one upon whom had fallen a new and sudden happiness.  As day added itself to day, and night to night, the periods of depression became shorter and less frequent, and at last Father Roland emerged from them altogether, as though he had been fighting a great fight, and had won.  There was a new lustre in his eyes.  David wondered whether it was a trick of his imagination that made him think the lines in the Missioner’s face were not so deep, that he stood straighter, and that there was at times a deep and vibrant note in his voice which he had not heard before.

During these days David was trying hard to make himself believe that no reasonable combination of circumstances could have associated Tavish with the girl whose picture he kept in the breast pocket of his coat.  He succeeded in a way.  He tried also to dissociate the face in the picture from a living personality.  In this he failed.  More and more the picture became a living thing for him.  He found a great comfort in his possession of it.  He made up his mind that he would keep it, and that its sweet face, always on the point of speaking to him, should go with him wherever he went, guiding him in a way—­a companion.  He found that, in hours when the darkness and the emptiness of his life oppressed him, the face gave him new hope, and he saw new light.  He ceased to think of it as a picture, and one night, speaking half aloud, he called her Little Sister.  She seemed nearer to him after that.  Unconsciously his hand learned the habit of going to his breast pocket when they were travelling, to make sure that she was there.  He would have suffered physical torment before he would have confided all this to any living soul, but the secret thought that was growing more and more in his heart he told to Baree.  The dog came into their camps now, but not until the Missioner and Mukoki had gone to bed.  He would cringe down near David’s feet, lying there motionless, oblivious of the other dogs and showing no inclination to disturb them.  He was there on the tenth night, looking steadily at David with his two bloodshot eyes, wondering what it was that his master held in his hands.  From the lips and eyes of the Girl, trembling and aglow in the firelight, David looked at Baree.  In the bloodshot eyes he saw the immeasurable faith of an adoring slave.  He knew that Baree would never leave him.  And the Girl, looking at him as steadily as Baree, would never leave him.  There was a tremendous thrill in the thought.  He leaned over the dog, and with a tremulous stir in his voice, he whispered: 

“Some day, boy, we may go to her.”

Baree shivered with joy.  David’s voice, whispering to him in that way, was like a caress, and he whined softly as he crept an inch or two nearer to his master’s feet.