Apart from these spiritual perplexities he found himself troubled over practical matters.  His creed of blind trust in Providence did not seem so sound and true.  He found himself dreading the hour when his swarthy guides would leave him to his lonely quarters.  He beheld terrible vistas of loneliness, a state of feeling to which he had always been a stranger.  He foresaw a series of vain struggles over that rusty cookstove.  It did him no good to recall that he had been told in the beginning that he would occupy the mission quarters, that he must provide himself with ample supplies of food, that he might have to prepare that food himself.

His mind had simply been unable to envisage the sordid reality of these things until he faced them.  Now that he did face them they seemed more terrible than they really were.

Lying wakeful on his bed that night, listening to the snoring of the half-breeds on the floor, to the faint murmur of a wind that stirred the drooping boughs of the spruce, he reviewed his enthusiasms and his tenuous plans—­and slipped so far into the slough of despond as to call himself a misguided fool for rearing so fine a structure of dreams upon so slender a foundation as this appointment to a mission in the outlying places.  He blamed the Board of Missions.  Obviously that august circle of middle-aged and worthy gentlemen were sadly ignorant of the North.

Whereupon, recognizing the trend of his thought, the Reverend Wesley Thompson turned upon himself with a bitter accusation of self-seeking, and besought earnestly the gift of an humble spirit from Above.

But the deadly pin-points of discontent and discouragement were still pricking him when he fell asleep.

CHAPTER V

FURTHER ACQUAINTANCE

Mike Breyette took a last look over his shoulder as the current and the thrust of two paddles carried the canoe around the first bend.  Thompson stood on the bank, watching them go.

“Bagosh, dat man hees gon’ have dam toff time, Ah theenk,” Breyette voiced his conviction.  “Feller lak heem got no beesness for be here ’tall.”

“He didna have tae come here,” MacDonald answered carelessly.  “An’ he disna have tae stay.”

“Oh, sure, Ah know dat, me,” Mike agreed.  “All same hees feel bad.”

Which was a correct, if brief, estimate of Mr. Thompson’s emotions as he stood on the bank watching the gray canoe slip silently out of his ken.  That gave him a keener pang, a more complete sense of loss, than he had ever suffered at parting with any one or anything.  It was to him like taking a last look before a leap in the dark.  Thrown entirely upon his own resources he felt wholly inadequate, found his breast filled with incomprehensible misgivings.  The work he had come there to do seemed to have lost much of its force as a motive, as an inspiration.  He felt himself—­so far as his mission to Lone Moose was concerned—­in the anomalous position of one compelled to make bricks without straw.