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The Ruling Passion 

by Henry van Dyke

September, 1997  [Etext #1048]


The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke
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THE RULING PASSION

by Henry van Dyke




A WRITER'S REQUEST OF HIS MASTER


Let me never tag a moral to a story, nor tell a story without a 
meaning.  Make me respect my material so much that I dare not slight 
my work.  Help me to deal very honestly with words and with people 
because they are both alive.  Show me that as in a river, so in a 
writing, clearness is the best quality, and a little that is pure is 
worth more than much that is mixed.  Teach me to see the local 
colour without being blind to the inner light.  Give me an ideal 
that will stand the strain of weaving into human stuff on the loom 
of the real.  Keep me from caring more for books than for folks, for 
art than for life.  Steady me to do my full stint of work as well as 
I can: and when that is done, stop me, pay what wages Thou wilt, and 
help me to say, from a quiet heart, a grateful AMEN.



PREFACE


In every life worth writing about there is a ruling passion,--"the 
very pulse of the machine."  Unless you touch that, you are groping 
around outside of reality.

Sometimes it is romantic love: Natures masterpiece of interested 
benevolence.  In almost all lives this passion has its season of 
empire.  Therefore, and rightly, it is the favourite theme of the 
storyteller.  Romantic love interests almost everybody, because 
almost everybody knows something about it, or would like to know.

But there are other passions, no less real, which also have their 
place and power in human life.  Some of them come earlier, and 
sometimes they last longer, than romantic love.  They play alongside 
of it and are mixed up with it, now checking it, now advancing its 
flow and tingeing it with their own colour.

Just because love is so universal, it is often to one of the other 
passions that we must look for the distinctive hue, the individual 
quality of a life-story.  Granted, if you will, that everybody must 
fall in love, or ought to fall in love, How will he do it?  And what 
will he do afterwards?  These are questions not without interest to 
one who watches the human drama as a friend.  The answers depend 
upon those hidden and durable desires, affections, and impulses to 
which men and women give themselves up for rule and guidance.

Music, nature, children, honour, strife, revenge, money, pride, 
friendship, loyalty, duty,--to these objects and others like them 
the secret power of personal passion often turns, and the life 
unconsciously follows it, as the tides in the sea follow the moon in 
the sky.

When circumstances cross the ruling passion, when rocks lie in the 
way and winds are contrary, then things happen, characters emerge, 
slight events are significant, mere adventures are transformed into 
a real plot.  What care I how many "hair-breadth 'scapes" and 
"moving accidents" your hero may pass through, unless I know him for 
a man?  He is but a puppet strung on wires.  His kisses are wooden 
and his wounds bleed sawdust.  There is nothing about him to 
remember except his name, and perhaps a bit of dialect.  Kill him or 
crown him,--what difference does it make?

But go the other way about your work:

     "Take the least man of all mankind, as I;
      Look at his head and heart, find how and why
      He differs from his fellows utterly,"--

and now there is something to tell, with a meaning.

If you tell it at length, it is a novel,--a painting.  If you tell 
it in brief, it is a short story,--an etching.  But the subject is 
always the same: the unseen, mysterious, ruling passion weaving the 
stuff of human nature into patterns wherein the soul is imaged and 
revealed.

To tell about some of these ruling passions, simply, clearly, and 
concretely, is what I want to do in this book.  The characters are 
chosen, for the most part, among plain people, because their 
feelings are expressed with fewer words and greater truth, not being 
costumed for social effect.  The scene is laid on Nature's stage 
because I like to be out-of-doors, even when I am trying to think 
and learning to write.

"Avalon," Princeton, July 22, 1901.



CONTENTS

I.  A Lover of Music

II.  The Reward of Virtue

III.  A Brave Heart

IV.  The Gentle Life

V.  A Friend of Justice

VI.  The White Blot

VII.  A Year of Nobility

VIII.  The Keeper of the Light



A LOVER OF MUSIC


I

He entered the backwoods village of Bytown literally on the wings of 
the wind.  It whirled him along like a big snowflake, and dropped 
him at the door of Moody's "Sportsmen's Retreat," as if he were a 
New Year's gift from the North Pole.  His coming seemed a mere 
chance; but perhaps there was something more in it, after all.  At 
all events, you shall hear, if you will, the time and the manner of 
his arrival.

It was the last night of December, some thirty-five years ago.  All 
the city sportsmen who had hunted the deer under Bill Moody's 
direction had long since retreated to their homes, leaving the 
little settlement on the border of the Adirondack wilderness wholly 
under the social direction of the natives.

The annual ball was in full swing in the dining-room of the hotel.  
At one side of the room the tables and chairs were piled up, with 
their legs projecting in the air like a thicket of very dead trees.

The huge stove in the southeast corner was blushing a rosy red 
through its thin coat of whitewash, and exhaling a furious dry heat 
flavoured with the smell of baked iron.  At the north end, however, 
winter reigned; and there were tiny ridges of fine snow on the 
floor, sifted in by the wind through the cracks in the window-
frames.

But the bouncing girls and the heavy-footed guides and lumbermen who 
filled the ball-room did not appear to mind the heat or the cold.  
They balanced and "sashayed" from the tropics to the arctic circle.  
They swung at corners and made "ladies' change" all through the 
temperate zone.  They stamped their feet and did double-shuffles 
until the floor trembled beneath them.  The tin lamp-reflectors on 
the walls rattled like castanets.

There was only one drawback to the hilarity of the occasion.  The 
band, which was usually imported from Sandy River Forks for such 
festivities,--a fiddle, a cornet, a flute, and an accordion,--had 
not arrived.  There was a general idea that the mail-sleigh, in 
which the musicians were to travel, had been delayed by the storm, 
and might break its way through the snow-drifts and arrive at any 
moment.  But Bill Moody, who was naturally of a pessimistic 
temperament, had offered a different explanation.

"I tell ye, old Baker's got that blame' band down to his hotel at 
the Falls now, makin' 'em play fer his party.  Them music fellers is 
onsartin; can't trust 'em to keep anythin' 'cept the toon, and they 
don't alluz keep that.  Guess we might uz well shet up this ball, or 
go to work playin' games."

At this proposal a thick gloom had fallen over the assembly; but it 
had been dispersed by Serena Moody's cheerful offer to have the 
small melodion brought out of the parlour, and to play for dancing 
as well as she could.  The company agreed that she was a smart girl, 
and prepared to accept her performance with enthusiasm.  As the 
dance went on, there were frequent comments of approval to encourage 
her in the labour of love.

"Sereny's doin' splendid, ain't she?" said the other girls.

To which the men replied, "You bet!  The playin' 's reel nice, and 
good 'nough fer anybody--outside o' city folks."

But Serena's repertory was weak, though her spirit was willing.  
There was an unspoken sentiment among the men that "The Sweet By and 
By" was not quite the best tune in the world for a quadrille.  A 
Sunday-school hymn, no matter how rapidly it was rendered, seemed to 
fall short of the necessary vivacity for a polka.  Besides, the 
wheezy little organ positively refused to go faster than a certain 
gait.  Hose Ransom expressed the popular opinion of the instrument, 
after a figure in which he and his partner had been half a bar ahead 
of the music from start to finish, when he said:

"By Jolly! that old maloney may be chock full o' relijun and po'try; 
but it ain't got no DANCE into it, no more 'n a saw-mill."


This was the situation of affairs inside of Moody's tavern on New 
Year's Eve.  But outside of the house the snow lay two feet deep on 
the level, and shoulder-high in the drifts.  The sky was at last 
swept clean of clouds.  The shivering stars and the shrunken moon 
looked infinitely remote in the black vault of heaven.  The frozen 
lake, on which the ice was three feet thick and solid as rock, was 
like a vast, smooth bed, covered with a white counterpane.  The 
cruel wind still poured out of the northwest, driving the dry snow 
along with it like a mist of powdered diamonds.

Enveloped in this dazzling, pungent atmosphere, half blinded and 
bewildered by it, buffeted and yet supported by the onrushing 
torrent of air, a man on snow-shoes, with a light pack on his 
shoulders, emerged from the shelter of the Three Sisters' Islands, 
and staggered straight on, down the lake.  He passed the headland of 
the bay where Moody's tavern is ensconced, and probably would have 
drifted on beyond it, to the marsh at the lower end of the lake, but 
for the yellow glare of the ball-room windows and the sound of music 
and dancing which came out to him suddenly through a lull in the 
wind.

He turned to the right, climbed over the low wall of broken ice-
blocks that bordered the lake, and pushed up the gentle slope to the 
open passageway by which the two parts of the rambling house were 
joined together.  Crossing the porch with the last remnant of his 
strength, he lifted his hand to knock, and fell heavily against the 
side door.

The noise, heard through the confusion within, awakened curiosity 
and conjecture.

Just as when a letter comes to a forest cabin, it is turned over and 
over, and many guesses are made as to the handwriting and the 
authorship before it occurs to any one to open it and see who sent 
it, so was this rude knocking at the gate the occasion of argument 
among the rustic revellers as to what it might portend.  Some 
thought it was the arrival of the belated band.  Others supposed the 
sound betokened a descent of the Corey clan from the Upper Lake, or 
a change of heart on the part of old Dan Dunning, who had refused to 
attend the ball because they would not allow him to call out the 
figures.  The guesses were various; but no one thought of the 
possible arrival of a stranger at such an hour on such a night, 
until Serena suggested that it would he a good plan to open the 
door.  Then the unbidden guest was discovered lying benumbed along 
the threshold.

There was no want of knowledge as to what should be done with a 
half-frozen man, and no lack of ready hands to do it.  They carried 
him not to the warm stove, but into the semi-arctic region of the 
parlour.  They rubbed his face and his hands vigorously with snow.  
They gave him a drink of hot tea flavoured with whiskey--or perhaps 
it was a drink of whiskey with a little hot tea in it--and then, as 
his senses began to return to him, they rolled him in a blanket and 
left him on a sofa to thaw out gradually, while they went on with 
the dance.

Naturally, he was the favourite subject of conversation for the next 
hour.

"Who is he, anyhow?  I never seen 'im before.  Where'd he come 
from?" asked the girls.

"I dunno," said Bill Moody; "he didn't say much.  Talk seemed all 
froze up.  Frenchy, 'cordin' to what he did say.  Guess he must a 
come from Canady, workin' on a lumber job up Raquette River way.  
Got bounced out o' the camp, p'raps.  All them Frenchies is queer."

This summary of national character appeared to command general 
assent.

"Yaas," said Hose Ransom, "did ye take note how he hung on to that 
pack o' his'n all the time?  Wouldn't let go on it.  Wonder what 't 
wuz?  Seemed kinder holler 'n light, fer all 'twuz so big an' 
wropped up in lots o' coverin's."

"What's the use of wonderin'?" said one of the younger boys; "find 
out later on.  Now's the time fer dancin'.  Whoop 'er up!"

So the sound of revelry swept on again in full flood.  The men and 
maids went careering up and down the room.  Serena's willing fingers 
laboured patiently over the yellow keys of the reluctant melodion.  
But the ancient instrument was weakening under the strain; the 
bellows creaked; the notes grew more and more asthmatic.

"Hold the Fort" was the tune, "Money Musk" was the dance; and it was 
a preposterously bad fit.  The figure was tangled up like a fishing-
line after trolling all day without a swivel.  The dancers were 
doing their best, determined to be happy, as cheerful as possible, 
but all out of time.  The organ was whirring and gasping and 
groaning for breath.

Suddenly a new music filled the room.

The right tune--the real old joyful "Money Musk," played jubilantly, 
triumphantly, irresistibly--on a fiddle!

The melodion gave one final gasp of surprise and was dumb.

Every one looked up.  There, in the parlour door, stood the 
stranger, with his coat off, his violin hugged close under his chin, 
his right arm making the bow fly over the strings, his black eyes 
sparkling, and his stockinged feet marking time to the tune.

"DANSEZ!  DANSEZ," he cried, "EN AVANT!  Don' spik'.  Don' res'!  
Ah'll goin' play de feedle fo' yo' jess moch yo' lak', eef yo' 
h'only DANSE!"

The music gushed from the bow like water from the rock when Moses 
touched it.  Tune followed tune with endless fluency and variety--
polkas, galops, reels, jigs, quadrilles; fragments of airs from many 
lands--"The Fisher's Hornpipe," "Charlie is my Darling," "Marianne 
s'en va-t-au Moulin," "Petit Jean," "Jordan is a Hard Road to 
Trabbel," woven together after the strangest fashion and set to the 
liveliest cadence.

It was a magical performance.  No one could withstand it.  They all 
danced together, like the leaves on the shivering poplars when the 
wind blows through them.  The gentle Serena was swept away from her 
stool at the organ as if she were a little canoe drawn into the 
rapids, and Bill Moody stepped high and cut pigeon-wings that had 
been forgotten for a generation.  It was long after midnight when 
the dancers paused, breathless and exhausted.

"Waal," said Hose Ransom, "that's jess the hightonedest music we 
ever had to Bytown.  You 're a reel player, Frenchy, that's what you 
are.  What's your name?  Where'd you come from?  Where you goin' to?  
What brought you here, anyhow?"

"MOI?" said the fiddler, dropping his bow and taking a long breath.  
"Mah nem Jacques Tremblay.  Ah'll ben come fraum Kebeck.  W'ere 
goin'?  Ah donno.  Prob'ly Ah'll stop dis place, eef yo' lak' dat 
feedle so moch, hein?"

His hand passed caressingly over the smooth brown wood of the 
violin.  He drew it up close to his face again, as if he would have 
kissed it, while his eyes wandered timidly around the circle of 
listeners, and rested at last, with a question in them, on the face 
of the hotel-keeper.  Moody was fairly warmed, for once, out of his 
customary temper of mistrust and indecision.  He spoke up promptly.

"You kin stop here jess long's you like.  We don' care where you 
come from, an' you need n't to go no fu'ther, less you wanter.  But 
we ain't got no use for French names round here.  Guess we 'll call 
him Fiddlin' Jack, hey, Sereny?  He kin do the chores in the day-
time, an' play the fiddle at night."

This was the way in which Bytown came to have a lover of music among 
its permanent inhabitants.



II


Jacques dropped into his place and filled it as if it had been made 
for him.  There was something in his disposition that seemed to fit 
him for just the role that was vacant in the social drama of the 
settlement.  It was not a serious, important, responsible part, like 
that of a farmer, or a store-keeper, or a professional hunter.  It 
was rather an addition to the regular programme of existence, 
something unannounced and voluntary, and therefore not weighted with 
too heavy responsibilities.  There was a touch of the transient and 
uncertain about it.  He seemed like a perpetual visitor; and yet he 
stayed on as steadily as a native, never showing, from the first, 
the slightest wish or intention to leave the woodland village.

I do not mean that he was an idler.  Bytown had not yet arrived at 
that stage of civilization in which an ornamental element is 
supported at the public expense.

He worked for his living, and earned it.  He was full of a quick, 
cheerful industry; and there was nothing that needed to be done 
about Moody's establishment, from the wood-pile to the ice-house, at 
which he did not bear a hand willingly and well.

"He kin work like a beaver," said Bill Moody, talking the stranger 
over down at the post-office one day; "but I don't b'lieve he's got 
much ambition.  Jess does his work and takes his wages, and then 
gits his fiddle out and plays."

"Tell ye what," said Hose Ransom, who set up for the village 
philosopher, "he ain't got no 'magination.  That's what makes men 
slack.  He don't know what it means to rise in the world; don't care 
fer anythin' ez much ez he does fer his music.  He's jess like a 
bird; let him have 'nough to eat and a chance to sing, and he's all 
right.  What's he 'magine about a house of his own, and a barn, and 
sich things?"

Hosea's illustration was suggested by his own experience.  He had 
just put the profits of his last summer's guiding into a new barn, 
and his imagination was already at work planning an addition to his 
house in the shape of a kitchen L.

But in spite of his tone of contempt, he had a kindly feeling for 
the unambitious fiddler.  Indeed, this was the attitude of pretty 
much every one in the community.  A few men of the rougher sort had 
made fun of him at first, and there had been one or two attempts at 
rude handling.  But Jacques was determined to take no offence; and 
he was so good-humoured, so obliging, so pleasant in his way of 
whistling and singing about his work, that all unfriendliness soon 
died out.

He had literally played his way into the affections of the village.  
The winter seemed to pass more swiftly and merrily than it had done 
before the violin was there.  He was always ready to bring it out, 
and draw all kinds of music from its strings, as long as any one 
wanted to listen or to dance.

It made no difference whether there was a roomful of listeners, or 
only a couple, Fiddlin' Jack was just as glad to play.  With a 
little, quiet audience, he loved to try the quaint, plaintive airs 
of the old French songs--"A la Claire Fontaine," "Un Canadien 
Errant," and "Isabeau s'y Promene"--and bits of simple melody from 
the great composers, and familiar Scotch and English ballads--things 
that he had picked up heaven knows where, and into which he put a 
world of meaning, sad and sweet.

He was at his best in this vein when he was alone with Serena in the 
kitchen--she with a piece of sewing in her lap, sitting beside the 
lamp; he in the corner by the stove, with the brown violin tucked 
under his chin, wandering on from one air to another, and perfectly 
content if she looked up now and then from her work and told him 
that she liked the tune.

Serena was a pretty girl, with smooth, silky hair, end eyes of the 
colour of the nodding harebells that blossom on the edge of the 
woods.  She was slight and delicate.  The neighbours called her 
sickly; and a great doctor from Philadelphia who had spent a summer 
at Bytown had put his ear to her chest, and looked grave, and said 
that she ought to winter in a mild climate.  That was before people 
had discovered the Adirondacks as a sanitarium for consumptives.

But the inhabitants of Bytown were not in the way of paying much 
attention to the theories of physicians in regard to climate.  They 
held that if you were rugged, it was a great advantage, almost a 
virtue; but if you were sickly, you just had to make the best of it, 
and get along with the weather as well as you could.

