"Oh!" he ejaculated with swift intuition. "I didn't know that you——"
"That'll do," the chief trader cut in. "You don't know anything yet. Try not to bother your head! Go on over to the Mission House!" He started Edwin Glyndon down the path.
Malcolm Macleod for the first time in twenty years had entered the chapel, not for the service but for the christening. Dunvegan left the store in charge of his mètis clerk and followed.
Was he going for the service? Perhaps, for he was a good man, and his religious creed was not a narrow one. Was he going for the christening also? Undoubtedly, for he was to stand sponsor for the child.
But in the depths of his being something cried a third reason.
Across the flat ground which served as the trading house yard lay the chapel. Roughly built after the fashion of northern missions, its very ruggedness suggested the strength of the faith for which it stood as symbol.
As Dunvegan approached the steps, people were already filing rapidly through the narrow doorway. A medley of types was there. Acorn-headed squaws pattered in. Morose Indians filed after. Women, children, and settlers drifted through the doorway. The Hudson's Bay men slouched over. Trappers and halfbreeds filled the single aisle. At the end of a rough bench in one front corner of the building sat the Factor, dour and unyielding. His head was bowed. Not a muscle of his body moved. Perched on the opposite end of that seat was Gaspard Follet, the Fool who had drifted in from nowhere to the post about a year before. It was the Fool's delight to go about hearing everything through dog-like ears, seeing everything through owlish eyes.
None could find out who or what he was, or whence he had come. Yet many at Oxford House contended that he was not so simple as he appeared. They declared that he was as wise as themselves and only kept up the sham to get an easy living. In proof of their contention these suspicious ones set forth his glibness of tongue when he pleased, for on occasion he could talk as well as Brochet.
As Dunvegan seated himself not far from Pierre Lazard and his niece, the mass began in solemn intonation.
"In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti," began Father Brochet, the mass book supported where the black cassock bulged over his portly waist.