"At Fort George, Monsieur Hunter who has been lately ordered there to the Protestant church, is a medical missionary. We learned this to-day when the Christmas mail arrived. But they were five days coming from Fort George with their poor dogs. It will take you eight days to make the round trip and even in a week it may be too late—too late——" He finished with a groan.
"Father, I will go and bring this missionary. I shall return before a week."
"God speed you, my son! The mail team is worn out and we were sending a team of the Crees, but they have no dogs like yours."
Mrs. Gillies led Marcel into Julie Breton's room and left them. On her white bed, with wayward masses of dusky hair tumbled on her pillow, lay Julie Breton, moaning low in the delirium of high fever. On a pillow at her side lay her bandaged left arm. As Marcel looked long at the flushed face with its parted lips murmuring incoherently, the muscles of his jaw flexed through the frost-blackened skin as he clenched his teeth at his helplessness to aid her—this stricken girl for whom he would have given his life.
Then he knelt, and lifting the limp hand on the coverlet, pressed it long to his lips, rose, and went out.
When Mrs. Gillies returned she found the right hand of Julie Breton wet—and understood.
First feeding and loosing his dogs in the stockade Marcel hurried to the trade-house. There he obtained from Jules five days' rations of whitefish for the dogs, and some pemmican, hard bread and tea.
"You t'ink you can mak' For' George een t'ree day?" Jules shook his head doubtfully. "Eet nevaire been made een t'ree day, Jean."
"No one evair before on de East Coast travel as I travel, Jules," was the low reply.
Gillies, Père Breton and McCain, talking earnestly, entered the room to overhear Marcel's words.