CHAPTER XIX
"THE LONE PATROL"
"But assuredly you will be doing me the greatest of favours," said Père Melisand. "You come to me, figuratively speaking, as the men used to come to me at Rouen—with strange stories in their eyes and the smell of the salt sea-water in their hair. I have not seen the sea since I left France ten years ago. And you?"
"I saw salt water three months ago in Hudson Bay." Dick flung off his coat and looked round him. "You keep some relics of France with you still," he added. "I remember the original of that portrait at Versailles—and surely the chair below it is Louis Quinze?"
"Genuine. Yes. We have our fancies yet, though we change the skies over us. There is an incantation in these little things to one who remembers."
Dick turned to look at his host. Without the cassock and tonsure Père Melisand would have had nothing to knit him to this little Roman Catholic Mission at Vermilion on the Peace River. For he had the look of a man of the world in his eyes and the fluency of a scholar on his tongue, and he welcomed Dick to his poor quarters here just as he would have welcomed him to some old chateau in his native France, with no embarrassment at all in the contrast. Perhaps ten years had used him to it, although it had not sapped the polish of his manner. He smiled at Dick.
"I will ask Antoine to hasten dinner," he said. "You must be both cold and hungry. Travelling in a thaw is difficult work."
"Well, two of my dogs knocked up rather badly. Could I get more here?"
"Vital Jeudi might have one or two. We will see him
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