She was almost covered in her coat.  He caught only the gleam of her thick, dark hair, and the shape of one slim hand, white as paper in the lampglow.  He knew that she was not asleep, for he saw her shoulders move, and the hand shifted its position to hold the coat closer about her.  The whistling of the approaching engine, which could be heard distinctly now, had no apparent effect on her.  For ten minutes he sat staring at all he could see of her—­the dark glow of her hair and the one ghostly white hand.  He moved, he shuffled his feet, he coughed; he made sure she knew he was there, but she did not look up.  He was sorry that he had not brought Father Roland with him in the first place, for he was certain that if the Little Missioner had seen the grief and the despair in her eyes—­the hope almost burned out—­he would have gone to her and said things which he had found it impossible to say when the opportunity had come to him.  He rose again from his seat as the powerful snow-engine and its consort coupled on to the train.  The shock almost flung him off his feet.  Even then she did not raise her head.

A second time he returned to the smoking compartment.

Father Roland was no longer huddled down in his corner.  He was on his feet, his hands thrust deep down into his trousers pockets, and he was whistling softly as David came in.  His hat lay on the seat.  It was the first time David had seen his round, rugged, weather-reddened face without the big Stetson.  He looked younger and yet older; his face, as David saw it there in the lampglow, had something in the ruddy glow and deeply lined strength of it that was almost youthful.  But his thick, shaggy hair was very gray.  The train had begun to move.  He turned to the window for a moment, and then looked at David.

“We are under way,” he said.  “Very soon I will be getting off.”

David sat down.

“It is some distance beyond the divisional point ahead—­this cabin where you get off?” he asked.

“Yes, twenty or twenty-five miles.  There is nothing but a cabin and two or three log outbuildings there—­where Thoreau, the Frenchman, has his fox pens, as I told you.  It is not a regular stop, but the train will slow down to throw off my dunnage and give me an easy jump.  My dogs and Indian are with Thoreau.”

“And from there—­from Thoreau’s—­it is a long distance to the place you call home?”

The Little Missioner rubbed his hands in a queer rasping way.  The movement of those rugged hands and the curious, chuckling laugh that accompanied it, radiated a sort of cheer.  They were expressions of more than satisfaction.  “It’s a great many miles to my own cabin, but it’s home—­all home—­after I get into the forests.  My cabin is at the lower end of God’s Lake, three hundred miles by dogs and sledge from Thoreau’s—­three hundred miles as straight north as a niskuk flies.”

“A niskuk?” said David.