Five years, and he was an old man now.  A long and dreary wait it would be for him.  But for youth, the glorious youth of Roger and Nada, it would seem very short when in later years they looked back upon it.  And for a time as he contemplated the long span of life that lay behind him, and the briefness of that which lay ahead, a yearning selfishness possessed the soul of Father John, an almost savage desire to hold those five years away from the violation of the law—­not alone for Nada’s sake and Roger McKay’s —­but for his own.  In this twilight of a tragic life a great happiness had come to him in the love of these two, and thought of its menace, its desecration by a pitiless and mistaken justice, roused in him something that was more like the soul of a fighting man than the spirit of a missioner of God.

Vainly he tried to stamp out the evil of this resentment, for evil he believed it to be.  And shame possessed him when he saw the sweet glory in Nada’s face later that morning, and the happiness that was in Roger McKay’s.  Yet was that aching place in his heart, and the hidden fear which he could not vanquish.

And that day, it seemed to him, his lips gave voice to lies.  For, being Sunday, the wilderness folk gathered from miles about, and he preached to them in the little mission house which they had helped him to build of logs in the clearing.  Partly he spoke in Cree, and partly in English, and his message was one of hope and inspiration, pointing out the silver linings that always lay beyond the darkness of clouds.  To McKay, holding Nada’s hand in his own as they listened, Father John’s words brought a great and comforting faith.  And in Nada’s eyes and voice as she led in Cree the song, “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” he heard and saw the living fire of that faith, and had Breault come in through the open doorway then he would have accepted him calmly as the beginning of that sacrifice which he had made up his mind to make.

In the afternoon, when the wilderness people had gone, Father John heard again the story of Yellow Bird, for Nada was ever full of questions about her, and for the first time the Missioner learned of the inspiration which the Indian woman’s sorcery had been to Jolly Roger.

“It was foolish,” McKay apologized, in spite of the certainty and faith which he saw shining in Nada’s eyes.  “But—­it helped me.”

“It wasn’t foolish,” replied Nada quickly.  “Yellow Bird did come to me.  And—­she knew.”

“No true faith is folly,” said Father John, in his soft, low voice.  “The great fact is that Yellow Bird believed.  She was inspired by a great confidence, and confidence and faith give to the mind a power which it is utterly incapable of possessing without them.  I believe in the mind, children.  I believe that in some day to come it will reach those heights where it will unlock the mystery of life itself to us.  I have seen many strange things in my forty-odd years in the wilderness, and not the least of these have been the achievements of the primitive mind.  And it seems to me, Roger, that Yellow Bird told you much that has come true.  And has it occurred to you—­”