This hermit existence he kept up for over a fortnight. He had fought
with Tommy Ashe and he felt diffident about inflicting his company on
Tommy, considering the casus belli. Nor could he bring himself to a
casual dropping in on Sam Carr. He shrank from meeting Sophie, from
hearing the sound of her voice, from feeling the tumult of desire her
nearness always stirred up in him. And there was nowhere else to go, no
one with whom he could talk. He could not hold converse with the Crees.
The Lachlan family relapsed into painful stiffness when he entered their
house. There was no common ground between him and them.
He was really marking time until the next mail should arrive at Fort
Pachugan. The days were growing shorter, the nights edged with sharp
frosts. There came a flurry of snow that lay a day and faded slowly in
the eye of the weakening sun.
Mr. Thompson, watching his daily diminishing food supply with sedulous
consideration, knew that the winter was drawing near, a season merciless
in its rigor. He knew that one of these days the northerly wind would
bring down a storm which would blanket the land with snow that only the
sun of the next May would banish. He was ill-prepared to face such an
iron-jawed season.
If he stayed there it would just about take his quarterly salary to
supply him with plain food and the heavier clothing he needed. But--he
drew a long breath and asked himself one day why he should stay there.
Why should he? He could not forbear a wry grimace when he tried to see
himself carrying out his appointed task faithfully to the end--preaching
vainly to uncomprehending ears month after month, year after year,
stagnating mentally and suffocating spiritually in those silent forests
where God and godly living was not a factor at all; where food,
clothing, and shelter loomed bigger than anything else, because until
these primary needs were satisfied a man could not rise above the status
of a hungry animal.
Yet he shrank from giving up the ministry. He had been bred to it, his
destiny sedulously shaped toward that end by the maiden aunts and the
theological schools. It was, in effect, his trade. He could scarcely
look equably upon a future apart from prayer meetings, from Bible
classes, from carefully thought out and eloquently delivered sermons. He
felt like a renegade when he considered quitting that chosen field. But
he felt also that it was a field in which he had no business now.
He was still in this uncertain frame of mind a few days later when he
borrowed a canoe from Lachlan and set out for the Fort. He had kept
away from Carr's for nearly five weeks. Neither Sophie nor her father
had come to his cabin again. Once or twice he had hailed Carr from a
distance. In the height of his loneliness he had traversed the half-mile
to Tommy Ashe's shack up Lone Moose, only to find it deserted. He
learned later that Lachlan's oldest son and Ashe had gone partners to
run a line of traps away to the north of the village. It occurred to
Thompson that he might do the same--if--well, he would see about that
when he got home from Pachugan.