been bred in the wilderness, and wed to it. “Not yet. It’s still against us.”

But there was no talk now of turning back.

The Lost Babiche—lost no more—was a noble river; a gray and ice-clear stream winding in generous curves between high cliffs of slate-coloured rock. These cliffs were much cut into ravines and gullies, where grew timber of fine size for that country. But as their tense excitement lessened a little, they were struck by the absence of all life; even in the deep rock-shadows they saw no fish. Of human life there was not a sign; though in Forbes Lemaire’s days the country had supported many Indians. And now—“Not a soul but ourselves,” said Barrett, in an awed voice; “not a living soul. . .”

Yes. One soul yet living. Far behind them, in the staggering old canoe, the old Indian paddled valiantly on their trail. But he had forgotten them now, as they had long forgotten him. He stopped no more for the offal of their camps. A stronger instinct even than that of hunger was drawing him on the way they also went; down the Lost Babiche. Had they looked, they would not have seen him. And soon, between him and them, the clouds which had been gathering all day dropped a curtain of fine snow.

The first sting of the tiny balled flakes on his knuckles was to Lemaire like the thunder of guns, the opening of a battle.

He had no need to speak to Barrett. They bent over the paddles and the canoe surged forward. It was a race; a race between the early winter and themselves. If the cold weather set in so soon, if they found no Indians on the little-known Silver Fork—there were a dozen “ifs” in their minds as, mile after mile, they fled down the P’tite Babiche. Even as they fled from the winter, so that other white man long ago had fled from the sickness; seen those stark bluffs unrolling; viewed perhaps those very trees.

They made a record distance that day. “We’re winning, Bob, we’re winning,” said Barrett over the fire that night. Lemaire had not the heart to contradict him; but Lemaire’s instincts, inherited from generations, told him that the wilderness was still mysteriously their enemy. He sat smoking, silent, hearing nothing but the faint, innumerable hiss of the snowflakes falling into the flames.

The snow was thickening in the morning, and by noon a bitter wind arose, blowing in their faces and against the stream. Soon the canoe was smack-smack-smacking on the waves, and the snow was driving almost level. The continual pressure of wind and snow drugged their senses. They never heard the voice of the rapids until, rounding an abrupt bend, the ravelled water seemed to leap at them from under the very bow of the canoe.

There was only one thing to be done, and—“Let her go!” yelled Lemaire, crouching tense as a spring above the steering paddle.

Now for the trained eye, the strong hand—the eye to see the momentary chance, the hand to obey without a falter.

Now for the sleeping instincts of a brain inherited from far generations of wanderers and voyageurs. Flash on flash of leaping water, the drive of spray and snow, the canoe staggering and checking like a thing hurt, but always recovering.

Barrett, in the bows, paddled blindly. His life lay in Bob Lemaire’s hands, and he was content to leave it there during those roaring moments. But those hands failed—by an inch.

They were in smooth water. Barrett would have paused to take breath, but Lemaire’s voice barked at him from the stern. He obeyed. The canoe drove forward again—forward in great leaps, towards the point of a small island ahead, dimly seen through the snow—something wrong, though, thought Barrett, grunting; he could get no “beef” on the thing—it dragged; you’d have thought Bob was paddling against him. Then, suddenly, he understood. He called up the last of his strength, drove the paddle in, once, twice—again—heard a shout, flung himself overside into water waist-deep, and just as the canoe was sinking under them, he and Lemaire caught it and ran it ashore. Then, dripping, they looked each other in the face, and each seemed to see the face of disaster.

“It was a rock,” said Lemaire at last, very quietly, “a few inches below the surface. It has almost cut the canoe in two.”

“What’s to be done?”

“Find shelter, I suppose.”

They were very quiet about it. There was no shelter on their islet but a few rocks and a dead spruce in the middle. Here they set up their tent as a wind-break. It was bitterly cold; the island was sheathed with white ice, for the spray from the rough water froze now as it fell; everything in the canoe was wet; they were wet to their waists. They tried to induce the dead tree to burn, but the wood was so rotted with wet it only smouldered and went out. They had a little cooking-lamp and a few squares of compressed fuel for it; they lighted this, and Lemaire made tea with numbed hands. It renewed the life in them, but could not dry them. They huddled against the little lamp in silence, waiting—waiting.

