IN THE NORTH 53

abuse, not indeed against the priest, but against the
unknown one who had given him his information.
Yet their chief forbade any one to lend Father Morice
a canoe for his return, and declared that they would
see to it that no Babine accompanied him on his way
home, threatening dire vengeance on any one who
should dare run counter to that ukase.

Fortunately, the priest had espied in the village
three Carriers who were there on a visit. By dint of
coaxing and extolling them above those bastard
Christians they had come to see, he persuaded them to
take him home in their own canoe.

Two or three years then elapsed without the
Babines receiving the visit of the missionary. Of
course, were it only out of rage at being abandoned,
they then fell into all kinds of disorders: gambling in-
creased and pagan practices were resumed on a larger
scale; a man would leave his wife to take another as
passion would dictate; so much so indeed that, after a
while, it was hard to say who was this or that man’s
legitimate partner. Two of their former Christian
practices, however, they never relinquished: Friday
abstinence and the daily public recitation in the
church of the morning and evening prayers their
spiritual guide had always insisted on.

After a time it came to pass that one of their petty
chiefs,’ who, for a wonder, had been baptized in child-
hood, fell dangerously sick and sent for the priest in
order to get reconciled to his God. Father Morice
hurried as much as he could, and,covered in five days
the one hundred and sixty miles which separated him
from his northern patient. But when he arrived, the
latter had just expired.

7 Or hereditary landowners, those to whom belong the various
portions of the hunting grounds of the tribe.