So Serena stayed at home and adapted herself very cheerfully to the 
situation.  She kept indoors in winter more than the other girls, 
and had a quieter way about her; but you would never have called her 
an invalid.  There was only a clearer blue in her eyes, and a 
smoother lustre on her brown hair, and a brighter spot of red on her 
cheek.  She was particularly fond of reading and of music.  It was 
this that made her so glad of the arrival of the violin.  The 
violin's master knew it, and turned to her as a sympathetic soul.  I 
think he liked her eyes too, and the soft tones of her voice.  He 
was a sentimentalist, this little Canadian, for all he was so merry; 
and love--but that comes later.

"Where'd you get your fiddle, Jack?  said Serena, one night as they 
sat together in the kitchen.

"Ah'll get heem in Kebeck," answered Jacques, passing his hand 
lightly over the instrument, as he always did when any one spoke of 
it.  "Vair' nice VIOLON, hein?  W'at you t'ink?  Ma h'ole teacher, 
to de College, he was gif' me dat VIOLON, w'en Ah was gone away to 
de woods."

"I want to know!  Were you in the College?  What'd you go off to the 
woods for?"

"Ah'll get tire' fraum dat teachin'--read, read, read, h'all taim'.  
Ah'll not lak' dat so moch.  Rader be out-door--run aroun'--paddle 
de CANOT--go wid de boys in de woods--mek' dem dance at ma MUSIQUE.  
A-a-ah!  Dat was fon!  P'raps you t'ink dat not good, hem?  You 
t'ink Jacques one beeg fool, Ah suppose?"

"I dunno," said Serena, declining to commit herself, but pressing on 
gently, as women do, to the point she had in view when she began the 
talk.  "Dunno's you're any more foolish than a man that keeps on 
doin' what he don't like.  But what made you come away from the boys 
in the woods and travel down this way?"

A shade passed over the face of Jacques.  He turned away from the 
lamp and bent over the violin on his knees, fingering the strings 
nervously.  Then he spoke, in a changed, shaken voice.

"Ah'l tole you somet'ing, Ma'amselle Serene.  You ma frien'.  Don' 
you h'ask me dat reason of it no more.  Dat's somet'ing vair' bad, 
bad, bad.  Ah can't nevair tole dat--nevair."

There was something in the way he said it that gave a check to her 
gentle curiosity and turned it into pity.  A man with a secret in 
his life?  It was a new element in her experience; like a chapter in 
a book.  She was lady enough at heart to respect his silence.  She 
kept away from the forbidden ground.  But the knowledge that it was 
there gave a new interest to Jacques and his music.  She embroidered 
some strange romances around that secret while she sat in the 
kitchen sewing.

Other people at Bytown were less forbearing.  They tried their best 
to find out something about Fiddlin' Jack's past, but he was not 
communicative.  He talked about Canada.  All Canadians do.  But 
about himself?  No.

If the questions became too pressing, he would try to play himself 
away from his inquisitors with new tunes.  If that did not succeed, 
he would take the violin under his arm and slip quickly out of the 
room.  And if you had followed him at such a time, you would have 
heard him drawing strange, melancholy music from the instrument, 
sitting alone in the barn, or in the darkness of his own room in the 
garret.

Once, and only once, he seemed to come near betraying himself.  This 
was how it happened.

There was a party at Moody's one night, and Bull Corey had come down 
from the Upper Lake and filled himself up with whiskey.

Bull was an ugly-tempered fellow.  The more he drank, up to a 
certain point, the steadier he got on his legs, and the more 
necessary it seemed for him to fight somebody.  The tide of his 
pugnacity that night took a straight set toward Fiddlin' Jack.

Bull began with musical criticisms.  The fiddling did not suit him 
at all.  It was too quick, or else it was too slow.  He failed to 
perceive how any one could tolerate such music even in the infernal 
regions, and he expressed himself in plain words to that effect.  In 
fact, he damned the performance without even the faintest praise.

But the majority of the audience gave him no support.  On the 
contrary, they told him to shut up.  And Jack fiddled along 
cheerfully.

Then Bull returned to the attack, after having fortified himself in 
the bar-room.  And now he took national grounds.  The French were, 
in his opinion, a most despicable race.  They were not a patch on 
the noble American race.  They talked too much, and their language 
was ridiculous.  They had a condemned, fool habit of taking off 
their hats when they spoke to a lady.  They ate frogs.

Having delivered himself of these sentiments in a loud voice, much 
to the interruption of the music, he marched over to the table on 
which Fiddlin' Jack was sitting, and grabbed the violin from his 
hands.

"Gimme that dam' fiddle," he cried, "till I see if there's a frog in 
it."

Jacques leaped from the table, transported with rage.  His face was 
convulsed.  His eyes blazed.  He snatched a carving-knife from the 
dresser behind him, and sprang at Corey.

"TORT DIEU!" he shrieked, "MON VIOLON!  Ah'll keel you, beast!"

But he could not reach the enemy.  Bill Moody's long arms were flung 
around the struggling fiddler, and a pair of brawny guides had Corey 
pinned by the elbows, hustling him backward.  Half a dozen men 
thrust themselves between the would-be combatants.  There was a dead 
silence, a scuffling of feet on the bare floor; then the danger was 
past, and a tumult of talk burst forth.

But a strange alteration had passed over Jacques.  He trembled.  He 
turned white.  Tears poured down his cheeks.  As Moody let him go, 
he dropped on his knees, hid his face in his hands, and prayed in 
his own tongue.

"My God, it is here again!  Was it not enough that I must be tempted 
once before?  Must I have the madness yet another time?  My God, 
show the mercy toward me, for the Blessed Virgin's sake.  I am a 
sinner, but not the second time; for the love of Jesus, not the 
second time!  Ave Maria, gratia plena, ora pro me!"

The others did not understand what he was saying.  Indeed, they paid 
little attention to him.  They saw he was frightened, and thought it 
was with fear.  They were already discussing what ought to be done 
about the fracas.

It was plain that Bull Corey, whose liquor had now taken effect 
suddenly, and made him as limp as a strip of cedar bark, must be 
thrown out of the door, and left to cool off on the beach.  But what 
to do with Fiddlin' Jack for his attempt at knifing--a detested 
crime?  He might have gone at Bull with a gun, or with a club, or 
with a chair, or with any recognized weapon.  But with a carving-
knife!  That was a serious offence.  Arrest him, and send him to 
jail at the Forks?  Take him out, and duck him in the lake?  Lick 
him, and drive him out of the town?

There was a multitude of counsellors, but it was Hose Ransom who 
settled the case.  He was a well-known fighting-man, and a respected 
philosopher.  He swung his broad frame in front of the fiddler.

"Tell ye what we'll do.  Jess nothin'!  Ain't Bull Corey the 
blowin'est and the mos' trouble-us cuss 'round these hull woods?  
And would n't it be a fust-rate thing ef some o' the wind was let 
out 'n him?"

General assent greeted this pointed inquiry.

"And wa'n't Fiddlin' Jack peacerble 'nough 's long 's he was let 
alone?  What's the matter with lettin' him alone now?"

The argument seemed to carry weight.  Hose saw his advantage, and 
clinched it.

"Ain't he given us a lot o' fun here this winter in a innercent kind 
o' way, with his old fiddle?  I guess there ain't nothin' on airth 
he loves better 'n that holler piece o' wood, and the toons that's 
inside o' it.  It's jess like a wife or a child to him.  Where's 
that fiddle, anyhow?"

Some one had picked it deftly out of Corey's hand during the 
scuffle, and now passed it up to Hose.

"Here, Frenchy, take yer long-necked, pot-bellied music-gourd.  And 
I want you boys to understand, ef any one teches that fiddle ag'in, 
I'll knock hell out 'n him."

So the recording angel dropped another tear upon the record of Hosea 
Ransom, and the books were closed for the night.



III


For some weeks after the incident of the violin and the carving-
knife, it looked as if a permanent cloud had settled upon the 
spirits of Fiddlin' Jack.  He was sad and nervous; if any one 
touched him, or even spoke to him suddenly, he would jump like a 
deer.  He kept out of everybody's way as much as possible, sat out 
in the wood-shed when he was not at work, and could not be persuaded 
to bring down his fiddle.  He seemed in a fair way to be transformed 
into "the melancholy Jaques."

It was Serena who broke the spell; and she did it in a woman's way, 
the simplest way in the world--by taking no notice of it.

"Ain't you goin' to play for me to-night?" she asked one evening, as 
Jacques passed through the kitchen.  Whereupon the evil spirit was 
exorcised, and the violin came back again to its place in the life 
of the house.

But there was less time for music now than there had been in the 
winter.  As the snow vanished from the woods, and the frost leaked 
out of the ground, and the ice on the lake was honeycombed, breaking 
away from the shore, and finally going to pieces altogether in a 
warm southeast storm, the Sportsmen's Retreat began to prepare for 
business.  There was a garden to be planted, and there were boats to 
be painted.  The rotten old wharf in front of the house stood badly 
in need of repairs.  The fiddler proved himself a Jack-of-all-trades 
and master of more than one.

In the middle of May the anglers began to arrive at the Retreat--a 
quiet, sociable, friendly set of men, most of whom were old-time 
acquaintances, and familiar lovers of the woods.  They belonged to 
the "early Adirondack period," these disciples of Walton.  They were 
not very rich, and they did not put on much style, but they 
understood how to have a good time; and what they did not know about 
fishing was not worth knowing.

Jacques fitted into their scheme of life as a well-made reel fits 
the butt of a good rod.  He was a steady oarsman, a lucky fisherman, 
with a real genius for the use of the landing-net, and a cheerful 
companion, who did not insist upon giving his views about artificial 
flies and advice about casting, on every occasion.  By the end of 
June he found himself in steady employment as a guide.

He liked best to go with the anglers who were not too energetic, but 
were satisfied to fish for a few hours in the morning and again at 
sunset, after a long rest in the middle of the afternoon.  This was 
just the time for the violin; and if Jacques had his way, he would 
take it with him, carefully tucked away in its case in the bow of 
the boat; and when the pipes were lit after lunch, on the shore of 
Round Island or at the mouth of Cold Brook, he would discourse sweet 
music until the declining sun drew near the tree-tops and the veery 
rang his silver bell for vespers.  Then it was time to fish again, 
and the flies danced merrily over the water, and the great speckled 
trout leaped eagerly to catch them.  For trolling all day long for 
lake-trout Jacques had little liking.

"Dat is not de sport," he would say, "to hol' one r-r-ope in de 
'and, an' den pool heem in wid one feesh on t'ree hook, h'all tangle 
h'up in hees mout'--dat is not de sport.  Bisside, dat leef not 
taim' for la musique."

Midsummer brought a new set of guests to the Retreat, and filled the 
ramshackle old house to overflowing.  The fishing fell off, but 
there were picnics and camping-parties in abundance, and Jacques was 
in demand.  The ladies liked him; his manners were so pleasant, and 
they took a great interest in his music.  Moody bought a piano for 
the parlour that summer; and there were two or three good players in 
the house, to whom Jacques would listen with delight, sitting on a 
pile of logs outside the parlour windows in the warm August 
evenings.

Some one asked him whether he did not prefer the piano to the 
violin.

"NON," he answered, very decidedly; "dat piano, he vairee smart; he 
got plentee word, lak' de leetle yellow bird in de cage--'ow you 
call heem--de cannarie.  He spik' moch.  Bot dat violon, he spik' 
more deep, to de heart, lak' de Rossignol.  He mak' me feel more 
glad, more sorree--dat fo' w'at Ah lak' heem de bes'!"

Through all the occupations and pleasures of the summer Jacques kept 
as near as he could to Serena.  If he learned a new tune, by 
listening to the piano--some simple, artful air of Mozart, some 
melancholy echo of a nocturne of Chopin, some tender, passionate 
love-song of Schubert--it was to her that he would play it first.  
If he could persuade her to a boat-ride with him on the lake, Sunday 
evening, the week was complete.  He even learned to know the more 
shy and delicate forest-blossoms that she preferred, and would come 
in from a day's guiding with a tiny bunch of belated twin-flowers, 
or a few purple-fringed orchids, or a handful of nodding stalks of 
the fragrant pyrola, for her.

So the summer passed, and the autumn, with its longer hunting 
expeditions into the depth of the wilderness; and by the time winter 
came around again, Fiddlin' Jack was well settled at Moody's as a 
regular Adirondack guide of the old-fashioned type, but with a 
difference.  He improved in his English.  Something of that missing 
quality which Moody called ambition, and to which Hose Ransom gave 
the name of imagination, seemed to awaken within him.  He saved his 
wages.  He went into business for himself in a modest way, and made 
a good turn in the manufacture of deerskin mittens and snow-shoes.  
By the spring he had nearly three hundred dollars laid by, and 
bought a piece of land from Ransom on the bank of the river just 
above the village.

The second summer of guiding brought him in enough to commence 
building a little house.  It was of logs, neatly squared at the 
corners; and there was a door exactly in the middle of the facade, 
with a square window at either side, and another at each end of the 
house, according to the common style of architecture at Bytown.

But it was in the roof that the touch of distinction appeared.  For 
this, Jacques had modelled after his memory of an old Canadian roof.  
There was a delicate concave sweep in it, as it sloped downward from 
the peak, and the eaves projected pleasantly over the front door, 
making a strip of shade wherein it would be good to rest when the 
afternoon sun shone hot.

He took great pride in this effort of the builder's art.  One day at 
the beginning of May, when the house was nearly finished, he asked 
old Moody and Serena to stop on their way home from the village and 
see what he had done.  He showed them the kitchen, and the living-
room, with the bed-room partitioned off from it, and sharing half of 
its side window.  Here was a place where a door could be cut at the 
back, and a shed built for a summer kitchen--for the coolness, you 
understand.  And here were two stoves--one for the cooking, and the 
other in the living-room for the warming, both of the newest.

"An' look dat roof.  Dat's lak' we make dem in Canada.  De rain ron 
off easy, and de sun not shine too strong at de door.  Ain't dat 
nice?  You lak' dat roof, Ma'amselle Serene, hein?"

Thus the imagination of Jacques unfolded itself, and his ambition 
appeared to be making plans for its accomplishment.  I do not want 
any one to suppose that there was a crisis in his affair of the 
heart.  There was none.  Indeed, it is very doubtful whether anybody 
in the village, even Serena herself, ever dreamed that there was 
such an affair.  Up to the point when the house was finished and 
furnished, it was to be a secret between Jacques and his violin; and 
they found no difficulty in keeping it.

Bytown was a Yankee village. Jacques was, after all, nothing but a 
Frenchman.  The native tone of religion, what there was of it, was 
strongly Methodist.  Jacques never went to church, and if he was 
anything, was probably a Roman Catholic.  Serena was something of a 
sentimentalist, and a great reader of novels; but the international 
love-story had not yet been invented, and the idea of getting 
married to a foreigner never entered her head.  I do not say that 
she suspected nothing in the wild flowers, and the Sunday evening 
boat-rides, and the music.  She was a woman.  I have said already 
that she liked Jacques very much, and his violin pleased her to the 
heart.  But the new building by the river?  I am sure she never even 
thought of it once, in the way that he did.

Well, in the end of June, just after the furniture had come for the 
house with the curved roof, Serena was married to Hose Ransom.  He 
was a young widower without children, and altogether the best 
fellow, as well as the most prosperous, in the settlement.  His 
house stood up on the hill, across the road from the lot which 
Jacques had bought.  It was painted white, and it had a narrow front 
porch, with a scroll-saw fringe around the edge of it; and there was 
a little garden fenced in with white palings, in which Sweet 
Williams and pansies and blue lupines and pink bleeding-hearts were 
planted.

The wedding was at the Sportsmen's Retreat, and Jacques was there, 
of course.  There was nothing of the disconsolate lover about him.  
The noun he might have confessed to, in a confidential moment of 
intercourse with his violin; but the adjective was not in his line.

The strongest impulse in his nature was to be a giver of 
entertaininent, a source of joy in others, a recognized element of 
delight in the little world where he moved.  He had the artistic 
temperament in its most primitive and naive form.  Nothing pleased 
him so much as the act of pleasing.  Music was the means which 
Nature had given him to fulfil this desire.  He played, as you might 
say, out of a certain kind of selfishness, because he enjoyed making 
other people happy.  He was selfish enough, in his way, to want the 
pleasure of making everybody feel the same delight that he felt in 
the clear tones, the merry cadences, the tender and caressing flow 
of his violin.  That was consolation.  That was power.  That was 
success.

And especially was he selfish enough to want to feel his ability to 
give Serena a pleasure at her wedding--a pleasure that nobody else 
could give her.  When she asked him to play, he consented gladly.  
Never had he drawn the bow across the strings with a more magical 
touch.  The wedding guests danced as if they were enchanted.  The 
big bridegroom came up and clapped him on the back, with the nearest 
approach to a gesture of affection that backwoods etiquette allows 
between men.

"Jack, you're the boss fiddler o' this hull county.  Have a drink 
now?  I guess you 're mighty dry."

"MERCI, NON," said Jacques.  "I drink only de museek dis night.  Eef 
I drink two t'ings, I get dronk."

In between the dances, and while the supper was going on, he played 
quieter tunes--ballads and songs that he knew Serena liked.  After 
supper came the final reel; and when that was wound up, with immense 
hilarity, the company ran out to the side door of the tavern to 
shout a noisy farewell to the bridal buggy, as it drove down the 
road toward the house with the white palings.  When they came back, 
the fiddler was gone.  He had slipped away to the little cabin with 
the curved roof.

All night long he sat there playing in the dark.  Every tune that he 
had ever known came back to him--grave and merry, light and sad.  He 
played them over and over again, passing round and round among them 
as a leaf on a stream follows the eddies, now backward, now forward, 
and returning most frequently to an echo of a certain theme from 
Chopin--you remember the NOCTURNE IN G MINOR, the second one?  He 
did not know who Chopin was.  Perhaps he did not even know the name 
of the music.  But the air had fallen upon his ear somewhere, and 
had stayed in his memory; and now it seemed to say something to him 
that had an especial meaning.

