And so, little by little, the patient priest got the factor’s view-point, and learned the great secret of the centuries of success that has attended the Hudson’s Bay Company in the far North.

And little by little the two men, without preaching, revealed to the Indians and the Oriental the mystery of Life—­vegetable life at first—­of death and life beyond.  They showed them the miracle of the wheat.

On the first day of June they put into a tiny grave a grain of wheat.  They told the Blind Ones that the berry would suffer death, decay, but out of that grave would spring fresh new flags that would grow and blow, fanned by the balmy chinook winds, and wet by the dews of heaven.

On the first day of September they harvested seventy-two stalks and threshed from the seventy-two stalks seven thousand two hundred grains of wheat.  They showed all this to the Blind Ones and they saw.  The cure explained that we, too, would go down and die, but live again in another life, in a fairer world.

The Cree accepted it all in absolute silence, but the Oriental, with his large imagination, exclaimed, pointing to the tiny heap of golden grain:  “Me ketchem die, me sleep, byme by me wake up in China—­seven thousand—­heap good.”  The cure was about to explain when the factor put up a warning finger.  “Don’t cut it too fine, father,” said he.  “They’re getting on very well.”

That was a happy summer for the two men, working together in the garden in the cool dawn and chatting in the long twilight that lingers on the Peace until 11 P.M.  Alas! as the summer waned the factor saw that his friend was failing fast.  He could walk but a short distance now without resting, and when the red rose of the Upper Athabasca caught the first cold kiss of Jack Frost, the good priest took to his bed.  Wing You, the accomplished cook, did all he could to tempt him to eat and grow strong again.  Dunraven watched from day to day for an opportunity to “do something”; but in vain.  The faithful factor made daily visits to the bedside of his sick friend.  As the priest, who was still in the springtime of his life, drew nearer to the door of death, he talked constantly of his beloved mother in far-off France—­a thing unusual for a priest, who is supposed to burn his bridges when he leaves the world for the church.

Often when he talked thus, the factor wanted to ask his mother’s name and learn where she lived, but always refrained.

Late in the autumn the factor was called to Edmonton for a general conference of all the factors in the employ of the Honorable Company of gentlemen adventurers trading into Hudson’s Bay.  With a heavy heart he said good-bye to the failing priest.

When he had come within fifty miles of Chinook, on the return trip, he was wakened at midnight by Dunraven, who had come out to ask him to hurry up as the cure was dying, but wanted to speak to the factor first.

Without a word the Englishman got up and started forward, Dunraven leading on the second lap of his “century.”