Page:RidersOfSilences - Max Brand.djvu/16

10 to outface the rigid piety of Jean Paul Victor. His missionary work had carried him far north, where the cold burns men thin. The eternal frost of the Arctics lay on his hair, and his starved eyes looked out from hollows shadowed with blue. He might have posed for a painting of one of those damned souls whom Dante placed in the frozen circle of the "Inferno."

It was his own spirit which tortured him—the zeal which drove him north land north and north over untracked regions, drove him until his body failed, drove him even now, though his body was crippled.

A mighty yearning, and a still mightier self-contempt whipped him on, and the school over which he was master groaned and suffered under his regime, and the disciples caught his spirit and went out like warriors in the name of God to spread the faith.

He despised them as he despised himself, for he said continually in his heart: "How great is the purpose and how little is our labor!"

Some such thought as that curled his thin lip as he stared across at Father Anthony like a wolf that has not eaten for a fortnight. The good father sustained the gaze, but he shivered a little and sighed. There was awe, and pity, and even a touch of horror in his eyes.

He said gently: "Are there none among all your lads, dear Father Victor, whom you find something more than imperfect machines?"

The man of the north drew from a pocket of his