Father Gautier, a worthy priest, one reproved him with instances of concrete perdition.  He never reproved him again.

“Eet may be so, mon pere,” he made answer.  “An’ Ah t’ink Ah go troo hell a-snappin’, lak de hemlock troo de fire.  Eh, mon pere?”

But all bad things come to an end as well as good, and so with Black Leclere.  On the summer low water, in a poling boat, he left McDougall for Sunrise.  He left McDougall in company with Timothy Brown, and arrived at Sunrise by himself.  Further, it was known that they had quarrelled just previous to pulling out; for the Lizzie, a wheezy ten-ton stern-wheeler, twenty-four hours behind, beat Leclere in by three days.  And when he did get in, it was with a clean-drilled bullet-hole through his shoulder muscle, and a tale of ambush and murder.

A strike had been made at Sunrise, and things had changed considerably.  With the infusion of several hundred gold-seekers, a deal of whisky, and half-a-dozen equipped gamblers, the missionary had seen the page of his years of labour with the Indians wiped clean.  When the squaws became preoccupied with cooking beans and keeping the fire going for the wifeless miners, and the bucks with swapping their warm furs for black bottles and broken time-pieces, he took to his bed, said “Bless me” several times, and departed to his final accounting in a rough-hewn, oblong box.  Whereupon the gamblers moved their roulette and faro tables into the mission house, and the click of chips and clink of glasses went up from dawn till dark and to dawn again.

Now Timothy Brown was well beloved among these adventurers of the North.  The one thing against him was his quick temper and ready fist—­a little thing, for which his kind heart and forgiving hand more than atoned.  On the other hand, there was nothing to atone for Black Leclere.  He was “black,” as more than one remembered deed bore witness, while he was as well hated as the other was beloved.  So the men of Sunrise put an antiseptic dressing on his shoulder and haled him before Judge Lynch.

It was a simple affair.  He had quarrelled with Timothy Brown at McDougall.  With Timothy Brown he had left McDougall.  Without Timothy Brown he had arrived at Sunrise.  Considered in the light of his evilness, the unanimous conclusion was that he had killed Timothy Brown.  On the other hand, Leclere acknowledged their facts, but challenged their conclusion, and gave his own explanation.  Twenty miles out of Sunrise he and Timothy Brown were poling the boat along the rocky shore.  From that shore two rifle-shots rang out.  Timothy Brown pitched out of the boat and went down bubbling red, and that was the last of Timothy Brown.  He, Leclere, pitched into the bottom of the boat with a stinging shoulder.  He lay very quiet, peeping at the shore.  After a time two Indians stuck up their heads and came out to the water’s edge, carrying between them a birch-bark canoe.  As