A sense of shame—­shame and anger—­swept through him, heating his brain, setting his teeth hard, filling him again with a grim determination.  For the second time that day his fighting blood rose.  It surged through his veins in a flood, beating down the old barriers, clearing away the obstructions of his doubts and his fears, and filling him with the desire to go on—­the desire to fight it out, to punish himself as he deserved to be punished, and to win in the end.  Father Roland, glancing back in benignant solicitude, saw the new glow in David’s eyes.  He saw, also, his parted lips and the quickness of his breath.  With a sharp command he stopped Mukoki and the dogs.

“Half a mile at a time is enough for a beginner,” he said to David.  “Back off your shoes and ride the next half mile.”

David shook his head.

“Go on,” he said, tersely, saving his wind.  “I’m just finding myself.”

Father Roland loaded and lighted his pipe.  The aroma of the tobacco filled David’s nostrils as they went on.  Clouds of smoke wreathed the Little Missioner’s shoulders as he followed the trail ahead of him.  It was comforting, that smoke.  It warmed David with a fresh desire.  His exertion was clearing out his lungs.  He was inhaling balsam and spruce, a mighty tonic of dry forest air, and he felt also the craving to smoke.  But he knew that he could not afford the waste of breath.  His snow shoes were growing heavier and heavier, and back of his knees the tendons seemed preparing to snap.  He kept on, at last counting his steps.  He was determined to make a mile.  He was ready to groan when a sudden twist in the trail brought them out of the forest to the edge of a lake whose frozen surface stretched ahead of them for miles.  Mukoki stopped the dogs.  With a gasp David floundered to the sledge and sat down.

“Finding myself,” he managed to say.  “Just—­finding myself!”

It was a triumph for him—­the last half of that mile.  He knew it.  He felt it.  Through the white haze of his breath he looked out over the lake.  It was wonderfully clear, and the sun was shining.  The surface of the lake was like an untracked carpet of white sprinkled thickly with tiny diamonds where the sunlight fell on its countless billions of snow crystals.  Three or four miles away he could see the dark edge of the forest on the other side.  Up and down the lake the distance was greater.  He had never seen anything like it.  It was marvellous—­like a dream picture.  And he was not cold as he looked at it.  He was warm, even uncomfortably warm.  The air he breathed was like a new kind of fuel.  It gave him the peculiar sensation of feeling larger inside; he seemed to drink it in; it expanded his lungs; he could feel his heart pumping with an audible sound.  There was nothing in the majesty and wonder of the scene about him to make him laugh, but he laughed.  It was exultation, an involuntary outburst of the change that was working within him.  He felt,