At last he let the bow fall.  He patted the brown wood of the violin 
after his old fashion, loosened the strings a little, wrapped it in 
its green baize cover, and hung it on the wall.

"Hang thou there, thou little violin," he murmured.  "It is now that 
I shall take the good care of thee, as never before; for thou art 
the wife of Jacques Tremblay.  And the wife of 'Osee Ransom, she is 
a friend to us, both of us; and we will make the music for her many 
years, I tell thee, many years--for her, and for her good man, and 
for the children--yes?"

But Serena did not have many years to listen to the playing of 
Jacques Tremblay: on the white porch, in the summer evenings, with 
bleeding-hearts abloom in the garden; or by the winter fire, while 
the pale blue moonlight lay on the snow without, and the yellow 
lamplight filled the room with homely radiance.  In the fourth year 
after her marriage she died, and Jacques stood beside Hose at the 
funeral.

There was a child--a little boy--delicate and blue-eyed, the living 
image of his mother.  Jacques appointed himself general attendant, 
nurse in extraordinary, and court musician to this child.  He gave 
up his work as a guide.  It took him too much away from home.  He 
was tired of it.  Besides, what did he want of so much money?  He 
had his house.  He could gain enough for all his needs by making 
snow-shoes and the deerskin mittens at home.  Then he could be near 
little Billy.  It was pleasanter so.

When Hose was away on a long trip in the woods, Jacques would move 
up to the white house and stay on guard.  His fiddle learned how to 
sing the prettiest slumber songs.  Moreover, it could crow in the 
morning, just like the cock; and it could make a noise like a mouse, 
and like the cat, too; and there were more tunes inside of it than 
in any music-box in the world.

As the boy grew older, the little cabin with the curved roof became 
his favourite playground.  It was near the river, and Fiddlin' Jack 
was always ready to make a boat for him, or help him catch minnows 
in the mill-dam.  The child had a taste for music, too, and learned 
some of the old Canadian songs, which he sang in a curious broken 
patois, while his delighted teacher accompanied him on the violin.  
But it was a great day when he was eight years old, and Jacques 
brought out a small fiddle, for which he had secretly sent to 
Albany, and presented it to the boy.

"You see dat feedle, Billee?  Dat's for you!  You mek' your lesson 
on dat.  When you kin mek' de museek, den you play on de violon--
lak' dis one--listen!"

Then he drew the bow across the strings and dashed into a medley of 
the jolliest airs imaginable.

The boy took to his instruction as kindly as could have been 
expected.  School interrupted it a good deal; and play with the 
other boys carried him away often; but, after all, there was nothing 
that he liked much better than to sit in the little cabin on a 
winter evening and pick out a simple tune after his teacher.  He 
must have had some talent for it, too; for Jacques was very proud of 
his pupil, and prophesied great things of him.

"You know dat little Billee of 'Ose Ransom," the fiddler would say 
to a circle of people at the hotel, where he still went to play for 
parties; "you know dat small Ransom boy?  Well, I 'm tichin' heem 
play de feedle; an' I tell you, one day he play better dan hees 
ticher.  Ah, dat 's gr-r-reat t'ing, de museek, ain't it?  Mek' you 
laugh, mek' you cry, mek' you dance!  Now, you dance.  Tek' your 
pardnerre.  EN AVANT! Kip' step to de museek!"



IV


Thirty years brought many changes to Bytown. The wild woodland 
flavour evaporated out of the place almost entirely; and instead of 
an independent centre of rustic life, it became an annex to great 
cities.  It was exploited as a summer resort, and discovered as a 
winter resort.  Three or four big hotels were planted there, and in 
their shadow a score of boarding-houses alternately languished and 
flourished.  The summer cottage also appeared and multiplied; and 
with it came many of the peculiar features which man elaborates in 
his struggle toward the finest civilization--afternoon teas, and 
amateur theatricals, and claw-hammer coats, and a casino, and even a 
few servants in livery.

The very name of Bytown was discarded as being too American and 
commonplace.  An Indian name was discovered, and considered much 
more romantic and appropriate.  You will look in vain for Bytown on 
the map now.  Nor will you find the old saw-mill there any longer, 
wasting a vast water-power to turn its dripping wheel and cut up a 
few pine-logs into fragrant boards.  There is a big steam-mill a 
little farther up the river, which rips out thousands of feet of 
lumber in a day; but there are no more pine-logs, only sticks of 
spruce which the old lumbermen would have thought hardly worth 
cutting.  And down below the dam there is a pulp-mill, to chew up 
the little trees and turn them into paper, and a chair factory, and 
two or three industrial establishments, with quite a little colony 
of French-Canadians employed in them as workmen.

Hose Ransom sold his place on the hill to one of the hotel 
companies, and a huge caravansary occupied the site of the house 
with the white palings.  There were no more bleeding-hearts in the 
garden.  There were beds of flaring red geraniums, which looked as 
if they were painted; and across the circle of smooth lawn in front 
of the piazza the name of the hotel was printed in alleged 
ornamental plants letters two feet long, immensely ugly.  Hose had 
been elevated to the office of postmaster, and lived in a Queen 
Antic cottage on the main street.  Little Billy Ransom had grown up 
into a very interesting young man, with a decided musical genius, 
and a tenor voice, which being discovered by an enterprising patron 
of genius, from Boston, Billy was sent away to Paris to learn to 
sing.  Some day you will hear of his debut in grand opera, as 
Monsieur Guillaume Rancon.

But Fiddlin' Jack lived on in the little house with the curved roof, 
beside the river, refusing all the good offers which were made to 
him for his piece of land.

"NON," he said; "what for shall I sell dis house?  I lak' her, she 
lak' me.  All dese walls got full from museek, jus' lak' de wood of 
dis violon.  He play bettair dan de new feedle, becos' I play heem 
so long.  I lak' to lissen to dat rivaire in de night.  She sing 
from long taim' ago--jus' de same song w'en I firs come here.  W'at 
for I go away?  W'at I get?  W'at you can gif' me lak' dat?"

He was still the favourite musician of the county-side, in great 
request at parties and weddings; but he had extended the sphere of 
his influence a little.  He was not willing to go to church, though 
there were now several to choose from; but a young minister of 
liberal views who had come to take charge of the new Episcopal 
chapel had persuaded Jacques into the Sunday-school, to lead the 
children's singing with his violin.  He did it so well that the 
school became the most popular in the village.  It was much 
pleasanter to sing than to listen to long addresses.

Jacques grew old gracefully, but he certainly grew old rapidly.  His 
beard was white; his shoulders were stooping; he suffered a good 
deal in damp days from rheumatism--fortunately not in his hands, but 
in his legs.  One spring there was a long spell of abominable 
weather, just between freezing and thawing.  He caught a heavy cold 
and took to his bed.  Hose came over to look after him.

For a few days the old fiddler kept up his courage, and would sit up 
in the bed trying to play; then his strength and his spirit seemed 
to fail together.  He grew silent and indifferent.  When Hose came 
in he would find Jacques with his face turned to the wall, where 
there was a tiny brass crucifix hanging below the violin, and his 
lips moving quietly.

"Don't ye want the fiddle, Jack?  I 'd like ter hear some o' them 
old-time tunes ag'in."

But the artifice failed.  Jacques shook his head.  His mind seemed 
to turn back to the time of his first arrival in the village, and 
beyond it.  When he spoke at all, it was of something connected with 
this early time.

"Dat was bad taim' when I near keel Bull Corey, hein?"

Hose nodded gravely.

"Dat was beeg storm, dat night when I come to Bytown.  You remember 
dat?"

Yes, Hose remembered it very well.  It was a real old-fashioned 
storm.

"Ah, but befo dose taim', dere was wuss taim' dan dat--in Canada.  
Nobody don' know 'bout dat.  I lak to tell you, 'Ose, but I can't.  
No, it is not possible to tell dat, nevair!"

It came into Hose's mind that the case was serious.  Jack was going 
to die.  He never went to church, but perhaps the Sunday-school 
might count for something.  He was only a Frenchman, after all, and 
Frenchmen had their own ways of doing things.  He certainly ought to 
see some kind of a preacher before he went out of the wilderness.  
There was a Canadian priest in town that week, who had come down to 
see about getting up a church for the French people who worked in 
the mills.  Perhaps Jack would like to talk with him.

His face lighted up at the proposal.  He asked to have the room 
tidied up, and a clean shirt put on him, and the violin laid open in 
its case on a table beside the bed, and a few other preparations 
made for the visit.  Then the visitor came, a tall, friendly, quiet-
looking man about Jacques's age, with a smooth face and a long black 
cassock.  The door was shut, and they were left alone together.

"I am comforted that you are come, mon pere," said the sick man, 
"for I have the heavy heart.  There is a secret that I have kept for 
many years.  Sometimes I had almost forgotten that it must be told 
at the last; but now it is the time to speak.  I have a sin to 
confess--a sin of the most grievous, of the most unpardonable."

The listener soothed him with gracious words; spoke of the mercy 
that waits for all the penitent; urged him to open his heart without 
delay.

"Well, then, mon pere, it is this that makes me fear to die.  Long 
since, in Canada, before I came to this place, I have killed a man.  
It was--"

The voice stopped.  The little round clock on the window-sill ticked 
very distinctly and rapidly, as if it were in a hurry.

"I will speak as short as I can.  It was in the camp of 'Poleon 
Gautier, on the river St. Maurice.  The big Baptiste Lacombe, that 
crazy boy who wants always to fight, he mocks me when I play, he 
snatches my violin, he goes to break him on the stove.  There is a 
knife in my belt.  I spring to Baptiste.  I see no more what it is 
that I do.  I cut him in the neck--once, twice.  The blood flies 
out.  He falls down.  He cries, 'I die.'  I grab my violin from the 
floor, quick; then I run to the woods.  No one can catch me.  A 
blanket, the axe, some food, I get from a hiding-place down the 
river.  Then I travel, travel, travel through the woods, how many 
days I know not, till I come here.  No one knows me.  I give myself 
the name Tremblay.  I make the music for them.  With my violin I 
live.  I am happy.  I forget.  But it all returns to me--now--at the 
last.  I have murdered.  Is there a forgiveness for me, mon pere?"

The priest's face had changed very swiftly at the mention of the 
camp on the St. Maurice.  As the story went on, he grew strangely 
excited.  His lips twitched.  His hands trembled.  At the end he 
sank on his knees, close by the bed, and looked into the countenance 
of the sick man, searching it as a forester searches in the undergrowth 
for a lost trail.  Then his eyes lighted up as he found it.

"My son," said he, clasping the old fiddler's hand in his own, "you 
are Jacques Dellaire.  And I--do you know me now?--I am Baptiste 
Lacombe.  See those two scars upon my neck.  But it was not death.  
You have not murdered.  You have given the stroke that changed my 
heart.  Your sin is forgiven--AND MINE ALSO--by the mercy of God!"

The round clock ticked louder and louder.  A level ray from the 
setting sun--red gold--came in through the dusty window, and lay 
across the clasped hands on the bed.  A white-throated sparrow, the 
first of the season, on his way to the woods beyond the St. 
Lawrence, whistled so clearly and tenderly that it seemed as if he 
were repeating to these two gray-haired exiles the name of their 
homeland.  "sweet--sweet--Canada, Canada, Canada!"  But there was a 
sweeter sound than that in the quiet room.

It was the sound of the prayer which begins, in every language 
spoken by men, with the name of that Unseen One who rules over 
life's chances, and pities its discords, and tunes it back again 
into harmony.  Yes, this prayer of the little children who are only 
learning how to play the first notes of life's music, turns to the 
great Master musician who knows it all and who loves to bring a 
melody out of every instrument that He has made; and it seems to lay 
the soul in His hands to play upon as He will, while it calls Him, 
OUR FATHER!


Some day, perhaps, you will go to the busy place where Bytown used 
to be; and if you do, you must take the street by the river to the 
white wooden church of St. Jacques.  It stands on the very spot 
where there was once a cabin with a curved roof.  There is a gilt 
cross on the top of the church.  The door is usually open, and the 
interior is quite gay with vases of china and brass, and paper 
flowers of many colours; but if you go through to the sacristy at 
the rear, you will see a brown violin hanging on the wall.

Pere Baptiste, if he is there, will take it down and show it to you.  
He calls it a remarkable instrument--one of the best, of the most 
sweet.

But he will not let any one play upon it.  He says it is a relic.



THE REWARD OF VIRTUE

I

When the good priest of St. Gerome christened Patrick Mullarkey, he 
lent himself unconsciously to an innocent deception.  To look at the 
name, you would think, of course, it belonged to an Irishman; the 
very appearance of it was equal to a certificate of membership in a 
Fenian society

But in effect, from the turned-up toes of his bottes sauvages to the 
ends of his black mustache, the proprietor of this name was a 
Frenchman--Canadian French, you understand, and therefore even more 
proud and tenacious of his race than if he had been born in 
Normandy.  Somewhere in his family tree there must have been a graft 
from the Green Isle.  A wandering lumberman from County Kerry had 
drifted up the Saguenay into the Lake St. John region, and married 
the daughter of a habitant, and settled down to forget his own 
country and his father's house.  But every visible trace of this 
infusion of new blood had vanished long ago, except the name; and 
the name itself was transformed on the lips of the St. Geromians.  
If you had heard them speak it in their pleasant droning accent,--
"Patrique Moullarque,"--you would have supposed that it was made in 
France.  To have a guide with such a name as that was as good as 
being abroad.

Even when they cut it short and called him "Patte," as they usually 
did, it had a very foreign sound.  Everything about him was in 
harmony with it; he spoke and laughed and sang and thought and felt 
in French--the French of two hundred years ago, the language of 
Samuel de Champlain and the Sieur de Monts, touched with a strong 
woodland flavour.  In short, my guide, philosopher, and friend, Pat, 
did not have a drop of Irish in him, unless, perhaps, it was a 
certain--well, you shall judge for yourself, when you have heard 
this story of his virtue, and the way it was rewarded.

It was on the shore of the Lac a la Belle Riviere, fifteen miles 
back from St. Gerome, that I came into the story, and found myself, 
as commonly happens in the real stories which life is always 
bringing out in periodical form, somewhere about the middle of the 
plot.  But Patrick readily made me acquainted with what had gone 
before.  Indeed, it is one of life's greatest charms as a story-
teller that there is never any trouble about getting a brief resume 
of the argument, and even a listener who arrives late is soon put 
into touch with the course of the narrative.

We had hauled our canoes and camp-stuff over the terrible road that 
leads to the lake, with much creaking and groaning of wagons, and 
complaining of men, who declared that the mud grew deeper and the 
hills steeper every year, and vowed their customary vow never to 
come that way again.  At last our tents were pitched in a green 
copse of balsam trees, close beside the water.  The delightful sense 
of peace and freedom descended upon our souls.  Prosper and Ovide 
were cutting wood for the camp-fire; Francois was getting ready a 
brace of partridges for supper; Patrick and I were unpacking the 
provisions, arranging them conveniently for present use and future 
transportation.

"Here, Pat," said I, as my hand fell on a large square parcel--"here 
is some superfine tobacco that I got in Quebec for you and the other 
men on this trip.  Not like the damp stuff you had last year--a 
little bad smoke and too many bad words.  This is tobacco to burn--
something quite particular, you understand.  How does that please 
you?"

He had been rolling up a piece of salt pork in a cloth as I spoke, 
and courteously wiped his fingers on the outside of the bundle 
before he stretched out his hand to take the package of tobacco.  
Then he answered, with his unfailing politeness, but more solemnly 
than usual:

"A thousand thanks to m'sieu'.  But this year I shall not have need 
of the good tobacco.  It shall be for the others."

The reply was so unexpected that it almost took my breath away.  For 
Pat, the steady smoker, whose pipes were as invariable as the 
precession of the equinoxes, to refuse his regular rations of the 
soothing weed was a thing unheard of.  Could he be growing proud in 
his old age?  Had he some secret supply of cigars concealed in his 
kit, which made him scorn the golden Virginia leaf?  I demanded an 
explanation.

"But no, m'sieu'," he replied; "it is not that, most assuredly.  It 
is something entirely different--something very serious.  It is a 
reformation that I commence.  Does m'sieu' permit that I should 
inform him of it?"

Of course I permitted, or rather, warmly encouraged, the fullest 
possible unfolding of the tale; and while we sat among the bags and 
boxes, and the sun settled gently down behind the sharp-pointed firs 
across the lake, and the evening sky and the waveless lake glowed 
with a thousand tints of deepening rose and amber, Patrick put me in 
possession of the facts which had led to a moral revolution in his 
life.

"It was the Ma'm'selle Meelair, that young lady,--not very young, 
but active like the youngest,--the one that I conducted down the 
Grande Decharge to Chicoutimi last year, after you had gone away.  
She said that she knew m'sieu' intimately.  No doubt you have a good 
remembrance of her?"

I admitted an acquaintance with the lady.  She was the president of 
several societies for ethical agitation--a long woman, with short 
hair and eyeglasses and a great thirst for tea; not very good in a 
canoe, but always wanting to run the rapids and go into the 
dangerous places, and talking all the time.  Yes; that must have 
been the one.  She was not a bosom friend of mine, to speak 
accurately, but I remembered her well.

"Well, then, m'sieu'," continued Patrick, "it was this demoiselle 
who changed my mind about the smoking.  But not in a moment, you 
understand; it was a work of four days, and she spoke much.

"The first day it was at the Island House; we were trolling for 
ouananiche, and she was not pleased, for she lost many of the fish.  
I was smoking at the stern of the canoe, and she said that the 
tobacco was a filthy weed, that it grew in the devil's garden, and 
that it smelled bad, terribly bad, and that it made the air sick, 
and that even the pig would not eat it."

