neither of these. But the grip of his hand had been like the grip of an
iron man.

In the third coach David sat down in an empty seat. For the first time
in many months there was a thrill of something in his blood which he
could not analyze. What had the Little Missioner meant when, with that
wonderful grip of his knotted hand, he had said, "I've learned how a man
can find himself when he's down and out"? And what had he meant when he
added, "Will you come with me"? Go with him? Where?

There came a sudden crash of the storm against the window, a shrieking
blast of wind and snow, and David stared into the night. He could see
nothing. It was a black chaos outside. But he could hear. He could hear
the wailing and the moaning of the wind in the trees, and he almost
fancied that it was not darkness alone that shut out his vision, but the
thick walls of the forest.

Was that what Father Roland had meant? Had he asked him to go with him
into _that_?

His face touched the cold glass. He stared harder. That morning Father
Roland had boarded the train at a wilderness station and had taken a
seat beside him. They had become acquainted. And later the Little
Missioner had told him how those vast forests reached without a break
for hundreds of miles into the mysterious North. He loved them, even as
they lay cold and white outside the windows. There was gladness in his
voice when he had said that he was going back into them. They were a
part of _his_ world--a world of "mystery and savage glory" he had
called it, stretching for a thousand miles to the edge of the Arctic,
and fifteen hundred miles from Hudson's Bay to the western mountains.