creature out of this as soon as possible. And you want to get back to The Gap as soon as you can, don’t you?”
The sergeant made no reply. He was more than anxious to be with Marion once more. He had worried a great deal about her, and wondered how she was making out with the missionary. She was very much in his mind as he sat near the bunk after the Indian and the constable had left. He had plenty of time to think, as there was nothing else he could do. Marion always brought before him a vision of purity and nobleness. He pictured a time when his wanderings on the cruel trails would be ended, and he would have a snug little home of his own, with Marion as the beautiful presiding genius. What happiness that would be. No more wanderings to and fro, with no certain abiding place.
It was but natural that he should also think of the self-sacrificing life of Charles Norris, the missionary at The Gap, and the sad fate which had fallen upon him. He mused upon his noble life, and the peaceful expression upon his face as he had last seen him lying so still in the mission house. He compared him with the wretched being before him, and the contrast was most startling. One had lived for loving service; the other for self. The aim of one had been to build up, and improve; that of the other to tear down, and to destroy. In the end both had been terribly stricken down. That the good should suffer as well as the bad the sergeant knew was one of the great problems of life. And yet not for an instant could he imagine the missionary at The Gap undergoing such tortures of the condemned as he beheld in Bill, the Slugger. In the latter he saw the brute nature, revealed and uncontrolled, pouring forth the vile pollutions of the mind. He realised now,
