did not look at me, the incredible, swift lameness of the strange priest. However it was, virtue had gone from me. I went on to the top of the hill without much spirit, and into the woods. And in the woods the kindliness had gone from the snowfall. The familiar rocks and stumps were unfamiliar, threatening. Half a dozen times I wondered what a certain thing could be that crouched before me in the dusk, only to find it a rotten log, a boulder in the bare bushes. Whether I hurried faster than I knew, for that unfriendliness around me, I did not trouble to think, but I was in a wringing sweat when I came out at my own clearing. As I crossed it to my door something startled me — what, I do not know. It was only a faint sound, far off, unknown, unrecognizable, but unpleasing. I forgot the door was latched (I leave my house by the window when I go out for the day) and pushed it sharply. It gave to my hand. There was no stranger inside, at least. An old Indian sat by the smouldering fire, with my dog at his feet.

"Andrew!" said I. "Is anything wrong?"

I had it always in my mind, when he came unexpectedly, that his wife might be dead. She had been smoking her pipe and dying these ten years back.

"I don' know." The old man smiled as he carefully shut and barred the door I had left ajar. "He want tobacco, so I come. You good man to me. You not home; I wait and make supper; my meat." He nodded proudly at the dull embers, and I saw he had an open pot on them, with a hacked-off joint of moose meat. "I make him stew."

He had done the same thing before, a sort of tacit payment for the tobacco he wanted. I was glad to see him,

for I was so hot and tired from my walk home that I knew I must be getting old very fast. It is not good to sit alone in a shack of a winter's night and know you are getting old very fast.

When there was no more moose meat we drew to the fire. Outside the wind had risen full of a queer wailing that sounded something like the cry of a loon. Isaw Andrew was not ready to start for home, though he had his hat on his head, and I realized I had not got out the tobacco. But when I put it on the table he let it lie.

"You keep me here to-night?" he asked, without a smile, almost anxiously. "Bad night, to-night. Too long way home.”

I was pleased enough, but I asked if the old woman would be lonely.

"He get tobacco to-morrow." (Andrew had but the masculine third person singular; and why have more, when that serves?) "Girl with him when I come. To

morrow

He listened for an instant to the wind, stared into the fire, and threw so mighty a bark-covered log on it that the flames flew up the chimney.

"Red deer come back to this country!" exclaimed he irrelevantly. "Come down from Maine. Wolves come back, too, over the north ice. I s'pose smell 'em? I don' know."

I nodded. I knew both things, having nothing but such things to know in the corner of God's world I call my own.

Andrew filled his pipe. If I had not been used to him, I could never have seen his eyes were not on it, but on

mę,

"To-morrow," he harked back abruptly, "we go 'way. Break up here; go down Lake Mooin."

"Why?" I was astounded. He had not shifted camp for years.

"I say red deer back. Not good here any more."

"But" I wondered for half a minute if he could be afraid of the few stray wolves which had certainly come, from Heaven knew how far, the winter before. But I knew that was nonsense. It must be something about the deer. How was I to know what his mind got out of them?

"No good," he repeated. He lifted his long brown hand solemnly, - "No good here. You come too."

I laughed. "I'm too old! Andrew, who was the strange priest I met to-day crossing the upland farm?" "Father Moore - no? Father Underhill?"

“No. Thin, tired-looking, lame.”

"Lame! Drag leg? Hurry?" I had never seen him so excited, never seen him stop in full career as now. “I don' know." It was a different man speaking. "Strange priest, not belong here. You come Lake Mooin with me."

"Tell me about the priest first' was useless as I ordered it.

though I knew it

He spat into the fire. "Lame dog, lame woman, lame priest — all no good!" said he. “What time late you sit up here?"

Not late that night, assuredly. I was more tired than I wanted to own. But long after I had gone to my bunk in the corner I saw Andrew's wrinkled face listening in the firelight. He played with something in his hand, and I knew there was that in his mind which he would

not say. The wind had died away; there was no more loon-calling, or whatever it was. I fell asleep to the sound of the fire, the soft pat of snow on the window. But the straight old figure in my chair sat rigid, rigid.

I opened my eyes to broad, dull daylight. Andrew and the tobacco were gone. But on the table was something I did not see till I was setting my breakfast there: three bits of twig, two uprights and a crosspiece; a lakeshore pebble; a bit of charred wood. I supposed it was something about coming back from Lake Mooin to sit by my fire again, and I swept the picture-writing away as I put down my teapot. Afterwards I was glad.

I began to wonder if it would ever stop snowing. Andrew's track from my door was filled up already. I sat down to my fly-tying and my books, with a pipe in my mouth and an old tune at my heart, when I heard a hare shriek out. I will have no traps on my grant, a beggarly hundred acres, not cleared, and never will be; I have no farmer blood, and for a moment I distrusted Andrew. I put on my boots and went out.

The dog plumped into the woods ahead of me, and came back. The hare shrieked again, and was cut off in mid-cry.

"Indian is Indian!" said I savagely. "Andrew!" But no one answered.

The dog fell behind me, treading in my steps.

In the thick spruces there was nothing; nothing in the opener hardwood, till I came out on a clear place under a big tree, with the snow falling over into my boot-legs. There, stooping in the snow, with his back to me, was a man - the priest of yesterday. Priest or no priest, I would not have it; and I said so.

He smiled tightly, his soutane gathered up around him.

"I do not snare. Look!" He moved aside, and I saw the bloody snow, the dead hare. "Something must have killed it and been frightened away. It is very odd."

He looked round him, as I did, for the fox or wild-cat tracks that were not there. Except for my boot-prints from my side, and his uneven track from his, there was not a mark on the snow. It might have been a wild-cat which jumped to some tree, but even so it was queer. "Very odd," he said again. "Will you have the hare?" I shook my head. I had no fancy for it.

"It is good meat."

I had turned to see where my dog had gone, but I looked back at the sound of his voice, and was ashamed. Pinched, tired, bedraggled, he held up the hare; and his eyes were sharp with hunger.

I looked for no more phantom tracks; I forgot he had sinned about the hare; I was ashamed that I, well fed, had shamed him, empty, by wondering foolishly about wild cats. Yet even so I had less fancy for that hare than ever.

"Let it lie," said I. "I have better meat, and I suppose the beasts are hungry as well as we. If you are not hurried, come in and have a bite with me. I see few strangers out here. You would do me a kindness."

A very strange look came on his face. "A kindness!" he exclaimed. "I do a kindness!"

He seemed so taken aback that I wondered if he were not a little mad. I do not like madmen, but I could not turn round on him.

"You are off the track to anywhere," I explained.