I could imagine Patrick's dismay as he listened to this 
dissertation; for in his way he was as sensitive as a woman, and he 
would rather have been upset in his canoe than have exposed himself 
to the reproach of offending any one of his patrons by unpleasant or 
unseemly conduct.

"What did you do then, Pat?" I asked.

"Certainly I put out the pipe--what could I do otherwise?  But I 
thought that what the demoiselle Meelair has said was very strange, 
and not true--exactly; for I have often seen the tobacco grow, and 
it springs up out of the ground like the wheat or the beans, and it 
has beautiful leaves, broad and green, with sometimes a red flower 
at the top.  Does the good God cause the filthy weeds to grow like 
that?  Are they not all clean that He has made?  The potato--it is 
not filthy.  And the onion?  It has a strong smell; but the 
demoiselle Meelair she ate much of the onion--when we were not at 
the Island House, but in the camp.

"And the smell of the tobacco--this is an affair of the taste.  For 
me, I love it much; it is like a spice.  When I come home at night 
to the camp-fire, where the boys are smoking, the smell of the pipes 
runs far out into the woods to salute me.  It says, 'Here we are, 
Patrique; come in near to the fire.'  The smell of the tobacco is 
more sweet than the smell of the fish.  The pig loves it not, 
assuredly; but what then?  I am not a pig.  To me it is good, good, 
good.  Don't you find it like that, m'sieu'?

I had to confess that in the affair of taste I sided with Patrick 
rather than with the pig.  "Continue," I said--"continue, my boy.  
Miss Miller must have said more than that to reform you."

"Truly," replied Pat.  "On the second day we were making the lunch 
at midday on the island below the first rapids.  I smoked the pipe 
on a rock apart, after the collation.  Mees Meelair comes to me, and 
says: 'Patrique, my man, do you comprehend that the tobacco is a 
poison?  You are committing the murder of yourself.'  Then she tells 
me many things--about the nicoline, I think she calls him; how he 
goes into the blood and into the bones and into the hair, and how 
quickly he will kill the cat.  And she says, very strong, 'The men 
who smoke the tobacco shall die!'"

"That must have frightened you well, Pat.  I suppose you threw away 
your pipe at once."

"But no, m'sieu'; this time I continue to smoke, for now it is Mees 
Meelair who comes near the pipe voluntarily, and it is not my 
offence.  And I remember, while she is talking, the old bonhomme 
Michaud St. Gerome.  He is a capable man; when he was young he could 
carry a barrel of flour a mile without rest, and now that he has 
seventy-three years he yet keeps his force.  And he smokes--it is 
astonishing how that old man smokes!  All the day, except when he 
sleeps.  If the tobacco is a poison, it is a poison of the slowest--
like the tea or the coffee.  For the cat it is quick--yes; but for 
the man it is long; and I am still young--only thirty-one.

"But the third day, m'sieu'--the third day was the worst.  It was a 
day of sadness, a day of the bad chance.  The demoiselle Meelair was 
not content but that we should leap the Rapide des Cedres in canoe.  
It was rough, rough--all feather-white, and the big rock at the 
corner boiling like a kettle.  But it is the ignorant who have the 
most of boldness.  The demoiselle Meelair she was not solid in the 
canoe.  She made a jump and a loud scream.  I did my possible, but 
the sea was too high.  We took in of the water about five buckets.  
We were very wet.  After that we make the camp; and while I sit by 
the fire to dry my clothes I smoke for comfort.

"Mees Meelair she comes to me once more.  'Patrique,' she says with 
a sad voice, 'I am sorry that a nice man, so good, so brave, is 
married to a thing so bad, so sinful!'  At first I am mad when I 
hear this, because I think she means Angelique, my wife; but 
immediately she goes on: 'You are married to the smoking.  That is 
sinful; it is a wicked thing.  Christians do not smoke.  There is 
none of the tobacco in heaven.  The men who use it cannot go there.  
Ah, Patrique, do you wish to go to the hell with your pipe?'"

"That was a close question," I commented; "your Miss Miller is a 
plain speaker.  But what did you say when she asked you that?"

"I said, m'sieu'," replied Patrick, lifting his hand to his 
forehead, "that I must go where the good God pleased to send me, and 
that I would have much joy to go to the same place with our cure, 
the Pere Morel, who is a great smoker.  I am sure that the pipe of 
comfort is no sin to that holy man when he returns, some cold night, 
from the visiting of the sick--it is not sin, not more than the soft 
chair and the warm fire.  It harms no one, and it makes quietness of 
mind.  For me, when I see m'sieu' the cure sitting at the door of 
the presbytere, in the evening coolness, smoking the tobacco, very 
peaceful, and when he says to me, 'Good day, Patrique; will you have 
a pipeful?' I cannot think that is wicked--no!"

There was a warmth of sincerity in the honest fellow's utterance 
that spoke well for the character of the cure of St. Gerome.  The 
good word of a plain fisherman or hunter is worth more than a degree 
of doctor of divinity from a learned university.

I too had grateful memories of good men, faithful, charitable, wise, 
devout,--men before whose virtues my heart stood uncovered and 
reverent, men whose lives were sweet with self-sacrifice, and whose 
words were like stars of guidance to many souls,--and I had often 
seen these men solacing their toils and inviting pleasant, kindly 
thoughts with the pipe of peace.  I wondered whether Miss Miller 
ever had the good fortune to meet any of these men.  They were not 
members of the societies for ethical agitation, but they were 
profitable men to know.  Their very presence was medicinal.  It 
breathed patience and fidelity to duty, and a large, quiet 
friendliness.

"Well, then," I asked, "what did she say finally to turn you?  What 
was her last argument?  Come, Pat, you must make it a little shorter 
than she did."

"In five words, m'sieu', it was this: 'The tobacco causes the 
poverty.'  The fourth day--you remind yourself of the long dead-
water below the Rapide Gervais?  It was there.  All the day she 
spoke to me of the money that goes to the smoke.  Two piastres the 
month.  Twenty-four the year.  Three hundred--yes, with the 
interest, more than three hundred in ten years!  Two thousand 
piastres in the life of the man!  But she comprehends well the 
arithmetic, that demoiselle Meelair; it was enormous!  The big 
farmer Tremblay has not more money at the bank than that.  Then she 
asks me if I have been at Quebec?  No.  If I would love to go?  Of 
course, yes.  For two years of the smoking we could go, the goodwife 
and me, to Quebec, and see the grand city, and the shops, and the 
many people, and the cathedral, and perhaps the theatre.  And at the 
asylum of the orphans we could seek one of the little found children 
to bring home with us, to be our own; for m'sieu knows it is the 
sadness of our house that we have no child.  But it was not Mees 
Meelair who said that--no, she would not understand that thought."

Patrick paused for a moment, and rubbed his chin reflectively.  Then 
he continued:

"And perhaps it seems strange to you also, m'sieu', that a poor man 
should be so hungry for children.  It is not so everywhere: not in 
America, I hear.  But it is so with us in Canada.  I know not a man 
so poor that he would not feel richer for a child.  I know not a man 
so happy that he would not feel happier with a child in the house.  
It is the best thing that the good God gives to us; something to 
work for; something to play with.  It makes a man more gentle and 
more strong.  And a woman,--her heart is like an empty nest, if she 
has not a child.  It was the darkest day that ever came to Angelique 
and me when our little baby flew away, four years ago.  But perhaps 
if we have not one of our own, there is another somewhere, a little 
child of nobody, that belongs to us, for the sake of the love of 
children.  Jean Boucher, my wife's cousin, at St. Joseph d'Alma, has 
taken two from the asylum.  Two, m'sieu', I assure you for as soon 
as one was twelve years old, he said he wanted a baby, and so he 
went back again and got another.  That is what I should like to do."

"But, Pat," said I, "it is an expensive business, this raising of 
children.  You should think twice about it."

"Pardon, m'sieu'," answered Patrick; "I think a hundred times and 
always the same way.  It costs little more for three, or four, or 
five, in the house than for two.  The only thing is the money for 
the journey to the city, the choice, the arrangement with the nuns.  
For that one must save.  And so I have thrown away the pipe.  I 
smoke no more.  The money of the tobacco is for Quebec and for the 
little found child.  I have already eighteen piastres and twenty 
sous in the old box of cigars on the chimney-piece at the house.  
This year will bring more.  The winter after the next, if we have 
the good chance, we go to the city, the goodwife and me, and we come 
home with the little boy--or maybe the little girl.  Does m'sieu' 
approve?"

"You are a man of virtue, Pat," said I; "and since you will not take 
your share of the tobacco on this trip, it shall go to the other 
men; but you shall have the money instead, to put into your box on 
the mantel-piece."

After supper that evening I watched him with some curiosity to see 
what he would do without his pipe.  He seemed restless and uneasy.  
The other men sat around the fire, smoking; but Patrick was down at 
the landing, fussing over one of the canoes, which had been somewhat 
roughly handled on the road coming in.  Then he began to tighten the 
tent-ropes, and hauled at them so vigorously that he loosened two of 
the stakes.  Then he whittled the blade of his paddle for a while, 
and cut it an inch too short.  Then he went into the men's tent, and 
in a few minutes the sound of snoring told that he had sought refuge 
in sleep at eight o'clock, without telling a single caribou story, 
or making any plans for the next day's sport.



II

For several days we lingered on the Lake of the Beautiful River, 
trying the fishing.  We explored all the favourite meeting-places of 
the trout, at the mouths of the streams and in the cool spring-
holes, but we did not have remarkable success.  I am bound to say 
that Patrick was not at his best that year as a fisherman.  He was 
as ready to work, as interested, as eager, as ever; but he lacked 
steadiness, persistence, patience.  Some tranquillizing influence 
seemed to have departed from him.  That placid confidence in the 
ultimate certainty of catching fish, which is one of the chief 
elements of good luck, was wanting.  He did not appear to be able to 
sit still in the canoe.  The mosquitoes troubled him terribly.  He 
was just as anxious as a man could be to have me take plenty of the 
largest trout, but he was too much in a hurry.  He even went so far 
as to say that he did not think I cast the fly as well as I did 
formerly, and that I was too slow in striking when the fish rose.  
He was distinctly a weaker man without his pipe, but his virtuous 
resolve held firm.

There was one place in particular that required very cautious 
angling.  It was a spring-hole at the mouth of the Riviere du 
Milieu--an open space, about a hundred feet long and fifteen feet 
wide, in the midst of the lily-pads, and surrounded on every side by 
clear, shallow water.  Here the great trout assembled at certain 
hours of the day; but it was not easy to get them.  You must come up 
delicately in the canoe, and make fast to a stake at the side of the 
pool, and wait a long time for the place to get quiet and the fish 
to recover from their fright and come out from under the lily-pads.  
It had been our custom to calm and soothe this expectant interval 
with incense of the Indian weed, friendly to meditation and a foe of 
"Raw haste, half-sister to delay."  But this year Patrick could not 
endure the waiting.  After five minutes he would say:

"BUT the fishing is bad this season!  There are none of the big ones 
here at all.  Let us try another place.  It will go better at the 
Riviere du Cheval, perhaps."

There was only one thing that would really keep him quiet, and that 
was a conversation about Quebec.  The glories of that wonderful city 
entranced his thoughts.  He was already floating, in imagination, 
with the vast throngs of people that filled its splendid streets, 
looking up at the stately houses and churches with their glittering 
roofs of tin, and staring his fill at the magnificent shop-windows, 
where all the luxuries of the world were displayed.  He had heard 
that there were more than a hundred shops--separate shops for all 
kinds of separate things: some for groceries, and some for shoes, 
and some for clothes, and some for knives and axes, and some for 
guns, and many shops where they sold only jewels--gold rings, and 
diamonds, and forks of pure silver.  Was it not so?

He pictured himself, side by side with his goodwife, in the salle a 
manger of the Hotel Richelieu, ordering their dinner from a printed 
bill of fare.  Side by side they were walking on the Dufferin 
Terrace, listening to the music of the military band.  Side by side 
they were watching the wonders of the play at the Theatre de 
l'Etoile du Nord.  Side by side they were kneeling before the 
gorgeous altar in the cathedral.  And then they were standing 
silent, side by side, in the asylum of the orphans, looking at brown 
eyes and blue, at black hair and yellow curls, at fat legs and rosy 
cheeks and laughing mouths, while the Mother Superior showed off the 
little boys and girls for them to choose.  This affair of the choice 
was always a delightful difficulty, and here his fancy loved to hang 
in suspense, vibrating between rival joys.

Once, at the Riviere du Milieu, after considerable discourse upon 
Quebec, there was an interval of silence, during which I succeeded 
in hooking and playing a larger trout than usual.  As the fish came 
up to the side of the canoe, Patrick netted him deftly, exclaiming 
with an abstracted air, "It is a boy, after all.  I like that best."

Our camp was shifted, the second week, to the Grand Lac des Cedres; 
and there we had extraordinary fortune with the trout: partly, I 
conjecture, because there was only one place to fish, and so 
Patrick's uneasy zeal could find no excuse for keeping me in 
constant motion all around the lake.  But in the matter of weather 
we were not so happy.  There is always a conflict in the angler's 
mind about the weather--a struggle between his desires as a man and 
his desires as a fisherman.  This time our prayers for a good 
fishing season were granted at the expense of our suffering human 
nature.  There was a conjunction in the zodiac of the signs of 
Aquarius and Pisces.  It rained as easily, as suddenly, as 
penetratingly, as Miss Miller talked; but in between the showers the 
trout were very hungry.

One day, when we were paddling home to our tents among the birch 
trees, one of these unexpected storms came up; and Patrick, 
thoughtful of my comfort as ever, insisted on giving me his coat to 
put around my dripping shoulders.  The paddling would serve instead 
of a coat for him, he said; it would keep him warm to his bones.  As 
I slipped the garment over my back, something hard fell from one of 
the pockets into the bottom of the canoe.  It was a brier-wood pipe.

"Aha! Pat," I cried; "what is this?  You said you had thrown all 
your pipes away.  How does this come in your pocket?"

"But, m'sieu'," he answered, "this is different.  This is not the 
pipe pure and simple.  It is a souvenir.  It is the one you gave me 
two years ago on the Metabetchouan, when we got the big caribou.  I 
could not reject this.  I keep it always for the remembrance."

At this moment my hand fell upon a small, square object in the other 
pocket of the coat.  I pulled it out.  It was a cake of Virginia 
leaf.  Without a word, I held it up, and looked at Patrick.  He 
began to explain eagerly:

"Yes, certainly, it is the tobacco, m'sieu'; but it is not for the 
smoke, as you suppose.  It is for the virtue, for the self-victory.  
I call this my little piece of temptation.  See; the edges are not 
cut.  I smell it only; and when I think how it is good, then I speak 
to myself, 'But the little found child will be better!'  It will 
last a long time, this little piece of temptation; perhaps until we 
have the boy at our house--or maybe the girl."

The conflict between the cake of Virginia leaf and Patrick's virtue 
must have been severe during the last ten days of our expedition; 
for we went down the Riviere des Ecorces, and that is a tough trip, 
and full of occasions when consolation is needed.  After a long, 
hard day's work cutting out an abandoned portage through the woods, 
or tramping miles over the incredibly shaggy hills to some outlying 
pond for a caribou, and lugging the saddle and hind quarters back to 
the camp, the evening pipe, after supper, seemed to comfort the men 
unspeakably.  If their tempers had grown a little short under stress 
of fatigue and hunger, now they became cheerful and good-natured 
again.  They sat on logs before the camp-fire, their stockinged feet 
stretched out to the blaze, and the puffs of smoke rose from their 
lips like tiny salutes to the comfortable flame, or like incense 
burned upon the altar of gratitude and contentment.

Patrick, I noticed about this time, liked to get on the leeward side 
of as many pipes as possible, and as near as he could to the 
smokers.  He said that this kept away the mosquitoes.  There he 
would sit, with the smoke drifting full in his face, both hands in 
his pockets, talking about Quebec, and debating the comparative 
merits of a boy or a girl as an addition to his household.

But the great trial of his virtue was yet to come.  The main object 
of our trip down the River of Barks--the terminus ad quem of the 
expedition, so to speak--was a bear.  Now the bear as an object of 
the chase, at least in Canada, is one of the most illusory of 
phantoms.  The manner of hunting is simple.  It consists in walking 
about through the woods, or paddling along a stream, until you meet 
a bear; then you try to shoot him.  This would seem to be, as the 
Rev. Mr. Leslie called his book against the deists of the eighteenth 
century, "A Short and Easie Method."  But in point of fact there are 
two principal difficulties.  The first is that you never find the 
bear when and where you are looking for him.  The second is that the 
bear sometimes finds you when--but you shall see how it happened to us.

We had hunted the whole length of the River of Barks with the utmost 
pains and caution, never going out, even to pick blueberries, 
without having the rifle at hand, loaded for the expected encounter.  
Not one bear had we met.  It seemed as if the whole ursine tribe 
must have emigrated to Labrador.

At last we came to the mouth of the river, where it empties into 
Lake Kenogami, in a comparatively civilized country, with several 
farm-houses in full view on the opposite bank.  It was not a 
promising place for the chase; but the river ran down with a little 
fall and a lively, cheerful rapid into the lake, and it was a 
capital spot for fishing.  So we left the rifle in the case, and 
took a canoe and a rod, and went down, on the last afternoon, to 
stand on the point of rocks at the foot of the rapid, and cast the 
fly.

We caught half a dozen good trout; but the sun was still hot, and we 
concluded to wait awhile for the evening fishing.  So we turned the 
canoe bottom up among the bushes on the shore, stored the trout away 
in the shade beneath it, and sat down in a convenient place among 
the stones to have another chat about Quebec.  We had just passed 
the jewelry shops, and were preparing to go to the asylum of the 
orphans, when Patrick put his hand on my shoulder with a convulsive 
grip, and pointed up the stream.

There was a huge bear, like a very big, wicked, black sheep with a 
pointed nose, making his way down the shore.  He shambled along 
lazily and unconcernedly, as if his bones were loosely tied together 
in a bag of fur.  It was the most indifferent and disconnected gait 
that I ever saw.  Nearer and nearer he sauntered, while we sat as 
still as if we had been paralyzed.  And the gun was in its case at 
the tent!

