By this time tears were streaming down his cheek.  Sobs shook his powerful frame.  Irma was clinging to him in an abandonment of weeping.  Kalman stood holding tight to his father, rigid, tearless, white.  At length the father tore away their hands and once more crying “Farewell!” made toward the door.

At this the boy broke forth in a loud cry, “Father!  My father!  Take me with you!  I would not fear!  I would not fear to die.  Take me to Russia!” The boy ran after his father and clutched him hard.

“Ah, my lad, you are your mother’s son and mine.  Some day you may go back.  Who knows?  But—­no, no.  Canada is your country.  Go back.”  The lad still clutched him.  “Boy,” said his father, steadying his voice with great effort and speaking quietly, “with us, in our country, we learn first, obedience.”

The lad dropped his hold.

“Good!” said the father.  “You are my own son.  You will yet be a man.  And now farewell.”

He kissed them again.  The boy broke into passionate sobbing.  Paulina came forward and, kneeling at the father’s feet, put her face to the floor.

“I will care for the son of my lord,” she murmured.

But with never a look at her, the father strode to the door and passed out into the night.

“Be the howly prophet!” cried Tim, wiping his eyes, “it’s harrd, it’s harrd!  An’ it’s the heart av a paythriot the lad carries inside av him!  An’ may Hivin be about him!”

CHAPTER VI

THE GRIP OF BRITISH LAW

It was night in Winnipeg, a night of such radiant moonlight as is seen only in northern climates and in winter time.  During the early evening a light snow had fallen, not driving fiercely after the Manitoba manner, but gently, and so lay like a fleecy, shimmering mantle over all things.

Under this fleecy mantle, shimmering with myriad gems, lay Winnipeg asleep.  Up from five thousand chimneys rose straight into the still frosty air five thousand columns of smoke, in token that, though frost was king outside, the good folk of Winnipeg lay snug and warm in their virtuous beds.  Everywhere the white streets lay in silence except for the passing of a belated cab with creaking runners and jingling bells, and of a sleighing party returning from Silver Heights, their four-horse team smoking, their sleigh bells ringing out, carrying with them hoarse laughter and hoarser songs, for the frosty air works mischief with the vocal chords, and leaving behind them silence again.

All through Fort Rouge, lying among its snow-laden trees, across the frost-bound Assiniboine, all through the Hudson’s Bay Reserve, there was no sign of life, for it was long past midnight.  Even Main Street, that most splendid of all Canadian thoroughfares, lay white and spotless and, for the most part, in silence.  Here and there men in furs or in frieze coats with collars turned up high, their eyes peering through frost-rimmed eyelashes and over frost-rimmed coat collars, paced comfortably along if in furs, or walked hurriedly if only in frieze, whither their business or their pleasure led.