winter.  A hundred dollars, in Winnipeg, would buy as much as an Indian trapper could get at the Post for a thousand dollars’ worth of fur, and five hundred dollars is a good catch.  It is terrible, but what can I do?  I dare not buy their furs and sell them for my people, because the Company would blacklist the whole lot and it would be a great calamity in the end.  But if I had money—­if I could do it with my own....”

David had been thinking of that.  In the late January snow two teams went down to Thoreau in place of one.  Mukoki had charge of them, and with him went an even half of what David had brought with him—­fifteen hundred dollars in gold certificates.

“If I live I’m going to make them a Christmas present of twice that amount each year,” he said.  “I can afford it.  I fancy that I shall take a great pleasure in it, and that occasionally I shall return into this country to make a visit.”

It was the first time that he had spoken as though he would not remain with the Missioner indefinitely.  But the conviction that the time was not far away when he would be leaving him had been growing within him steadily.  He kept it to himself.  He fought against it even.  But it grew.  And, curiously enough, it was strongest when Father Roland was in the locked room playing softly on the violin.  David never mentioned the room.  He feigned an indifference to its very existence.  And yet in spite of himself the mystery of it became an obsession with him.  Something within it seemed to reach out insistently and invite him in, like a spirit chained there by the Missioner himself, crying for freedom.  One night they returned to the Chateau through a blizzard from the cabin of a half-breed whose wife was sick, and after their supper the Missioner went into the mystery-room.  He played the violin as usual.  But after that there was a long silence.  When Father Roland came out, and seated himself opposite David at the small table on which their books were scattered, David received a shock.  Clinging to the Missioner’s shoulder, shimmering like a polished silken thread in the lampglow, was a long, shining hair—­a woman’s hair.  With an effort David choked back the word of amazement in his throat, and began turning over the pages of a book.  And then suddenly, the Missioner saw that silken thread.  David heard his quick breath.  He saw, without raising his eyes, the slow, almost stealthy movement of his companion’s fingers as he plucked the hair from his arm and shoulder, and when David looked up the hair was gone, and one of Father Roland’s hands was closed tightly, so tightly that the veins stood out on it.  He rose from the table, and again went into the room beyond the locked door.  David’s heart was beating like an unsteady hammer.  He could not quite account for the strange effect this incident had upon him.  He wanted more than ever to see that room beyond the locked door.