How the bear knew this I cannot tell; but know it he certainly did, 
for he kept on until he reached the canoe, sniffed at it 
suspiciously, thrust his sharp nose under it, and turned it over 
with a crash that knocked two holes in the bottom, ate the fish, 
licked his chops, stared at us for a few moments without the 
slightest appearance of gratitude, made up his mind that he did not 
like our personal appearance, and then loped leisurely up the 
mountain-side.  We could hear him cracking the underbrush long after 
he was lost to sight.

Patrick looked at me and sighed.  I said nothing.  The French 
language, as far as I knew it, seemed trifling and inadequate.  It 
was a moment when nothing could do any good except the consolations 
of philosophy, or a pipe.  Patrick pulled the brier-wood from his 
pocket; then he took out the cake of Virginia leaf, looked at it, 
smelled it, shook his head, and put it back again.  His face was as 
long as his arm.  He stuck the cold pipe into his mouth, and pulled 
away at it for a while in silence.  Then his countenance began to 
clear, his mouth relaxed, he broke into a laugh.

"Sacred bear!" he cried, slapping his knee; "sacred beast of the 
world!  What a day of the good chance for her, HE!  But she was 
glad, I suppose.  Perhaps she has some cubs, HE?  BAJETTE!"



III

This was the end of our hunting and fishing for that year.  We spent 
the next two days in voyaging through a half-dozen small lakes and 
streams, in a farming country, on our way home.  I observed that 
Patrick kept his souvenir pipe between his lips a good deal of the 
time, and puffed at vacancy.  It seemed to soothe him.  In his 
conversation he dwelt with peculiar satisfaction on the thought of 
the money in the cigar-box on the mantel-piece at St. Gerome.  
Eighteen piastres and twenty sous already!  And with the addition to 
be made from the tobacco not smoked during the past month, it would 
amount to more than twenty-three piastres; and all as safe in the 
cigar-box as if it were in the bank at Chicoutimi!  That reflection 
seemed to fill the empty pipe with fragrance.  It was a Barmecide 
smoke; but the fumes of it were potent, and their invisible wreaths 
framed the most enchanting visions of tall towers, gray walls, 
glittering windows, crowds of people, regiments of soldiers, and the 
laughing eyes of a little boy--or was it a little girl?

When we came out of the mouth of La Belle Riviere, the broad blue 
expanse of Lake St. John spread before us, calm and bright in the 
radiance of the sinking sun.  In a curve on the left, eight miles 
away, sparkled the slender steeple of the church of St. Gerome.  A 
thick column of smoke rose from somewhere in its neighbourhood.  "It 
is on the beach," said the men; "the boys of the village accustom 
themselves to burn the rubbish there for a bonfire."  But as our 
canoes danced lightly forward over the waves and came nearer to the 
place, it was evident that the smoke came from the village itself.  
It was a conflagration, but not a general one; the houses were too 
scattered and the day too still for a fire to spread.  What could it 
be?  Perhaps the blacksmith shop, perhaps the bakery, perhaps the 
old tumble-down barn of the little Tremblay?  It was not a large 
fire, that was certain.  But where was it precisely?

The question, becoming more and more anxious, was answered when we 
arrived at the beach.  A handful of boys, eager to be the bearers of 
news, had spied us far off, and ran down to the shore to meet us.

"Patrique!  Patrique!" they shouted in English, to make their 
importance as great as possible in my eyes.  "Come 'ome kveek; yo' 
'ouse ees hall burn'!"

"W'at!" cried Patrick.  "MONJEE!"  And he drove the canoe ashore, 
leaped out, and ran up the bank toward the village as if he were 
mad.  The other men followed him, leaving me with the boys to unload 
the canoes and pull them up on the sand, where the waves would not 
chafe them.

This took some time, and the boys helped me willingly.  "Eet ees not 
need to 'urry, m'sieu'," they assured me; "dat 'ouse to Patrique 
Moullarque ees hall burn' seence t'ree hour.  Not'ing lef' bot de 
hash."

As soon as possible, however, I piled up the stuff, covered it with 
one of the tents, and leaving it in charge of the steadiest of the 
boys, took the road to the village and the site of the Maison 
Mullarkey.

It had vanished completely: the walls of squared logs were gone; the 
low, curved roof had fallen; the door-step with the morning-glory 
vines climbing up beside it had sunken out of sight; nothing 
remained but the dome of the clay oven at the back of the house, and 
a heap of smouldering embers.

Patrick sat beside his wife on a flat stone that had formerly 
supported the corner of the porch.  His shoulder was close to 
Angelique's--so close that it looked almost as if he must have had 
his arm around her a moment before I came up.  His passion and grief 
had calmed themselves down now, and he was quite tranquil.  In his 
left hand he held the cake of Virginia leaf, in his right a knife.  
He was cutting off delicate slivers of the tobacco, which he rolled 
together with a circular motion between his palms.  Then he pulled 
his pipe from his pocket and filled the bowl with great 
deliberation.

"What a misfortune!" I cried.  "The pretty house is gone.  I am so 
sorry, Patrick.  And the box of money on the mantel-piece, that is 
gone, too, I fear--all your savings.  What a terrible misfortune! 
How did it happen?"

"I cannot tell," he answered rather slowly.  "It is the good God.  
And he has left me my Angelique.  Also, m'sieu', you see"--here he 
went over to the pile of ashes, and pulled out a fragment of charred 
wood with a live coal at the end--"you see"--puff, puff--"he has 
given me"--puff, puff--"a light for my pipe again"--puff, puff, 
puff!

The fragrant, friendly smoke was pouring out now in full volume.  It 
enwreathed his head like drifts of cloud around the rugged top of a 
mountain at sunrise.  I could see that his face was spreading into a 
smile of ineffable contentment.

"My faith!" said I, "how can you be so cheerful?  Your house is in 
ashes; your money is burned up; the voyage to Quebec, the visit to 
the asylum, the little orphan--how can you give it all up so 
easily?"

"Well," he replied, taking the pipe from his mouth, with fingers 
curling around the bowl, as if they loved to feel that it was warm 
once more--"well, then, it would be more hard, I suppose, to give it 
up not easily.  And then, for the house, we shall build a new one 
this fall; the neighbours will help.  And for the voyage to Quebec--
without that we may be happy.  And as regards the little orphan, I 
will tell you frankly"--here he went back to his seat upon the flat 
stone, and settled himself with an air of great comfort beside his 
partner--"I tell you, in confidence, Angelique demands that I 
prepare a particular furniture at the new house.  Yes, it is a 
cradle; but it is not for an orphan."



IV

It was late in the following summer when I came back again to St. 
Gerome.  The golden-rods and the asters were all in bloom along the 
village street; and as I walked down it the broad golden sunlight of 
the short afternoon seemed to glorify the open road and the plain 
square houses with a careless, homely rapture of peace.  The air was 
softly fragrant with the odour of balm of Gilead.  A yellow warbler 
sang from a little clump of elder-bushes, tinkling out his contented 
song like a chime of tiny bells, "Sweet--sweet--sweet--sweeter--
sweeter--sweetest!"

There was the new house, a little farther back from the road than 
the old one; and in the place where the heap of ashes had lain, a 
primitive garden, with marigolds and lupines and zinnias all abloom.  
And there was Patrick, sitting on the door-step, smoking his pipe in 
the cool of the day.  Yes; and there, on a many-coloured counterpane 
spread beside him, an infant joy of the house of Mullarkey was 
sucking her thumb, while her father was humming the words of an old 
slumber-song:


     Sainte Marguerite,
     Veillez ma petite!
     Endormez ma p'tite enfant
     Jusqu'a l'age de quinze ans!
     Quand elle aura quinze ans passe
     Il faudra la marier
     Avec un p'tit bonhomme
     Que viendra de Rome.


"Hola! Patrick," I cried; "good luck to you!  Is it a girl or a 
boy?"

"SALUT! m'sieu'," he answered, jumping up and waving his pipe.  "It 
is a girl AND a boy!"

Sure enough, as I entered the door, I beheld Angelique rocking the 
other half of the reward of virtue in the new cradle.




A BRAVE HEART

"That was truly his name, m'sieu'--Raoul Vaillantcoeur--a name of 
the fine sound, is it not?  You like that word,--a valiant heart,--
it pleases you, eh!  The man who calls himself by such a name as 
that ought to be a brave fellow, a veritable hero?  Well, perhaps.  
But I know an Indian who is called Le Blanc; that means white.  And 
a white man who is called Lenoir; that means black.  It is very 
droll, this affair of the names.  It is like the lottery."

Silence for a few moments, broken only by the ripple of water under 
the bow of the canoe, the persistent patter of the rain all around 
us, and the SLISH, SLISH of the paddle with which Ferdinand, my 
Canadian voyageur, was pushing the birch-bark down the lonely length 
of Lac Moise.  I knew that there was one of his stories on the way.  
But I must keep still to get it.  A single ill-advised comment, a 
word that would raise a question of morals or social philosophy, 
might switch the narrative off the track into a swamp of abstract 
discourse in which Ferdinand would lose himself.  Presently the 
voice behind me began again.

"But that word VAILLANT, m'sieu'; with us in Canada it does not mean 
always the same as with you.  Sometimes we use it for something that 
sounds big, but does little; a gun that goes off with a terrible 
crack, but shoots not straight nor far.  When a man is like that he 
is FANFARON, he shows off well, but--well, you shall judge for 
yourself, when you hear what happened between this man Vaillantcoeur 
and his friend Prosper Leclere at the building of the stone tower of 
the church at Abbeville.  You remind yourself of that grand church 
with the tall tower--yes?  With permission I am going to tell you 
what passed when that was made.  And you shall decide whether there 
was truly a brave heart in the story, or not; and if it went with 
the name.

Thus the tale began, in the vast solitude of the northern forest, 
among the granite peaks of the ancient Laurentian Mountains, on a 
lake that knew no human habitation save the Indian's wigwam or the 
fisherman's tent.

How it rained that day!  The dark clouds had collapsed upon the 
hills in shapeless folds.  The waves of the lake were beaten flat by 
the lashing strokes of the storm.  Quivering sheets of watery gray 
were driven before the wind; and broad curves of silver bullets 
danced before them as they swept over the surface.  All around the 
homeless shores the evergreen trees seemed to hunch their backs and 
crowd closer together in patient misery.  Not a bird had the heart 
to sing; only the loon--storm-lover--laughed his crazy challenge to 
the elements, and mocked us with his long-drawn maniac scream.

It seemed as if we were a thousand miles from everywhere and 
everybody.  Cities, factories, libraries, colleges, law-courts, 
theatres, palaces,--what had we dreamed of these things?  They were 
far off, in another world.  We had slipped back into a primitive 
life.  Ferdinand was telling me the naked story of human love and 
human hate, even as it has been told from the beginning.

I cannot tell it just as he did.  There was a charm in his speech 
too quick for the pen: a woodland savour not to be found in any ink 
for sale in the shops.  I must tell it in my way, as he told it in 
his.

But at all events, nothing that makes any difference shall go into 
the translation unless it was in the original.  This is Ferdinand's 
story.  If you care for the real thing, here it is.



I

There were two young men in Abbeville who were easily the cocks of 
the woodland walk.  Their standing rested on the fact that they were 
the strongest men in the parish.  Strength is the thing that counts, 
when people live on the edge of the wilderness.  These two were well 
known all through the country between Lake St. John and Chicoutimi 
as men of great capacity.  Either of them could shoulder a barrel of 
flour and walk off with it as lightly as a common man would carry a 
side of bacon.  There was not a half-pound of difference between 
them in ability.  But there was a great difference in their looks 
and in their way of doing things.

Raoul Vaillantcoeur was the biggest and the handsomest man in the 
village; nearly six feet tall, straight as a fir tree, and black as 
a bull-moose in December.  He had natural force enough and to spare.  
Whatever he did was done by sheer power of back and arm.  He could 
send a canoe up against the heaviest water, provided he did not get 
mad and break his paddle--which he often did.  He had more muscle 
than he knew how to use.

Prosper Leclere did not have so much, but he knew better how to 
handle it.  He never broke his paddle--unless it happened to be a 
bad one, and then he generally had another all ready in the canoe.  
He was at least four inches shorter than Vaillantcoeur; broad 
shoulders, long arms, light hair, gray eyes; not a handsome fellow, 
but pleasant-looking and very quiet.  What he did was done more than 
half with his head.

He was the kind of a man that never needs more than one match to 
light a fire.

But Vaillantcoeur--well, if the wood was wet he might use a dozen, 
and when the blaze was kindled, as like as not he would throw in the 
rest of the box.

Now, these two men had been friends and were changed into rivals.  
At least that was the way that one of them looked at it.  And most 
of the people in the parish seemed to think that was the right view.  
It was a strange thing, and not altogether satisfactory to the 
public mind, to have two strongest men in the village.  The question 
of comparative standing in the community ought to be raised and 
settled in the usual way.  Raoul was perfectly willing, and at times 
(commonly on Saturday nights) very eager.  But Prosper was not.

"No," he said, one March night, when he was boiling maple-sap in the 
sugar-bush with little Ovide Rossignol (who had a lyric passion for 
holding the coat while another man was fighting)--"no, for what 
shall I fight with Raoul?  As boys we have played together.  Once, 
in the rapids of the Belle Riviere, when I have fallen in the water, 
I think he has saved my life.  He was stronger, then, than me.  I am 
always a friend to him.  If I beat him now, am I stronger?  No, but 
weaker.  And if he beats me, what is the sense of that?  Certainly I 
shall not like it.  What is to gain?"

Down in the store of old Girard, that night, Vaillantcoeur was 
holding forth after a different fashion.  He stood among the 
cracker-boxes and flour-barrels, with a background of shelves laden 
with bright-coloured calicoes, and a line of tin pails hanging 
overhead, and stated his view of the case with vigour.  He even 
pulled off his coat and rolled up his shirt-sleeve to show the 
knotty arguments with which he proposed to clinch his opinion.

"That Leclere," said he, "that little Prosper Leclere!  He thinks 
himself one of the strongest--a fine fellow!  But I tell you he is a 
coward.  If he is clever?  Yes.  But he is a poltroon.  He knows 
well that I can flatten him out like a crepe in the frying-pan.  But 
he is afraid.  He has not as much courage as the musk-rat.  You 
stamp on the bank.  He dives.  He swims away.  Bah!"

"How about that time he cut loose the jam of logs in the Rapide des 
Cedres?" said old Girard from his corner.

Vaillantcoeur's black eyes sparkled and he twirled his mustache 
fiercely.  "SAPRIE!" he cried, "that was nothing!  Any man with an 
axe can cut a log.  But to fight--that is another affair.  That 
demands the brave heart.  The strong man who will not fight is a 
coward.  Some day I will put him through the mill--you shall see 
what that small Leclere is made of.  SACREDAM!"

Of course, affairs had not come to this pass all at once.  It was a 
long history, beginning with the time when the two boys had played 
together, and Raoul was twice as strong as the other, and was very 
proud of it.  Prosper did not care; it was all right so long as they 
had a good time.  But then Prosper began to do things better and 
better.  Raoul did not understand it; he was jealous.  Why should he 
not always be the leader?  He had more force.  Why should Prosper 
get ahead?  Why should he have better luck at the fishing and the 
hunting and the farming?  It was by some trick.  There was no 
justice in it.

Raoul was not afraid of anything but death; and whatever he wanted, 
he thought he had a right to have.  But he did not know very well 
how to get it.  He would start to chop a log just at the spot where 
there was a big knot.

He was the kind of a man that sets hare-snares on a caribou-trail, 
and then curses his luck because he catches nothing.

Besides, whatever he did, he was always thinking most about beating 
somebody else.  But Prosper eared most for doing the thing as well 
as he could.  If any one else could beat him--well, what difference 
did it make?  He would do better the next time.

If he had a log to chop, he looked it all over for a clear place 
before he began.  What he wanted was, not to make the chips fly, but 
to get the wood split.

You are not to suppose that the one man was a saint and a hero, and 
the other a fool and a ruffian.  No; that sort of thing happens only 
in books.  People in Abbeville were not made on that plan.  They 
were both plain men.  But there was a difference in their hearts; 
and out of that difference grew all the trouble.

It was hard on Vaillantcoeur, of course, to see Leclere going ahead, 
getting rich, clearing off the mortgage on his farm, laying up money 
with the notary Bergeron, who acted as banker for the parish--it was 
hard to look on at this, while he himself stood still, or even 
slipped back a little, got into debt, had to sell a bit of the land 
that his father left him.  There must be some cheating about it.

But this was not the hardest morsel to swallow.  The great thing 
that stuck in his crop was the idea that the little Prosper, whom he 
could have whipped so easily, and whom he had protected so loftily, 
when they were boys, now stood just as high as he did as a capable 
man--perhaps even higher.  Why was it that when the Price Brothers, 
down at Chicoutimi, had a good lumber-job up in the woods on the 
Belle Riviere, they made Leclere the boss, instead of Vaillantcoeur?  
Why did the cure Villeneuve choose Prosper, and not Raoul, to steady 
the strain of the biggest pole when they were setting up the derrick 
for the building of the new church?

It was rough, rough!  The more Raoul thought of it, the rougher it 
seemed.  The fact that it was a man who had once been his protege, 
and still insisted on being his best friend, did not make it any 
smoother.  Would you have liked it any better on that account?  I am 
not telling you how it ought to have been, I am telling you how it 
was.  This isn't Vaillantcoeur's account-book; it's his story.  You 
must strike your balances as you go along.

