He had no time to ask himself whether he was enjoying these new sensations; he felt only the thrill of them as Thoreau and the Indian came up out of the night with their lanterns.

In Thoreau himself, as he stood a moment later in the glow of the lanterns, was embodied the living, breathing spirit of this new world into which David's leap out of the baggage car had plunged him.

He was picturesquely of the wild; his face was darkly bearded; his ivory-white teeth shining as he smiled a welcome; his tricoloured, Hudson's Bay coat of wool, with its frivolous red fringes, thrown open at the throat; the bushy tail of his fisher-skin cap hanging over a shoulder--and with these things his voice rattling forth, in French and half Indian, his joy that Father Roland was not dead but had arrived at last.

Behind him stood the Indian--his face without expression, dark, shrouded--a bronze sphinx of mystery.

But his eyes shone as the Little Missioner greeted him--shone so darkly and so full of fire that for a moment David was fascinated by them.