At his desk in the north window Crossman heard the hail, and went to the door. At sight of the singular padded figure his face lifted in a grin. "Come in, Father," he exclaimed; "be welcome." "Ah," said the Priest, his pink face shining with benevolence, "I thank you. Where is my friend, that good Jakapa? I am on my monthly circuit, and I thought to see what happens at the Falls of the Bijou." He stepped inside the cabin and advanced to the stove with outstretched hands. "I have not the pleasure," he said tentatively. "My name is Crossman," the other answered. "I am new to the North." "Ah, so? I am the Curé of Portage Dernier, but, as you see, I must wander after my lambs--very great goats are they, many of them, and the winter brings the logging. So I, too, take to the timber. My team," he waved an introducing hand at the two great cross-bred sled-dogs that unhooked from their traces had followed him in and now sat gravely on their haunches, staring at the fire. "You are an overseer for the company?" suggested the Curé, politely curious--"or perhaps you cruise?" Crossman shook his head. "No, _mon père_. I came up here to get well." "Ah," said the Curé, sympathetically tapping his lung. "In this air of the evergreens and the new wood, in the clean cold--it is the world's sanatorium--you will soon be yourself again." Crossman smiled painfully. "Perhaps _here_"--he laid a long, slender finger on his broad chest--"but I heal not easily of the great world sickness--the War. It has left its mark! The War, the great malady of the world." "You are right." Meditatively the Priest threw aside his cape and began unfastening the safety-pins that held up his cassock. "You say well. It strikes at the _heart_." Crossman nodded. "Yet it passes, my son, and Nature heals; as long as the hurt be in Nature, Nature will take care. And you have come where Nature and God work together. In this great living North Country, for sick bodies and sick souls, the good God has His good sun and His clean winds." He nodded reassurance, and Crossman's dark face cleared of its brooding. "Sit down, Father." He advanced a chair. "So," murmured the Curé, continuing his thought as he sank into the embrace of thong and withe. "So you were in the War, and did you take hurt there, my son?" Crossman nodded. "Trench pneumonia, and then the rat at the lung; but of shock, something also. But I think it was not concussion, as the doctors said, but _soul_-shock. It has left me, Father, like Mohammed's coffin, suspended. I think I have lost my grip on the world--and not found my hold on another." "Shock of the soul," the Priest ruminated. "Your soul is bruised, my son. We must take care of it." His voice trailed off. There was silence in the little office broken only by the yawn and snuffle of the sled-dogs.