“I understand, Father.”

For the first time David felt something of the awe of this thing that was death.  He had forgotten, almost, that Father Roland was a servant of God, so vitally human had he found him, so unlike all other men of his calling he had ever known.  But it was impressed upon him now, as he followed Mukoki.  Father Roland wanted to be alone.  Perhaps to pray.  To ask mercy for Tavish’s soul.  To plead for its guidance into the Great Unknown.  The thought quieted his own emotions, and as he began to dig in the hard snow and frozen earth he tried to think of Tavish as a man, and not as a monster.

In the cabin Father Roland waited until he heard the beat of the pick before he moved.  Then he fastened the cabin door with a wooden bolt and sat himself down at the table, with the lamp close to his bent head and Tavish’s confession in his hands.  He cut the babiche threads with his knife, unfolded the sheets of paper and began to read, while Tavish’s mice nosed slyly out of their murky corners wondering at the new and sudden stillness in the cabin and, it may be, stirred into restlessness by the absence of their master.

* * * * *

The ground under the snow was discouragingly hard.  To David the digging of the grave seemed like chipping out bits of flint from a solid block, and he soon turned over the pick to Mukoki.  Alternately they worked for an hour, and each time that the Cree took his place David wondered what was keeping the Missioner so long in the cabin.  At last Mukoki intimated with a sweep of his hands and a hunch of his shoulders that their work was done.  The grave looked very shallow to David, and he was about to protest against his companion’s judgment when it occurred to him that Mukoki had probably digged many holes such as this in the earth, and had helped to fill them again, so it was possible he knew his business.  After all, why did people weigh down one’s last slumber with six feet of soil overhead when three or four would leave one nearer to the sun, and make not quite so chill a bed?  He was thinking of this as he took a last look at Tavish.  Then he heard the Indian give a sudden grunt, as if some one had poked him unexpectedly in the pit of the stomach.  He whirled about, and stared.

Father Roland stood within ten feet of them, and at sight of him an exclamation rose to David’s lips and died there in an astonished gasp.  He seemed to be swaying, like a sick man, in the moonlight, and impelled by the same thought Mukoki and David moved toward him.  The Missioner extended an arm, as if to hold them back.  His face was ghastly, and terrible—­almost as terrible as Tavish’s, and he seemed to be struggling with something in his throat before he could speak.  Then he said, in a strange, forced voice that David had never heard come from his lips before: 

“Bury him.  There will be—­no prayer.”

He turned away, moving slowly in the direction of the forest.  And as he went David noticed the heavy drag of his feet, and the unevenness of his trail in the snow.