The woman subsided, but Rainy took his place beside her, and relieved her of two knives that she made an effort to reach.
“Now, go on, Seguis.”
“I didn't know, sir,” said the half-breed, “until the other day, that—what I was. Then, Donald McTavish told me, by accident or design, I don't know which. I asked my mother, and she confessed that Donald had spoken the truth. So great was her elation at the success of her claims for me that she showed me that certificate, signed by the missionary. I was as delighted as she.
“Then the next day she told me how she got it, and since then I have been in hell. Oh, sir, you don't know what an existence like mine can be. All my life I have been torn by two natures. I have wanted things that a man of my standing has no right to wish. I have brains, I have intelligence; I want to rise above my handicaps—to be something besides a common half-breed rover of the woods. I headed the free-traders because it gave me an opportunity to do something for myself. When my mother showed me that paper I thought my way was clear, and that I had not worked in vain. But—but, when she told me how she got it—then, the struggle started.
“I am a McTavish, sir, and I am proud of it; but it is that honorable blood that is this minute sending me back to the life I hate, and the oblivion I loathe. I can't lie here, and see you and Captain McTavish ruined. The Indian part of me says, 'Yes, take it; no one will ever know.' But the McTavish of me rebels, and I can't do it.”
“Yes, yes,” cried the commissioner feverishly, “but about the certificate? What about that?”
“I was getting to it, sir. Years ago, I don't know how many, my mother and I were living in a little cabin by a lake during the winter. I was small then, and did not realize the significance of things. One night, we heard faint noises in the woods near by, and my mother went out to see what made them. She found Burns Riley, the missionary, half-insane with suffering, his features frozen, and almost at the point of starvation. He had had a similar adventure to Captain McTavish's this winter.
“My mother saw his plight, and the vague plan that had been in her mind took shape. There, in the snow, she forced the missionary at the price of his miserable life to agree to write that certificate, and, as soon as his fingers could hold the pen and dip it in the soot-ink of the chimney, he did it, and before him sat the food that his words would purchase. Burns Riley was a square man, but his life was at stake, for my mother would have turned him out into the snow as he was, if he had not done as she wished—and he knew it.”
“But why didn't he come and tell me?” demanded McTavish.
“Because he was on his way to a mission, at Fort Chimo, on the Koksook River, near Ungava Bay. He didn't come back until shortly before he died, and he never saw you. No doubt he was afraid to trust the story of the disgrace of his cloth to a messenger. That, Mr. McTavish, is the story of the certificate. I'm glad I've told it; I'm glad I've relinquished my claims; I'm glad that I am still as honest as the best blood in me. But now,” he added drearily, “what is there for me? Commissioner, you have done me the irreparable wrong of making me what I am. All our two lives there can never be any righting of that wrong. I am a half-breed, and must forever yearn vainly for better things that I know I can never attain.”