'
Father Roubeau removed his pipe and reflected. 'The man speaks
true, but my soul is not vexed with that. The lie and the penance
stand with God; but--but--'
'What then? Your hands are clean.' 'Not so. Kid, I have thought
much, and yet the thing remains. I knew, and made her go back.'
The clear note of a robin rang out from the wooden bank, a
partridge drummed the call in the distance, a moose lunged
noisily in the eddy; but the twain smoked on in silence.
The Wisdom of the Trail
Sitka Charley had achieved the impossible. Other Indians might
have known as much of the wisdom of the trail as he did; but he
alone knew the white man's wisdom, the honor of the trail, and
the law. But these things had not come to him in a day. The
aboriginal mind is slow to generalize, and many facts, repeated
often, are required to compass an understanding. Sitka Charley,
from boyhood, had been thrown continually with white men, and as
a man he had elected to cast his fortunes with them, expatriating
himself, once and for all, from his own people. Even then,
respecting, almost venerating their power, and pondering over it,
he had yet to divine its secret essence--the honor and the law.
Pages:
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135