“It was a terrible fight; and when it was over the beast lay on the floor, bleeding and dead.  Gentlemen, the Supreme Arbiter broke A pipe-stem, and sent the husband back in time!”

No one spoke as Father Charles drew his coat still closer about him.  Above the tumult of the storm another sound came to them—­the distant, piercing shriek of a whistle.

“The husband dug a grave through the snow and in the frozen earth,” concluded Father Charles; “and late that afternoon they packed up a bundle and set out together for the settlement.  The storm overtook them.  They had dropped for the last time into the snow, about to die in each other’s arms, when I put my light in the window.  That is all; except that I knew them for several years afterward, and that the old happiness returned to them—­and more, for the child was born, a miniature of its mother.  Then they moved to another part of the wilderness, and I to still another.  So you see, gentlemen, what a snow-bound train may mean, for if an old sea tale, a broken pipe-stem—­”

The door at the end of the smoking-room opened suddenly.  Through it there came a cold blast of the storm, a cloud of snow, and a man.  He was bundled in a great bearskin coat, and as he shook out its folds his strong, ruddy face smiled cheerfully at those whom he had interrupted.

Then, suddenly, there came a change in his face.  The merriment went from it.  He stared at Father Charles.  The priest was rising, his face more tense and whiter still, his hands reaching out to the stranger.

In another moment the stranger had leaped to him—­not to shake his hands, but to clasp the priest in his great arms, shaking him, and crying out a strange joy, while for the first time that night the pale face of Father Charles was lighted up with a red and joyous glow.

After several minutes the newcomer released Father Charles, and turned to the others with a great hearty laugh.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “you must pardon me for interrupting you like this.  You will understand when I tell you that Father Charles is an old friend of mine, the dearest friend I have on earth, and that I haven’t seen him for years.  I was his first penitent!”

PETER GOD

Peter God was a trapper.  He set his deadfalls and fox-baits along the edge of that long, slim finger of the Great Barren, which reaches out of the East well into the country of the Great Bear, far to the West.  The door of his sapling-built cabin opened to the dark and chilling gray of the Arctic Circle; through its one window he could watch the sputter and play of the Northern Lights; and the curious hissing purr of the Aurora had grown to be a monotone in his ears.

Whence Peter God had come, and how it was that he bore the strange name by which he went, no man had asked, for curiosity belongs to the white man, and the nearest white men were up at Fort MacPherson, a hundred or so miles away.