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_.