Los Angeles herald., 1908-11-29


streaming over the land. As the passed
the ewes OF two men a high hill fol-
lowed it. and the look OF one was like a
light in window to a lost traveller 1t had
in the sense of home and the tale OF journey done
Such Journey this man had made few have ever
attempted, and fewer accomplished. To the farther
most regions of and ice, where the shoulder OF
continent juts into the northwestern Arctic seas,
he had travelled on foot and alone, for his dogs,
and for Indian guides who, and then, shepherded
him from point to point. The vast ice-hummocks had
been his housing pemmican the raw flesh of fish, and
even the fat and oil of seals had been his food Ever
and ever through long months the everlasting white
glitter of the snow and ice, ever and ever the cold
stars the coudless sky the at full, like a
white sickle set to warn him that his life must be
mown like grass
Where he had gone other had been of white
men from the Western lands though from across the
wide Pacific from the Eastern world adventures and
eSiles had once visited what is known the
Yukon Valley So this man. browsing in the library
of his grandfather, an Eastern scholar had come to
know and for love of adventure and because of tho
tale of a valley of gold and treasure to be had, and
because he had been ruined by bad investments, had
made journey like any one man had essayed
before. And his way up to those regions where
the veil before the face of God is very thin and fine
and mems hearts glow within them, though all the
gealed about them and bird floats in the air
or a tree in loneliness stretches out gaun to the
Sprinq-on his way to the desert of white where no
oasis was save the unguessed deposit of great hui
man dream that his soul could feel but his eyes could
not behold he had seen the face of girl which had
haunted him on his austere pilgrimage. Her voice
so sweet a voice that it rang like mufed silver in his
ears till in the of the everlasting theatre of the
Pole the stars seemed repeat it through millions
--fAa~ o,,Ie OTtar The fTOcf
hushed it to his ears-it had said to him late and
early, so that he was cheered when he would have
wept in misery, and raised when he would have fallen
you must come back with the swallows"
1t had been but an acquaintance of FIVE days while
he fitted out for his expedition but in this brief tc
it had sunk deep into his mind that life was now
thing to cherish and that he must indeed come back;
though he had left England caring little if, in the
peril and danger of his quest, he returned He
had been Indifferent to his fate till he to the
Valley of the Saskatchewan, to the town lying at the
foot of the maple hill beside the great northern stream,
and saw the girl whose life was knit with the far
north whose mothers heart buried in the great
wastes where Sir John Frankins expedition was lost
for her husband had been of the Inflated il not
unhappy band of lovers of their kind and of that civil
ration for which they had rsked all and lost all save
immortality Hither they had come after he had been
away the icy plains, and the settlement had
outer edge of house and field ever stepping norhward
Here with small income but high hearts and quiet
souls they had lived and labored, angels OF mercy and
kindness among pioneers, as he whom they mourned
had been before them
And when the man, who again looked down in
safety upon the little town. his face northward TO
an unknown destination, she and her daughter had
prayed as the mother did in the old days when the
daughter was but babe at her knee, and it not
yet certain that Franklin and his had been cast
away forever.
And he had returned He was now looking down
into the valley where the village lay Far far
two days march away, he could see the cluster of
houses, and the glow of the the tin spre of the
little Mission Church where he had heard the girl and
her mother sing till the hearts of all swept by
feeling and ravshed by the desire for the peace of the
Holy Grail" The village was, in truth, but days
march away from him. but he not alone, and the
journey could not be fastened Beside him, his eyes
also upon the sunset and the village, a in
costume half-trapper, haf-Indian, with bushy gray
beard and massive frame and a distant sorrowful
look, like that of whose soul tuned to past
suffering AS he sat his head sunk his breast his
elbow resting a stump of pine-the token of
progressive cvilizaton-his chin upon his hand he
looked like the figure of Moses made immortal by
Michael Angelo. But his strength not like that
of the young man beside him, who was thirty years
younger When he walked it as who had no
destination who had haven toward which to travel
who journeyed as to whom the world is a wilder
ness, and one tent one hut is the another,
and none is home
Like two ships meeting hull TO hull on the wide seas
where few miles of water will hide them from each
other whose ports are thousands Of miles apart whose
courses are not the same they had met the elder
man. sick and worn and near death, in the poor
hospitality of an Indians tepee John Bckersteth had
uursed him back to strength, and had brought him
southwark with him, silent companion who spoke in
nonosyllables who had conversation at all of the
past and little of the present but who was woods
man and an Arctic traveller of the most expert kind
Who knew by instinct where the best places for shelter
and for sleeping might be found, who never com
blamed was wonderful with the dogs. of whom only