And all the time, you see, he felt sure that he was a stronger man 
and a braver man than Prosper.  He was hungry to prove it in the 
only way that he could understand.  The sense of rivalry grew into a 
passion of hatred, and the hatred shaped itself into a blind, 
headstrong desire to fight.  Everything that Prosper did well, 
seemed like a challenge; every success that he had was as hard to 
bear as an insult.  All the more, because Prosper seemed unconscious 
of it.  He refused to take offence, went about his work quietly and 
cheerfully, turned off hard words with a joke, went out of his way 
to show himself friendly and good-natured.  In reality, of course, 
he knew well enough how matters stood.  But he was resolved not to 
show that he knew, if he could help it; and in any event, not to be 
one of the two that are needed to make a quarrel.

He felt very strangely about it.  There was a presentiment in his 
heart that he did not dare to shake off.  It seemed as if this 
conflict were one that would threaten the happiness of his whole 
life.  He still kept his old feeling of attraction to Raoul, the 
memory of the many happy days they had spent together; and though 
the friendship, of course, could never again be what it had been, 
there was something of it left, at least on Prosper's side.  To 
struggle with this man, strike at his face, try to maim and 
disfigure him, roll over and over on the ground with him, like two 
dogs tearing each other,--the thought was hateful.  His gorge rose 
at it.  He would never do it, unless to save his life.  Then?  Well, 
then, God must be his judge.

So it was that these two men stood against each other in Abbeville.  
Just as strongly as Raoul was set to get into a fight, just so 
strongly was Prosper set to keep out of one.  It was a trial of 
strength between two passions,--the passion of friendship and the 
passion of fighting.

Two or three things happened to put an edge on Raoul's hunger for an 
out-and-out fight.

The first was the affair at the shanty on Lac des Caps.  The wood-
choppers, like sailors, have a way of putting a new man through a 
few tricks to initiate him into the camp.  Leclere was bossing the 
job, with a gang of ten men from St. Raymond under him.  
Vaillantcoeur had just driven a team in over the snow with a load of 
provisions, and was lounging around the camp as if it belonged to 
him.  It was Sunday afternoon, the regular time for fun, but no one 
dared to take hold of him.  He looked too big.  He expressed his 
opinion of the camp.

"No fun in this shanty, HE?  I suppose that little Leclere he makes 
you others work, and say your prayers, and then, for the rest, you 
can sleep.  HE!  Well, I am going to make a little fun for you, my 
boys.  Come, Prosper, get your hat, if you are able to climb a tree."

He snatched the hat from the table by the stove and ran out into the 
snow.  In front of the shanty a good-sized birch, tall, smooth, very 
straight, was still standing.  He went up the trunk like a bear.

But there was a dead balsam that had fallen against the birch and 
lodged on the lower branches.  It was barely strong enough to bear 
the weight of a light man.  Up this slanting ladder Prosper ran 
quickly in his moccasined feet, snatched the hat from Raoul's teeth 
as he swarmed up the trunk, and ran down again.  As he neared the 
ground, the balsam, shaken from its lodgement, cracked and fell.  
Raoul was left up the tree, perched among the branches, out of 
breath.  Luck had set the scene for the lumberman's favourite trick.

"Chop him down! chop him down" was the cry; and a trio of axes were 
twanging against the birch tree, while the other men shouted and 
laughed and pelted the tree with ice to keep the prisoner from 
climbing down.

Prosper neither shouted nor chopped, but he grinned a little as he 
watched the tree quiver and shake, and heard the rain of "SACRES!" 
and "MAUDITS!" that came out of the swaying top.  He grinned--until 
he saw that a half-dozen more blows would fell the birch right on 
the roof of the shanty.

"Are you crazy?" he cried, as he picked up an axe; "you know nothing 
how to chop.  You kill a man.  You smash the cabane.  Let go!"  He 
shoved one of the boys away and sent a few mighty cuts into the side 
of the birch that was farthest from the cabin; then two short cuts 
on the other side; the tree shivered, staggered, cracked, and swept 
in a great arc toward the deep snow-drift by the brook.  As the top 
swung earthward, Raoul jumped clear of the crashing branches and 
landed safely in the feather-bed of snow, buried up to his neck.  
Nothing was to be seen of him but his head, like some new kind of 
fire-work--sputtering bad words.

Well, this was the first thing that put an edge on Vaillantcoeur's 
hunger to fight.  No man likes to be chopped down by his friend, 
even if the friend does it for the sake of saving him from being 
killed by a fall on the shanty-roof.  It is easy to forget that part 
of it.  What you remember is the grin.

The second thing that made it worse was the bad chance that both of 
these men had to fall in love with the same girl.  Of course there 
were other girls in the village beside Marie Antoinette Girard--
plenty of them, and good girls, too.  But somehow or other, when 
they were beside her, neither Raoul nor Prosper cared to look at any 
of them, but only at 'Toinette.  Her eyes were so much darker and 
her cheeks so much more red--bright as the berries of the mountain-
ash in September.  Her hair hung down to her waist on Sunday in two 
long braids, brown and shiny like a ripe hazelnut; and her voice 
when she laughed made the sound of water tumbling over little 
stones.

No one knew which of the two lovers she liked best. At school it was 
certainly Raoul, because he was bigger and bolder.  When she came 
back from her year in the convent at Roberval it was certainly 
Prosper, because he could talk better and had read more books.  He 
had a volume of songs full of love and romance, and knew most of 
them by heart.  But this did not last forever.  'Toinette's manners 
had been polished at the convent, but her ideas were still those of 
her own people.  She never thought that knowledge of books could 
take the place of strength, in the real battle of life.  She was a 
brave girl, and she felt sure in her heart that the man of the most 
courage must be the best man after all.

For a while she appeared to persuade herself that it was Prosper, 
beyond a doubt, and always took his part when the other girls 
laughed at him.  But this was not altogether a good sign.  When a 
girl really loves, she does not talk, she acts.  The current of 
opinion and gossip in the village was too strong for her.  By the 
time of the affair of the "chopping-down" at Lac des Caps, her heart 
was swinging to and fro like a pendulum.  One week she would walk 
home from mass with Raoul.  The next week she would loiter in the 
front yard on a Saturday evening and talk over the gate with 
Prosper, until her father called her into the shop to wait on 
customers.

It was in one of these talks that the pendulum seemed to make its 
last swing and settle down to its resting-place.  Prosper was 
telling her of the good crops of sugar that he had made from his 
maple grove.

"The profit will be large--more than sixty piastres--and with that I 
shall buy at Chicoutimi a new four-wheeler, of the finest, a 
veritable wedding carriage--if you--if I--'Toinette?  Shall we ride 
together?"

His left hand clasped hers as it lay on the gate.  His right arm 
stole over the low picket fence and went around the shoulder that 
leaned against the gate-post. The road was quite empty, the night 
already dark.  He could feel her warm breath on his neck as she 
laughed.

"If you!  If I!  If what?  Why so many ifs in this fine speech?  Of 
whom is the wedding for which this new carriage is to be bought?  Do 
you know what Raoul Vaillantcoeur has said?  'No more wedding in 
this parish till I have thrown the little Prosper over my 
shoulder!'"

As she said this, laughing, she turned closer to the fence and 
looked up, so that a curl on her forehead brushed against his cheek.

"BATECHE!  Who told you he said that?"

"I heard him, myself."

"Where?"

"In the store, two nights ago.  But it was not for the first time.  
He said it when we came from the church together, it will be four 
weeks to-morrow."

"What did you say to him?"

"I told him perhaps he was mistaken.  The next wedding might be 
after the little Prosper had measured the road with the back of the 
longest man in Abbeville."

The laugh had gone out of her voice now.  She was speaking eagerly, 
and her bosom rose and fell with quick breaths.  But Prosper's right 
arm had dropped from her shoulder, and his hand gripped the fence as 
he straightened up.

"'Toinette!" he cried, "that was bravely said.  And I could do it.  
Yes, I know I could do it.  But, MON DIEU, what shall I say?  Three 
years now, he has pushed me, every one has pushed me, to fight.  And 
you--but I cannot.  I am not capable of it."

The girl's hand lay in his as cold and still as a stone.  She was 
silent for a moment, and then asked, coldly, "Why not?"

"Why not?  Because of the old friendship.  Because he pulled me out 
of the river long ago.  Because I am still his friend.  Because now 
he hates me too much.  Because it would be a black fight.  Because 
shame and evil would come of it, whoever won.  That is what I fear, 
'Toinette!"

Her hand slipped suddenly away from his.  She stepped back from the 
gate.

"TIENS!  You have fear, Monsieur Leclere!  Truly I had not thought 
of that.  It is strange.  For so strong a man it is a little stupid 
to be afraid.  Good-night.  I hear my father calling me.  Perhaps 
some one in the store who wants to be served.  You must tell me 
again what you are going to do with the new carriage.  Good-night!"

She was laughing again.  But it was a different laughter.  Prosper, 
at the gate, did not think it sounded like the running of a brook 
over the stones.  No, it was more the noise of the dry branches that 
knock together in the wind.  He did not hear the sigh that came as 
she shut the door of the house, nor see how slowly she walked 
through the passage into the store.



II

There seemed to be a great many rainy Saturdays that spring; and in 
the early summer the trade in Girard's store was so brisk that it 
appeared to need all the force of the establishment to attend to it.  
The gate of the front yard had no more strain put upon its hinges.  
It fell into a stiff propriety of opening and shutting, at the touch 
of people who understood that a gate was made merely to pass 
through, not to lean upon.

That summer Vaillantcoeur had a new hat--a black and shiny beaver--
and a new red-silk cravat.  They looked fine on Corpus Christi day, 
when he and 'Toinette walked together as fiancee's.

You would have thought he would have been content with that.  Proud, 
he certainly was.  He stepped like the cure's big rooster with the 
topknot--almost as far up in the air as he did along the ground; and 
he held his chin high, as if he liked to look at things over his nose.

But he was not satisfied all the way through.  He thought more of 
beating Prosper than of getting 'Toinette.  And he was not quite 
sure that he had beaten him yet.

Perhaps the girl still liked Prosper a little.  Perhaps she still 
thought of his romances, and his chansons, and his fine, smooth 
words, and missed them.  Perhaps she was too silent and dull 
sometimes, when she walked with Raoul; and sometimes she laughed too 
loud when he talked, more at him than with him.  Perhaps those St. 
Raymond fellows still remembered the way his head stuck out of that 
cursed snow-drift, and joked about it, and said how clever and quick 
the little Prosper was.  Perhaps--ah, MAUDIT! a thousand times 
perhaps!  And only one way to settle them, the old way, the sure 
way, and all the better now because 'Toinette must be on his side.  
She must understand for sure that the bravest man in the parish had 
chosen her.

That was the summer of the building of the grand stone tower of the 
church.  The men of Abbeville did it themselves, with their own 
hands, for the glory of God.  They were keen about that, and the 
cure was the keenest of them all.  No sharing of that glory with 
workmen from Quebec, if you please!  Abbeville was only forty years 
old, but they already understood the glory of God quite as well 
there as at Quebec, without doubt.  They could build their own 
tower, perfectly, and they would.  Besides, it would cost less.

Vaillantcoeur was the chief carpenter.  He attended to the affair of 
beams and timbers.  Leclere was the chief mason.  He directed the 
affair of dressing the stones and laying them.  That required a very 
careful head, you understand, for the tower must be straight.  In 
the floor a little crookedness did not matter; but in the wall--that 
might be serious.  People have been killed by a falling tower.  Of 
course, if they were going into church, they would be sure of 
heaven.  But then think--what a disgrace for Abbeville!

Every one was glad that Leclere bossed the raising of the tower.  
They admitted that he might not be brave, but he was assuredly 
careful.  Vaillantcoeur alone grumbled, and said the work went too 
slowly, and even swore that the sockets for the beams were too 
shallow, or else too deep, it made no difference which.  That BETE 
Prosper made trouble always by his poor work.  But the friction 
never came to a blaze; for the cure was pottering about the tower 
every day and all day long, and a few words from him would make a 
quarrel go off in smoke.

"Softly, my boys!" he would say; "work smooth and you work fast. The 
logs in the river run well when they run all the same way.  But when 
two logs cross each other, on the same rock--psst! a jam! The whole 
drive is hung up!  Do not run crossways, my children."

The walls rose steadily, straight as a steamboat pipe--ten, twenty, 
thirty, forty feet; it was time to put in the two cross-girders, lay 
the floor of the belfry, finish off the stonework, and begin the 
pointed wooden spire.  The cure had gone to Quebec that very day to 
buy the shining plates of tin for the roof, and a beautiful cross of 
gilt for the pinnacle.

Leclere was in front of the tower putting on his overalls.  
Vaillantcoeur came up, swearing mad.  Three or four other workmen 
were standing about.

"Look here, you Leclere," said he, "I tried one of the cross-girders 
yesterday afternoon and it wouldn't go.  The templet on the north is 
crooked--crooked as your teeth.  We had to let the girder down 
again.  I suppose we must trim it off some way, to get a level 
bearing, and make the tower weak, just to match your sacre bad work, 
eh?"

"Well," said Prosper, pleasant and quiet enough, "I'm sorry for 
that, Raoul.  Perhaps I could put that templet straight, or perhaps 
the girder might be a little warped and twisted, eh?  What?  Suppose 
we measure it."

Sure enough, they found the long timber was not half seasoned and 
had corkscrewed itself out of shape at least three inches.  
Vaillantcoeur sat on the sill of the doorway and did not even look 
at them while they were measuring.  When they called out to him what 
they had found, he strode over to them.

"It's a dam' lie," he said, sullenly.  "Prosper Leclere, you slipped 
the string.  None of your sacre cheating!  I have enough of it 
already.  Will you fight, you cursed sneak?"

Prosper's face went gray, like the mortar in the trough.  His fists 
clenched and the cords on his neck stood out as if they were ropes.  
He breathed hard.  But he only said three words:

"No!  Not here."

"Not here?  Why not?  There is room.  The cure is away.  Why not 
here?"

"It is the house of LE BON DIEU.  Can we build it in hate?"

"POLISSON!  You make an excuse.  Then come to Girard's, and fight 
there."

Again Prosper held in for a moment, and spoke three words:

"No!  Not now."

"Not now?  But when, you heart of a hare?  Will you sneak out of it 
until you turn gray and die?  When will you fight, little musk-rat?"

"When I have forgotten.  When I am no more your friend."

Prosper picked up his trowel and went into the tower.  Raoul bad-
worded him and every stone of his building from foundation to 
cornice, and then went down the road to get a bottle of cognac.

An hour later he came back breathing out threatenings and slaughter, 
strongly flavoured with raw spirits.  Prosper was working quietly on 
the top of the tower, at the side away from the road.  He saw 
nothing until Raoul, climbing up by the ladders on the inside, 
leaped on the platform and rushed at him like a crazy lynx.

"Now!" he cried, "no hole to hide in here, rat!  I'll squeeze the 
lies out of you."

He gripped Prosper by the head, thrusting one thumb into his eye, 
and pushing him backward on the scaffolding.

Blinded, half maddened by the pain, Prosper thought of nothing but 
to get free.  He swung his long arm upward and landed a heavy blow 
on Raoul's face that dislocated the jaw; then twisting himself 
downward and sideways, he fell in toward the wall.  Raoul plunged 
forward, stumbled, let go his hold, and pitched out from the tower, 
arms spread, clutching the air.

Forty feet straight down!  A moment--or was it an eternity?--of 
horrible silence.  Then the body struck the rough stones at the foot 
of the tower with a thick, soft dunt, and lay crumpled up among 
them, without a groan, without a movement.

When the other men, who had hurried up the ladders in terror, found 
Leclere, he was peering over the edge of the scaffold, wiping the 
blood from his eyes, trying to see down.

"I have killed him," he muttered, "my friend!  He is smashed to 
death.  I am a murderer.  Let me go.  I must throw myself down!"

They had hard work to hold him back.  As they forced him down the 
ladders he trembled like a poplar.

But Vaillantcoeur was not dead.  No; it was incredible--to fall 
forty feet and not be killed--they talk of it yet all through the 
valley of the Lake St. John--it was a miracle!  But Vaillantcoeur 
had broken only a nose, a collar-bone, and two ribs--for one like 
him that was but a bagatelle.  A good doctor from Chicoutimi, a few 
months of nursing, and he would be on his feet again, almost as good 
a man as he had ever been.

It was Leclere who put himself in charge of this.

"It is my affair," he said--"my fault!  It was not a fair place to 
fight.  Why did I strike?  I must attend to this bad work."

"MAIS, SACRE BLEU!" they answered, "how could you help it?  He 
forced you.  You did not want to be killed.  That would be a little 
too much."

"No," he persisted, "this is my affair.  Girard, you know my money 
is with the notary.  There is plenty.  Raoul has not enough, perhaps 
not any.  But he shall want nothing--you understand--nothing!  It is 
my affair, all that he needs--but you shall not tell him--no!  That 
is all."

Prosper had his way.  But he did not see Vaillantcoeur after he was 
carried home and put to bed in his cabin.  Even if he had tried to 
do so, it would have been impossible.  He could not see anybody.  
One of his eyes was entirely destroyed.  The inflammation spread to 
the other, and all through the autumn he lay in his house, drifting 
along the edge of blindness, while Raoul lay in his house slowly 
getting well.

The cure went from one house to the other, but he did not carry any 
messages between them.  If any were sent one way they were not 
received.  And the other way, none were sent.  Raoul did not speak 
of Prosper; and if one mentioned his name, Raoul shut his mouth and 
made no answer.

To the cure, of course, it was a distress and a misery.  To have a 
hatred like this unhealed, was a blot on the parish; it was a shame, 
as well as a sin.  At last--it was already winter, the day before 
Christmas--the cure made up his mind that he would put forth one 
more great effort.

"Look you, my son," he said to Prosper, "I am going this afternoon 
to Raoul Vaillantcoeur to make the reconciliation.  You shall give 
me a word to carry to him.  He shall hear it this time, I promise 
you.  Shall I tell him what you have done for him, how you have 
cared for him?"

"No, never," said Prosper; "you shall not take that word from me.  
It is nothing.  It will make worse trouble.  I will never send it."