After some time Lemaire heard a curious sound from Barrett; his teeth were chattering. Lemaire saw that his face had taken a waxy white hue. He spoke to him, and Barrett looked up, but his eyes were dim and glazed. “It’ll be all right,” he said, thickly, “we’ll get through, somehow. I’ve a feeling that this country can’t go back on a Lemaire.”

They were the first symptoms of collapse. Lemaire groaned. He got to his feet, and staggered across the slippery rocks. He shook his fist in the implacable face of the desolation. He shouted, foolish rage and defiance, caught back at his sanity; shouted again. . . . This time he thought he heard a faint cry in the snow. It whipped him back to self-control. He splashed out into the curdling shallows, shouting desperately.

Out of the gray drive of snow loomed the ghost of a canoe, paddled, as it seemed, by a ghost. It was the old Indian, whom Lemaire had long forgotten; the weather had not hindered him, the rapids had not wrecked him. At Lemaire’s cry he raised his head, and the canoe put inshore, waveringly. Lemaire splashed to meet it, met the incurious gaze of the half-blind old eyes under the scarred lids, and read into the wrinkled, foul old face, a sort of animal kindness.

Five minutes later he was desperately trying to rouse Barrett. Barrett looked at him at last, and Lemaire saw that the brief delirium was past. “What is it, Bob?” he asked, weakly. And Lemaire broke into a torrent of words.

“The old Indian—the old Indian you said was a hoodoo—don’t you remember? He’s here. He has caught us up, God knows how. He says his canoe’ll hold three. He says that a very little way on there’s a big camp, and that he’ll take us there—in a very little while. He says his tribe is always kind to strangers, to white men. . . . I can’t make out all he says, he’s queer in his head. But he’s dead sure of the encampment. He says it’s always there. .”

Still talking eagerly, Lemaire snatched together a few things, got an arm round Barrett, lifted him up to his feet, got him reeling to the canoe, laid him in the bottom, and helped the old Indian push off. There was no second paddle. There was no need of it. The current took them at once.

The cold was increasing, as the wind died and the snow thinned. Lemaire ceased to be conscious of the passing of time, but within himself the stubborn life burned; he was strongly curious to know the end, to discover what it was the wilderness had in store for him after five years, to read the riddle of that relationship with himself which had called him from the cities to this.

He was aware, at last, of a vast, golden light. The clouds were parting behind the snow, and the sunset was gleaming through. It turned the snow into a mist of rose and molten gold. The old Indian feebly turned the canoe. It crept toward the shore.

“The lodges of my people,” muttered the old Indian. He stood erect, and pointed with his bleached paddle. “They are very many—a very strong tribe.”

Lemaire also looked, and saw.

Silently, the canoe took the half-frozen sand. Silently, very slowly, Lemaire stepped out. The old Indian waited for him. It seemed that the whole world was waiting for him.

He, like a man in a dream, moved slowly into the midst of a level stretch of sand, and stood there. All about him, covering the whole level, were the ridgepoles of wigwams, but the coverings had long fallen away and rotted, and the sunset glowed through the gaunt poles. Lemaire stretched out his hand, and touched the nearest; they fell into dust and rot. . . . Under his feet he crushed the bones of the dead—the dead, who had died fifty years before, and had waited for him here ever since, under the blown sand and the ground willows . . . . “They’ve a song about it, down along the Lamennais. For of all that tribe, only one family, they say, escaped. All the others died . . . . they died like flies, they died in heaps. And over the bones of the dead the tepees stood for years . . . . No one ever went to that place any more. It was cursed . . . . because of my grandfather . . . .”

He went back to the canoe. Whining like an old animal, the old Indian was busied above Barrett. “The lodges of my people,” he muttered, “a very strong tribe, and kind to the white men.”

Very gently, Lemaire put aside the blind old hands that touched Barrett’s unconscious face. “Don’t wake him,” he said.