“Yes, I will rest now—­a little.  I have been eight hundred miles over the ice, with dogs, since January 1.”

The Boy looked at him with something very like reverence.  Here was a man who could give you tips!

“You have travelled abroad, too,” the Colonel rather stated than asked.

“I spent a good deal of my youth in France and Germany.”

“Educated over there?”

“Well, I am a Johns Hopkins man, but I may say I found my education in Rome.  Speaking of education”—­he turned to the other priests—­“I have greatly advanced my grammar since we parted.”  Father Brachet answered with animation in French, and the conversation went forward for some minutes in that tongue.  The discussion was interrupted to introduce the other new face, at the bottom of the table, to the Big Chimney men:  “Resident Fazzer Roget of ze Kuskoquim mission.”

“That is the best man on snow-shoes in Central Alaska,” said Father Richmond low to the Colonel, nodding at the Kuskoquim priest.

“And he knows more of two of ze native dialects here zan anyone else,” added the Father Superior.

“You must forgive our speaking much of the Indian tongues,” said Father Richmond.  “We are all making dictionaries and grammars; we have still to translate much of our religious instruction, and the great variety in dialect of the scattered tribes keeps us busy with linguistic studies.”

“Tomorrow you must see our schools,” said Father Brachet.

But the Boy answered quickly that they could not afford the time.  He was surprised at the Colonel’s silence; but the Boy didn’t know what the Colonel’s feet felt like.

Kentucky ain’t sorry, he said to himself, to have a back to his chair, and to eat off china again.  Kentucky’s a voluptuary!  I’ll have to drag him away by main force; and the Boy allowed Father Richmond to help him yet more abundantly to the potatoes and cabbage grown last summer in the mission garden!

It was especially the vegetables that lent an element of luxury to the simple meal.  The warm room, the excellent food, better cooked than any they had had for seven months, produced a gentle somnolence.  The thought of the inviting look of the white-covered bed upstairs lay like a balm on the spirits of men not born to roughing it.  As the travellers said an early and grateful good-night, the Boy added sleepily something about the start at dawn.

Father Brachet answered, “Morning will bring counsel, my son.  I sink ze bleezzar-r will not let us lose you so soon.”

They overslept themselves, and they knew it, in that way the would-be early riser does, before ever he looks into the accusing face of his watch.  The Boy leapt out of bed.

“Hear that?” The wind was booming among the settlement buildings.  “Sounds as if there was weather outside.”  A glance between the curtains showed the great gale at its height.  The snow blew level in sheets and darkened the air.