"What then?" said the priest. "Shall I tell him that you forgive 
him?"

"No, not that," answered Prosper, "that would be a foolish word.  
What would that mean?  It is not I who can forgive.  I was the one 
who struck hardest.  It was he that fell from the tower."

"Well, then, choose the word for yourself.  What shall it be?  Come, 
I promise you that he shall hear it.  I will take with me the 
notary, and the good man Girard, and the little Marie Antoinette.  
You shall hear an answer.  What message?"

"Mon pere," said Prosper, slowly, "you shall tell him just this.  I, 
Prosper Leclere, ask Raoul Vaillantcoeur that he will forgive me for 
not fighting with him on the ground when he demanded it."

Yes, the message was given in precisely those words.  Marie 
Antoinette stood within the door, Bergeron and Girard at the foot of 
the bed, and the cure spoke very clearly and firmly.  Vaillantcoeur 
rolled on his pillow and turned his face away.  Then he sat up in 
bed, grunting a little with the pain in his shoulder, which was 
badly set.  His black eyes snapped like the eyes of a wolverine in a 
corner.

"Forgive?" he said, "no, never.  He is a coward.  I will never 
forgive!"


A little later in the afternoon, when the rose of sunset lay on the 
snowy hills, some one knocked at the door of Leclere's house.

"ENTREZ!" he cried.  "Who is there?  I see not very well by this 
light.  Who is it?"

"It is me, said 'Toinette, her cheeks rosier than the snow outside, 
"nobody but me.  I have come to ask you to tell me the rest about 
that new carriage--do you remember?"



III

The voice in the canoe behind me ceased.  The rain let up.  The 
SLISH, SLISH of the paddle stopped.  The canoe swung sideways to the 
breeze.  I heard the RAP, RAP, RAP of a pipe on the gunwale, and the 
quick scratch of a match on the under side of the thwart.

"What are you doing, Ferdinand?"

"I go to light the pipe, m'sieu'."

"Is the story finished?"

"But yes--but no--I know not, m'sieu'.  As you will."

"But what did old Girard say when his daughter broke her engagement 
and married a man whose eyes were spoiled?"

"He said that Leclere could see well enough to work with him in the 
store."

"And what did Vaillantcoeur say when he lost his girl?"

"He said it was a cursed shame that one could not fight a blind 
man."

"And what did 'Toinette say?"

"She said she had chosen the bravest heart in Abbeville."

"And Prosper--what did he say?"

"M'sieu', I know not.  He said it only to 'Toinette."





THE GENTLE LIFE

Do you remember that fair little wood of silver birches on the West 
Branch of the Neversink, somewhat below the place where the Biscuit 
Brook runs in?  There is a mossy terrace raised a couple of feet 
above the water of a long, still pool; and a very pleasant spot for 
a friendship-fire on the shingly beach below you; and a plenty of 
painted trilliums and yellow violets and white foam-flowers to adorn 
your woodland banquet, if it be spread in the month of May, when 
Mistress Nature is given over to embroidery.

It was there, at Contentment Corner, that Ned Mason had promised to 
meet me on a certain day for the noontide lunch and smoke and talk, 
he fishing down Biscuit Brook, and I down the West Branch, until we 
came together at the rendezvous.  But he was late that day--good old 
Ned!  He was occasionally behind time on a trout stream.  For he 
went about his fishing very seriously; and if it was fine, the sport 
was a natural occasion of delay.  But if it was poor, he made it an 
occasion to sit down to meditate upon the cause of his failure, and 
tried to overcome it with many subtly reasoned changes of the fly--
which is a vain thing to do, but well adapted to make one forgetful 
of the flight of time.

So I waited for him near an hour, and then ate my half of the 
sandwiches and boiled eggs, smoked a solitary pipe, and fell into a 
light sleep at the foot of the biggest birch tree, an old and trusty 
friend of mine.  It seemed like a very slight sound that roused me: 
the snapping of a dry twig in the thicket, or a gentle splash in the 
water, differing in some indefinable way from the steady murmur of 
the stream; something it was, I knew not what, that made me aware of 
some one coming down the brook.  I raised myself quietly on one 
elbow and looked up through the trees to the head of the pool.  "Ned 
will think that I have gone down long ago," I said to myself; "I 
will just lie here and watch him fish through this pool, and see how 
he manages to spend so much time about it."

But it was not Ned's rod that I saw poking out through the bushes at 
the bend in the brook.  It was such an affair as I had never seen 
before upon a trout stream: a majestic weapon at least sixteen feet 
long, made in two pieces, neatly spliced together in the middle, and 
all painted a smooth, glistening, hopeful green.  The line that hung 
from the tip of it was also green, but of a paler, more transparent 
colour, quite thick and stiff where it left the rod, but tapering 
down towards the end, as if it were twisted of strands of horse-
hair, reduced in number, until, at the hook, there were but two 
hairs.  And the hook--there was no disguise about that--it was an 
unabashed bait-hook, and well baited, too.  Gently the line swayed 
to and fro above the foaming water at the head of the pool; quietly 
the bait settled down in the foam and ran with the current around 
the edge of the deep eddy under the opposite bank; suddenly the line 
straightened and tautened; sharply the tip of the long green rod 
sprang upward, and the fisherman stepped out from the bushes to play 
his fish.

Where had I seen such a figure before?  The dress was strange and 
quaint--broad, low shoes, gray woollen stockings, short brown 
breeches tied at the knee with ribbons, a loose brown coat belted at 
the waist like a Norfolk jacket; a wide, rolling collar with a bit 
of lace at the edge, and a soft felt hat with a shady brim.  It was 
a costume that, with all its oddity, seemed wonderfully fit and 
familiar.  And the face?  Certainly it was the face of an old 
friend.  Never had I seen a countenance of more quietness and 
kindliness and twinkling good humour.

"Well met, sir, and a pleasant day to you," cried the angler, as his 
eyes lighted on me.  "Look you, I have hold of a good fish; I pray 
you put that net under him, and touch not my line, for if you do, 
then we break all.  Well done, sir; I thank you.  Now we have him 
safely landed.  Truly this is a lovely one; the best that I have 
taken in these waters.  See how the belly shines, here as yellow as 
a marsh-marigold, and there as white as a foam-flower.  Is not the 
hand of Divine Wisdom as skilful in the colouring of a fish as in 
the painting of the manifold blossoms that sweeten these wild 
forests?"

"Indeed it is," said I, "and this is the biggest trout that I have 
seen caught in the upper waters of the Neversink.  It is certainly 
eighteen inches long, and should weigh close upon two pounds and a 
half."

"More than that," he answered, "if I mistake not.  But I observe 
that you call it a trout.  To my mind, it seems more like a char, as 
do all the fish that I have caught in your stream.  Look here upon 
these curious water-markings that run through the dark green of the 
back, and these enamellings of blue and gold upon the side.  Note, 
moreover, how bright and how many are the red spots, and how each 
one of them is encircled with a ring of purple.  Truly it is a fish 
of rare beauty, and of high esteem with persons of note.  I would 
gladly know if it he as good to the taste as I have heard it reputed."

"It is even better," I replied; "as you shall find, if you will but 
try it."

Then a curious impulse came to me, to which I yielded with as little 
hesitation or misgiving, at the time, as if it were the most natural 
thing in the world.

"You seem a stranger in this part of the country, sir," said I; "but 
unless I am mistaken you are no stranger to me.  Did you not use to 
go a-fishing in the New River, with honest Nat. and R. Roe, many 
years ago?  And did they not call you Izaak Walton?"

His eyes smiled pleasantly at me and a little curve of merriment 
played around his lips.  "It is a secret which I thought not to have 
been discovered here," he said; "but since you have lit upon it, I 
will not deny it."

Now how it came to pass that I was not astonished nor dismayed at 
this, I cannot explain.  But so it was; and the only feeling of 
which I was conscious was a strong desire to detain this visitor as 
long as possible, and have some talk with him.  So I grasped at the 
only expedient that flashed into my mind.

"Well, then, sir," I said, "you are most heartily welcome, and I 
trust you will not despise the only hospitality I have to offer.  If 
you will sit down here among these birch trees in Contentment 
Corner, I will give you half of a fisherman's luncheon, and will 
cook your char for you on a board before an open wood-fire, if you 
are not in a hurry.  Though I belong to a nation which is reported 
to be curious, I will promise to trouble you with no inquisitive 
questions; and if you will but talk to me at your will, you shall 
find me a ready listener."

So we made ourselves comfortable on the shady bank, and while I 
busied myself in splitting the fish and pinning it open on a bit of 
board that I had found in a pile of driftwood, and setting it up 
before the fire to broil, my new companion entertained me with the 
sweetest and friendliest talk that I had ever heard.

"To speak without offence, sir," he began, "there was a word in your 
discourse a moment ago that seemed strange to me.  You spoke of 
being 'in a hurry'; and that is an expression which is unfamiliar to 
my ears; but if it mean the same as being in haste, then I must tell 
you that this is a thing which, in my judgment, honest anglers 
should learn to forget, and have no dealings with it.  To be in 
haste is to be in anxiety and distress of mind; it is to mistrust 
Providence, and to doubt that the issue of all events is in wiser 
hands than ours; it is to disturb the course of nature, and put 
overmuch confidence in the importance of our own endeavours.

"For how much of the evil that is in the world cometh from this 
plaguy habit of being in haste!  The haste to get riches, the haste 
to climb upon some pinnacle of worldly renown, the haste to resolve 
mysteries--from these various kinds of haste are begotten no small 
part of the miseries and afflictions whereby the children of men are 
tormented: such as quarrels and strifes among those who would over-
reach one another in business; envyings and jealousies among those 
who would outshine one another in rich apparel and costly equipage; 
bloody rebellions and cruel wars among those who would obtain power 
over their fellow-men; cloudy disputations and bitter controversies 
among those who would fain leave no room for modest ignorance and 
lowly faith among the secrets of religion; and by all these miseries 
of haste the heart grows weary, and is made weak and dull, or else 
hard and angry, while it dwelleth in the midst of them.

"But let me tell you that an angler's occupation is a good cure for 
these evils, if for no other reason, because it gently dissuadeth us 
from haste and leadeth us away from feverish anxieties into those 
ways which are pleasantness and those paths which are peace.  For an 
angler cannot force his fortune by eagerness, nor better it by 
discontent.  He must wait upon the weather, and the height of the 
water, and the hunger of the fish, and many other accidents of which 
he has no control.  If he would angle well, he must not be in haste.  
And if he be in haste, he will do well to unlearn it by angling, for 
I think there is no surer method.

"This fair tree that shadows us from the sun hath grown many years 
in its place without more unhappiness than the loss of its leaves in 
winter, which the succeeding season doth generously repair; and 
shall we be less contented in the place where God hath planted us? 
or shall there go less time to the making of a man than to the 
growth of a tree?  This stream floweth wimpling and laughing down to 
the great sea which it knoweth not; yet it doth not fret because the 
future is hidden; and doubtless it were wise in us to accept the 
mysteries of life as cheerfully and go forward with a merry heart, 
considering that we know enough to make us happy and keep us honest 
for to-day.  A man should be well content if he can see so far ahead 
of him as the next bend in the stream.  What lies beyond, let him 
trust in the hand of God.

"But as concerning riches, wherein should you and I be happier, this 
pleasant afternoon of May, had we all the gold in Croesus his 
coffers?  Would the sun shine for us more bravely, or the flowers 
give forth a sweeter breath, or yonder warbling vireo, hidden in her 
leafy choir, send down more pure and musical descants, sweetly 
attuned by natural magic to woo and win our thoughts from vanity and 
hot desires into a harmony with the tranquil thoughts of God?  And 
as for fame and power, trust me, sir, I have seen too many men in my 
time that lived very unhappily though their names were upon all 
lips, and died very sadly though their power was felt in many lands; 
too many of these great ones have I seen that spent their days in 
disquietude and ended them in sorrow, to make me envy their 
conditions or hasten to rival them.  Nor do I think that, by all 
their perturbations and fightings and runnings to and fro, the world 
hath been much bettered, or even greatly changed.  The colour and 
complexion of mortal life, in all things that are essential, remain 
the same under Cromwell or under Charles.  The goodness and mercy of 
God are still over all His works, whether Presbytery or Episcopacy 
be set up as His interpreter.  Very quietly and peacefully have I 
lived under several polities, civil and ecclesiastical, and under 
all there was room enough to do my duty and love my friends and go 
a-fishing.  And let me tell you, sir, that in the state wherein I 
now find myself, though there are many things of which I may not 
speak to you, yet one thing is clear: if I had made haste in my 
mortal concerns, I should not have saved time, but lost it; for all 
our affairs are under one sure dominion which moveth them forward to 
their concordant end: wherefore 'HE THAT BELIEVETH SHALL NOT MAKE 
HASTE,' and, above all, not when he goeth a-angling.

"But tell me, I pray you, is not this char cooked yet?  Methinks the 
time is somewhat overlong for the roasting.  The fragrant smell of 
the cookery gives me an eagerness to taste this new dish.  Not that 
I am in haste, but--

"Well, it is done; and well done, too!  Marry, the flesh of this 
fish is as red as rose-leaves, and as sweet as if he had fed on 
nothing else.  The flavour of smoke from the fire is but slight, and 
it takes nothing from the perfection of the dish, but rather adds to 
it, being clean and delicate.  I like not these French cooks who 
make all dishes in disguise, and set them forth with strange foreign 
savours, like a masquerade.  Give me my food in its native dress, 
even though it be a little dry.  If we had but a cup of sack, now, 
or a glass of good ale, and a pipeful of tobacco?

"What! you have an abundance of the fragrant weed in your pouch?  
Sir, I thank you very heartily!  You entertain me like a prince.  
Not like King James, be it understood, who despised tobacco and 
called it a 'lively image and pattern of hell'; nor like the Czar of 
Russia who commanded that all who used it should have their noses 
cut off; but like good Queen Bess of glorious memory, who disdained 
not the incense of the pipe, and some say she used one herself; 
though for my part I think the custom of smoking one that is more 
fitting for men, whose frailty and need of comfort are well known, 
than for that fairer sex whose innocent and virgin spirits stand 
less in want of creature consolations.

"But come, let us not trouble our enjoyment with careful 
discrimination of others' scruples.  Your tobacco is rarely good; 
I'll warrant it comes from that province of Virginia which was named 
for the Virgin Queen; and while we smoke together, let me call you, 
for this hour, my Scholar; and so I will give you four choice rules 
for the attainment of that unhastened quietude of mind whereof we 
did lately discourse.

"First: you shall learn to desire nothing in the world so much but 
that you can be happy without it.

"Second: you shall seek that which you desire only by such means as 
are fair and lawful, and this will leave you without bitterness 
towards men or shame before God.

"Third: you shall take pleasure in the time while you are seeking, 
even though you obtain not immediately that which you seek; for the 
purpose of a journey is not only to arrive at the goal, but also to 
find enjoyment by the way.

"Fourth: when you attain that which you have desired, you shall 
think more of the kindness of your fortune than of the greatness of 
your skill.  This will make you grateful, and ready to share with 
others that which Providence hath bestowed upon you; and truly this 
is both reasonable and profitable, for it is but little that any of 
us would catch in this world were not our luck better than our 
deserts.

"And to these Four Rules I will add yet another--Fifth: when you 
smoke your pipe with a good conscience, trouble not yourself because 
there are men in the world who will find fault with you for so 
doing.  If you wait for a pleasure at which no sour-complexioned 
soul hath ever girded, you will wait long, and go through life with 
a sad and anxious mind.  But I think that God is best pleased with 
us when we give little heed to scoffers, and enjoy His gifts with 
thankfulness and an easy heart.

"Well, Scholar, I have almost tired myself, and, I fear, more than 
almost tired you.  But this pipe is nearly burned out, and the few 
short whiffs that are left in it shall put a period to my too long 
discourse.  Let me tell you, then, that there be some men in the 
world who hold not with these my opinions.  They profess that a life 
of contention and noise and public turmoil, is far higher than a 
life of quiet work and meditation.  And so far as they follow their 
own choice honestly and with a pure mind, I doubt not that it is as 
good for them as mine is for me, and I am well pleased that every 
man do enjoy his own opinion.  But so far as they have spoken ill of 
me and my opinions, I do hold it a thing of little consequence, 
except that I am sorry that they have thereby embittered their own 
hearts.

"For this is the punishment of men who malign and revile those that 
differ from them in religion, or prefer another way of living; their 
revilings, by so much as they spend their wit and labour to make 
them shrewd and bitter, do draw all the sweet and wholesome sap out 
of their lives and turn it into poison; and so they become vessels 
of mockery and wrath, remembered chiefly for the evil things that 
they have said with cleverness.

"For be sure of this, Scholar, the more a man giveth himself to 
hatred in this world, the more will he find to hate.  But let us 
rather give ourselves to charity, and if we have enemies (and what 
honest man hath them not?) let them be ours, since they must, but 
let us not be theirs, since we know better.

"There was one Franck, a trooper of Cromwell's, who wrote ill of me, 
saying that I neither understood the subjects whereof I discoursed 
nor believed the things that I said, being both silly and 
pretentious.  It would have been a pity if it had been true.  There 
was also one Leigh Hunt, a maker of many books, who used one day a 
bottle of ink whereof the gall was transfused into his blood, so 
that he wrote many hard words of me, setting forth selfishness and 
cruelty and hypocrisy as if they were qualities of my disposition.  
God knew, even then, whether these things were true of me; and if 
they were not true, it would have been a pity to have answered them; 
but it would have been still more a pity to be angered by them.  But 
since that time Master Hunt and I have met each other; yes, and 
Master Franck, too; and we have come very happily to a better 
understanding.

