In the town of Manitou he still said mass
now and then, and heard the sorrows and sins of men and women, and gave
them "ghostly comfort," while priests younger than himself took the
burden of parish-work from his shoulders.
For a lifetime he had laboured among the Indians and the few whites and
squaw-men and half-breeds, with neither settlement nor progress. Then,
all at once, the railway; and people coming from all the world, and
cities springing up! Now once more he was living the life of
civilization, exchanging raw flesh of fish and animals and a meal of
tallow or pemmican for the wheaten loaf; the Indian tepee for the warm
house with the mansard roof; the crude mass beneath the trees for the
refinements of a chancel and an altar covered with lace and white linen.
A flock of geese went honking over his head. His eyes smiled in memory of
the countless times he had watched such flights, had seen thousands of
wild ducks hurrying down a valley, had watched a family of herons
stretching away to some lonely water-home. And then another sound greeted
his ear. It was shrill, sharp and insistent. A great serpent was stealing
out of the East and moving down upon Lebanon. It gave out puffs of smoke
from its ungainly head. It shrieked in triumph as it came.
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