February—­the Hunger Moon—­of this year was a month of great storm in the Northland.  This meant sickness, and a great deal of travel for Father Roland.  He and David were almost ceaselessly on the move, and its hardships gave the finishing touches to David’s education.  The wilderness, vast and empty as it was, no longer held a dread for him.  He had faced its bitterest storms; he had slept with the deep snow under his blankets; he had followed behind the Missioner through the blackest nights, when it had seemed as though no human soul could find its way; and he had looked on death.  Once they ran swiftly to it through a night blizzard; again it came, three in a family, so far to the west that it was out of Father Roland’s beaten trails; and again he saw it in the Madonna-like face of a young French girl, who had died clutching a cross to her breast.  It was this girl’s white face, sweet as a child’s and strangely beautiful in death, that stirred David most deeply.  She must have been about the age of the girl whose picture he carried next his heart.

Soon after this, early in March, he had definitely made up his mind.  There was no reason now why he should not go on.  He was physically fit.  Three months had hardened him until he was like a rock.  He believed that he had more than regained his weight.  He could beat Father Roland with either rifle or pistol, and in one day he had travelled forty miles on snow shoes.  That was when they had arrived just in time to save the life of Jean Croisset’s little girl, who lived over on the Big Thunder.  The crazed father had led them a mad race, but they had kept up with him.  And just in time.  There had not been an hour to lose.  After that Croisset and his half-breed wife would have laid down their lives for Father Roland—­and for him.  For the forest people had begun to accept him as a part of Father Roland; more and more he could see their growing love for him, their gladness when he came, their sorrow when he left, and it gave him what he thought of as a sort of filling satisfaction, something he had never quite fully experienced before in all his life.  He knew that he would come back to them again some day—­that, in the course of his life, he would spend a great deal of time among them.  He assured Father Roland of this.

The Missioner did not question him deeply about his “friends” in the western mountains.  But night after night he helped him to mark out a trail on the maps that he had at the Chateau, giving him a great deal of information which David wrote down in a book, and letters to certain good friends of his whom he would find along the way.  As the slush snow came, and the time when David would be leaving drew nearer, Father Roland could not entirely conceal his depression, and he spent more time in the room beyond the locked door.  Several times when about to enter the room he seemed to hesitate, as if there were something which he wanted to say to David.  Twice David thought he was almost on