B. garden where the
potatoes are six or eight inches high. We wander into a little
graveyard, surely the most lonely God's acre in all Canada. The
inscriptions in syllabic Chipewyan show the patient devotion of Father
Beihler, who comes across us as we gaze at the graves. Eight long years
the priest has put in at Fond du Lac, sent here when but three months in
the priesthood. His English, acquired from Mr. Harris, is a bit
hesitating. His home was in Alsace-Lorraine; he tells us his mother was
out of her mind for three days when he was ordered here, and he himself
wept. White women are a _rara avis_. Father Beihler wants to know how
old we are and if we are Catholics and how much money we earn. Pointing
wisely to the Kid, he assures me, "They are not an-gell (angel) at that
age," and says, "I am not a woman-hater, and I am not a _woman
chercher_." The priest is as great a curiosity to us as we are to him,
and each is interested in studying a new kind of animal. One sympathy we
have in common,--the good Father knows every bird that flies over Fond
du Lac. Who can tell what they whisper to him of the sweet Alsace so
far away? We are treated to peeps into the nests of the orange-crowned
warbler, the hermit thrush, and that shy wader, the spotted sandpiper.
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