“Is it the clang of the wild geese? 
    Is it the Indian’s yell,
  That lends to the call of the north wind
    The tones of a far-off bell?

  “The voyageur smiles as he listens
    To the sound that grows apace. 
  Well he knows the vesper ringing
    Of the bells of St. Boniface.

  “The bells of the Roman mission—­
    That call from their turrets twain
  To the boatman on the river,
    To the hunter on the plain.”

“To the hunter on the plain,” said Shag’s thoughts, over and over.  Perhaps the hunter was his trapper father, who with noiseless step and wary eye was this very moment stalking some precious fur-bearing animal, whose pelt would bring a good price at the great Hudson’s Bay trading-post; a price that would go toward keeping his son at this Eastern college for many terms.  Shag’s grey-brown eyes grew dreamy.  He saw the vast prairies sweeping away into the West, and his father, a mere speck on the horizon, the ever-present “gun,” the silent moccasin, the scarlet sash, the muffled step, all proclaiming “the hunter on the plain.”

The prayers were ended and Shag found that he was not really watching his father coming up some prairie trail, but that before him was a different type of man, Professor Warwick, whose studious eyes now required glasses to see through, and whose hand was white and silken in its touch—­how hopelessly lost this little man would be should circumstances turn him forth to gain his livelihood at hunting and trapping.  Old Larocque himself would hardly be more incongruous teaching in this college.  It was this thought that made Shag smile as he rose from his knees, with the echoes of the bells of St. Boniface haunting his heart.

Then the chapel emptied, each boy on breakfast bent.  “Cop” Billings still remained at the Indian’s elbow, but at the door one or two of the masters stopped to greet the new arrival, and a tall, remarkably handsome lad waited, apparently to speak.  He was a boy that anyone would pick from a crowd of fifty—­straight, well-built, with fine, strong, thin hands, and a face with contradictory eyes, for they twinkled and danced as if nothing so serious as thoughtfulness ever disturbed them.  As the two boys approached him he stepped impulsively forward, extending his hand to Shag with the words, “May I shake hands with you and say hello?”

“Thank you;” replied Shag; “the way you boys are treating me makes me feel less strange.”

“Oh, no one feels strange here,” laughed the handsome boy.  “You must try and like us.  So you’re from Manitoba, are you?”

“Yes, Red River,” answered Shag.

“Father’s been up there, and grandfather, too,” said the other, falling in step with the two boys on their way to the dining-room.  “Come up to my ranch some time soon—­to-night if you like.  Cop will bring you,” he added with a parting nod, as he left them for his own table at the other side of the room.