"Trust me, Scholar, it is the part of wisdom to spend little of your 
time upon the things that vex and anger you, and much of your time 
upon the things that bring you quietness and confidence and good 
cheer.  A friend made is better than an enemy punished.  There is 
more of God in the peaceable beauty of this little wood-violet than 
in all the angry disputations of the sects.  We are nearer heaven 
when we listen to the birds than when we quarrel with our fellow-
men.  I am sure that none can enter into the spirit of Christ, his 
evangel, save those who willingly follow his invitation when he 
says, 'COME YE YOURSELVES APART INTO A LONELY P1ACE, AND REST A 
WHILE.'  For since his blessed kingdom was first established in the 
green fields, by the lakeside, with humble fishermen for its 
subjects, the easiest way into it hath ever been through the wicket-
gate of a lowly and grateful fellowship with nature.  He that feels 
not the beauty and blessedness and peace of the woods and meadows 
that God hath bedecked with flowers for him even while he is yet a 
sinner, how shall he learn to enjoy the unfading bloom of the 
celestial country if he ever become a saint?

"No, no, sir, he that departeth out of this world without perceiving 
that it is fair and full of innocent sweetness hath done little 
honour to the every-day miracles of divine beneficence; and though 
by mercy he may obtain an entrance to heaven, it will be a strange 
place to him; and though he have studied all that is written in 
men's books of divinity, yet because he hath left the book of Nature 
unturned, he will have much to learn and much to forget.  Do you 
think that to be blind to the beauties of earth prepareth the heart 
to behold the glories of heaven?  Nay, Scholar, I know that you are 
not of that opinion.  But I can tell you another thing which perhaps 
you knew not.  The heart that is blest with the glories of heaven 
ceaseth not to remember and to love the beauties of this world.  And 
of this love I am certain, because I feel it, and glad because it is 
a great blessing.

"There are two sorts of seeds sown in our remembrance by what we 
call the hand of fortune, the fruits of which do not wither, but 
grow sweeter forever and ever.  The first is the seed of innocent 
pleasures, received in gratitude and enjoyed with good companions, 
of which pleasures we never grow weary of thinking, because they 
have enriched our hearts.  The second is the seed of pure and gentle 
sorrows, borne in submission and with faithful love, and these also 
we never forget, but we come to cherish them with gladness instead 
of grief, because we see them changed into everlasting joys.  And 
how this may be I cannot tell you now, for you would not understand 
me.  But that it is so, believe me: for if you believe, you shall 
one day see it yourself.

"But come, now, our friendly pipes are long since burned out.  Hark, 
how sweetly the tawny thrush in yonder thicket touches her silver 
harp for the evening hymn!  I will follow the stream downward, but 
do you tarry here until the friend comes for whom you were waiting.  
I think we shall all three meet one another, somewhere, after sunset."

I watched the gray hat and the old brown coat and long green rod 
disappear among the trees around the curve of the stream.  Then 
Ned's voice sounded in my ears, and I saw him standing above me 
laughing.

"Hallo, old man," he said, "you're a sound sleeper!  I hope you've 
had good luck, and pleasant dreams."



A FRIEND OF JUSTICE

I

It was the black patch over his left eye that made all the trouble.  
In reality he was of a disposition most peaceful and propitiating, a 
friend of justice and fair dealing, strongly inclined to a domestic 
life, and capable of extreme devotion.  He had a vivid sense of 
righteousness, it is true, and any violation of it was apt to heat 
his indignation to the boiling-point.  When this occurred he was 
strong in the back, stiff in the neck, and fearless of consequences.  
But he was always open to friendly overtures and ready to make peace 
with honour.

Singularly responsive to every touch of kindness, desirous of 
affection, secretly hungry for caresses, he had a heart framed for 
love and tranquillity.  But nature saw fit to put a black patch over 
his left eye; wherefore his days were passed in the midst of 
conflict and he lived the strenuous life.

How this sinister mark came to him, he never knew.  Indeed it is not 
likely that he had any idea of the part that it played in his 
career.  The attitude that the world took toward him from the 
beginning, an attitude of aggressive mistrust,--the role that he was 
expected and practically forced to assume in the drama of existence, 
the role of a hero of interminable strife,--must have seemed to him 
altogether mysterious and somewhat absurd.  But his part was fixed 
by the black patch.  It gave him an aspect so truculent and 
forbidding that all the elements of warfare gathered around him as 
hornets around a sugar barrel, and his appearance in public was like 
the raising of a flag for battle.

"You see that Pichou," said MacIntosh, the Hudson's Bay agent at 
Mingan, "you see yon big black-eye deevil?  The savages call him 
Pichou because he's ugly as a lynx--'LAID COMME UN PICHOU.'  Best 
sledge-dog and the gurliest tyke on the North Shore.  Only two years 
old and he can lead a team already.  But, man, he's just daft for 
the fighting.  Fought his mother when he was a pup and lamed her for 
life.  Fought two of his brothers and nigh killed 'em both.  Every 
dog in the place has a grudge at him, and hell's loose as oft as he 
takes a walk.  I'm loath to part with him, but I'll be selling him 
gladly for fifty dollars to any man that wants a good sledge-dog, 
eh?--and a bit collie-shangie every week."

Pichou had heard his name, and came trotting up to the corner of the 
store where MacIntosh was talking with old Grant the chief factor, 
who was on a tour of inspection along the North Shore, and Dan 
Scott, the agent from Seven Islands, who had brought the chief down 
in his chaloupe.  Pichou did not understand what his master had been 
saying about him: but he thought he was called, and he had a sense 
of duty; and besides, he was wishful to show proper courtesy to 
well-dressed and respectable strangers.  He was a great dog, thirty 
inches high at the shoulder; broad-chested, with straight, sinewy 
legs; and covered with thick, wavy, cream-coloured hair from the 
tips of his short ears to the end of his bushy tail--all except the 
left side of his face.  That was black from ear to nose--coal-black; 
and in the centre of this storm-cloud his eye gleamed like fire.

What did Pichou know about that ominous sign?  No one had ever told 
him.  He had no looking-glass.  He ran up to the porch where the men 
were sitting, as innocent as a Sunday-school scholar coming to the 
superintendent's desk to receive a prize.  But when old Grant, who 
had grown pursy and nervous from long living on the fat of the land 
at Ottawa, saw the black patch and the gleaming eye, he anticipated 
evil; so he hitched one foot up on the porch, crying "Get out!" and 
with the other foot he planted a kick on the side of the dog's head.

Pichou's nerve-centres had not been shaken by high living.  They 
acted with absolute precision and without a tremor.  His sense of 
justice was automatic, and his teeth were fixed through the leg of 
the chief factor's boot, just below the calf.

For two minutes there was a small chaos in the post of the 
Honourable Hudson's Bay Company at Mingan.  Grant howled bloody 
murder; MacIntosh swore in three languages and yelled for his dog-
whip; three Indians and two French-Canadians wielded sticks and 
fence-pickets.  But order did not arrive until Dan Scott knocked the 
burning embers from his big pipe on the end of the dog's nose.  
Pichou gasped, let go his grip, shook his head, and loped back to 
his quarters behind the barn, bruised, blistered, and intolerably 
perplexed by the mystery of life.

As he lay on the sand, licking his wounds, he remembered many 
strange things.  First of all, there was the trouble with his mother

She was a Labrador Husky, dirty yellowish gray, with bristling neck, 
sharp fangs, and green eyes, like a wolf.  Her name was Babette.  
She had a fiendish temper, but no courage.  His father was supposed 
to be a huge black and white Newfoundland that came over in a 
schooner from Miquelon.  Perhaps it was from him that the black 
patch was inherited.  And perhaps there were other things in the 
inheritance, too, which came from this nobler strain of blood 
Pichon's unwillingness to howl with the other dogs when they made 
night hideous; his silent, dignified ways; his sense of fair play; 
his love of the water; his longing for human society and friendship.

But all this was beyond Pichou's horizon, though it was within his 
nature.  He remembered only that Babette had taken a hate for him, 
almost from the first, and had always treated him worse than his 
all-yellow brothers.  She would have starved him if she could.  Once 
when he was half grown, she fell upon him for some small offence and 
tried to throttle him.  The rest of the pack looked on snarling and 
slavering.  He caught Babette by the fore-leg and broke the bone.  
She hobbled away, shrieking.  What else could he do?  Must a dog let 
himself be killed by his mother?

As for his brothers--was it fair that two of them should fall foul 
of him about the rabbit which he had tracked and caught and killed?  
He would have shared it with them, if they had asked him, for they 
ran behind him on the trail.  But when they both set their teeth in 
his neck, there was nothing to do but to lay them both out: which he 
did.  Afterward he was willing enough to make friends, but they 
bristled and cursed whenever he came near them.

It was the same with everybody.  If he went out for a walk on the 
beach, Vigneau's dogs or Simard's dogs regarded it as an insult, and 
there was a fight.  Men picked up sticks, or showed him the butt-end 
of their dog-whips, when he made friendly approaches.  With the 
children it was different; they seemed to like him a little; but 
never did he follow one of them that a mother did not call from the 
house-door: "Pierre!  Marie! come away quick!  That bad dog will 
bite you!"  Once when he ran down to the shore to watch the boat 
coming in from the mail-steamer, the purser had refused to let the 
boat go to land, and called out, "M'sieu' MacIntosh, you git no 
malle dis trip, eef you not call avay dat dam' dog."

True, the Minganites seemed to take a certain kind of pride in his 
reputation.  They had brought Chouart's big brown dog, Gripette, 
down from the Sheldrake to meet him; and after the meeting was over 
and Gripette had been revived with a bucket of water, everybody, 
except Chouart, appeared to be in good humour.  The purser of the 
steamer had gone to the trouble of introducing a famous BOULE-DOGGE 
from Quebec, on the trip after that on which he had given such a 
hostile opinion of Pichon.  The bulldog's intentions were 
unmistakable; he expressed them the moment he touched the beach; and 
when they carried him back to the boat on a fish-barrow many 
flattering words were spoken about Pichou.  He was not insensible to 
them.  But these tributes to his prowess were not what he really 
wanted.  His secret desire was for tokens of affection.  His 
position was honourable, but it was intolerably lonely and full of 
trouble.  He sought peace and he found fights.

While he meditated dimly on these things, patiently trying to get 
the ashes of Dan Scott's pipe out of his nose, his heart was cast 
down and his spirit was disquieted within him.  Was ever a decent 
dog so mishandled before?  Kicked for nothing by a fat stranger, and 
then beaten by his own master!

In the dining-room of the Post, Grant was slowly and reluctantly 
allowing himself to be convinced that his injuries were not fatal.  
During this process considerable Scotch whiskey was consumed and 
there was much conversation about the viciousness of dogs.  Grant 
insisted that Pichou was mad and had a devil.  MacIntosh admitted 
the devil, but firmly denied the madness.  The question was, whether 
the dog should be killed or not; and over this point there was like 
to be more bloodshed, until Dan Scott made his contribution to the 
argument: "If you shoot him, how can you tell whether he is mad or 
not?  I'll give thirty dollars for him and take him home."

"If you do," said Grant, "you'll sail alone, and I'll wait for the 
steamer.  Never a step will I go in the boat with the crazy brute 
that bit me."

"Suit yourself," said Dan Scott.  "You kicked before he bit."

At daybreak he whistled the dog down to the chaloupe, hoisted sail, 
and bore away for Seven Islands.  There was a secret bond of 
sympathy between the two companions on that hundred-mile voyage in 
an open boat.  Neither of them realized what it was, but still it 
was there.

Dan Scott knew what it meant to stand alone, to face a small hostile 
world, to have a surfeit of fighting.  The station of Seven Islands 
was the hardest in all the district of the ancient POSTES DU ROI.  
The Indians were surly and crafty.  They knew all the tricks of the 
fur-trade.  They killed out of season, and understood how to make a 
rusty pelt look black.  The former agent had accommodated himself to 
his customers.  He had no objection to shutting one of his eyes, so 
long as the other could see a chance of doing a stroke of business 
for himself.  He also had a convenient weakness in the sense of 
smell, when there was an old stock of pork to work off on the 
savages.  But all of Dan Scott's senses were strong, especially his 
sense of justice, and he came into the Post resolved to play a 
straight game with both hands, toward the Indians and toward the 
Honourable H. B. Company.  The immediate results were reproofs from 
Ottawa and revilings from Seven Islands.  Furthermore the free 
traders were against him because he objected to their selling rum to 
the savages.

It must be confessed that Dan Scott had a way with him that looked 
pugnacious.  He was quick in his motions and carried his shoulders 
well thrown back.  His voice was heavy.  He used short words and few 
of them.  His eyebrow's were thick and they met over his nose.  Then 
there was a broad white scar at one corner of his mouth.  His 
appearance was not prepossessing, but at heart he was a 
philanthropist and a sentimentalist. He thirsted for gratitude and 
affection on a just basis.  He had studied for eighteen months in 
the medical school at Montreal, and his chief delight was to 
practise gratuitously among the sick and wounded of the 
neighbourhood.  His ambition for Seven Islands was to make it a 
northern suburb of Paradise, and for himself to become a full-
fledged physician.  Up to this time it seemed as if he would have to 
break more bones than he could set; and the closest connection of 
Seven Islands appeared to be with Purgatory.

First, there had been a question of suzerainty between Dan Scott and 
the local representative of the Astor family, a big half-breed 
descendant of a fur-trader, who was the virtual chief of the Indians 
hunting on the Ste. Marguerite: settled by knock-down arguments.  
Then there was a controversy with Napoleon Bouchard about the right 
to put a fish-house on a certain part of the beach: settled with a 
stick, after Napoleon had drawn a knife.  Then there was a running 
warfare with Virgile and Ovide Boulianne, the free traders, who were 
his rivals in dealing with the Indians for their peltry: still 
unsettled.  After this fashion the record of his relations with his 
fellow-citizens at Seven Islands was made up.  He had their respect, 
but not their affection.  He was the only Protestant, the only 
English-speaker, the most intelligent man, as well as the hardest 
hitter in the place, and he was very lonely.  Perhaps it was this 
that made him take a fancy to Pichou.  Their positions in the world 
were not unlike.  He was not the first man who has wanted sympathy 
and found it in a dog.

Alone together, in the same boat, they made friends with each other 
easily.  At first the remembrance of the hot pipe left a little 
suspicion in Pichou's mind; but this was removed by a handsome 
apology in the shape of a chunk of bread and a slice of meat from 
Dan Scott's lunch.  After this they got on together finely.  It was 
the first time in his life that Pichou had ever spent twenty-four 
hours away from other dogs; it was also the first time he had ever 
been treated like a gentleman.  All that was best in him responded 
to the treatment.  He could not have been more quiet and steady in 
the boat if he had been brought up to a seafaring life.  When Dan 
Scott called him and patted him on the head, the dog looked up in 
the man's face as if he had found his God.  And the man, looking 
down into the eye that was not disfigured by the black patch, saw 
something that he had been seeking for a long time.

All day the wind was fair and strong from the southeast. The 
chaloupe ran swiftly along the coast past the broad mouth of the 
River Saint-Jean, with its cluster of white cottages past the hill-
encircled bay of the River Magpie, with its big fish-houses past the 
fire-swept cliffs of Riviere-au-Tonnerre, and the turbulent, rocky 
shores of the Sheldrake: past the silver cascade of the Riviere-aux-
Graines, and the mist of the hidden fall of the Riviere Manitou: 
past the long, desolate ridges of Cap Cormorant, where, at sunset, 
the wind began to droop away, and the tide was contrary So the 
chaloupe felt its way cautiously toward the corner of the coast 
where the little Riviere-a-la-Truite comes tumbling in among the 
brown rocks, and found a haven for the night in the mouth of the 
river.

There was only one human dwelling-place in sight As far as the eye 
could sweep, range after range of uninhabitable hills covered with 
the skeletons of dead forests; ledge after ledge of ice-worn granite 
thrust out like fangs into the foaming waves of the gulf.  Nature, 
with her teeth bare and her lips scarred: this was the landscape.  
And in the midst of it, on a low hill above the murmuring river, 
surrounded by the blanched trunks of fallen trees, and the blackened 
debris of wood and moss, a small, square, weather-beaten palisade of 
rough-hewn spruce, and a patch of the bright green leaves and white 
flowers of the dwarf cornel lavishing their beauty on a lonely 
grave.  This was the only habitation in sight--the last home of the 
Englishman, Jack Chisholm, whose story has yet to be told.

In the shelter of this hill Dan Scott cooked his supper and shared 
it with Pichou.  When night was dark he rolled himself in his 
blanket, and slept in the stern of the boat, with the dog at his 
side.  Their friendship was sealed.

The next morning the weather was squally and full of sudden anger.  
They crept out with difficulty through the long rollers that barred 
the tiny harbour, and beat their way along the coast.  At Moisie 
they must run far out into the gulf to avoid the treacherous shoals, 
and to pass beyond the furious race of white-capped billows that 
poured from the great river for miles into the sea.  Then they 
turned and made for the group of half-submerged mountains and 
scattered rocks that Nature, in some freak of fury, had thrown into 
the throat of Seven Islands Bay.  That was a difficult passage.  The 
black shores were swept by headlong tides.  Tusks of granite tore 
the waves.  Baffled and perplexed, the wind flapped and whirled 
among the cliffs. Through all this the little boat buffeted bravely 
on till she reached the point of the Gran Boule.  Then a strange 
thing happened.

The water was lumpy; the evening was growing thick; a swirl of the 
tide and a shift of the wind caught the chaloupe and swung her 
suddenly around.  The mainsail jibed, and before he knew how it 
happened Dan Scott was overboard.  He could swim but clumsily.  The 
water blinded him, choked him, dragged him down.  Then he felt 
Pichou gripping him by the shoulder, buoying him up, swimming 
mightily toward the chaloupe which hung trembling in the wind a few 
yards away.  At last they reached it and the man climbed over the 
stern and pulled the dog after him.  Dan Scott lay in the bottom of 
the boat, shivering, dazed, until he felt the dog's cold nose and 
warm breath against his cheek.  He flung his arm around Pichon's 
neck.

"They said you were mad!  God, if more men were mad like you!"



II


Pichou's work at Seven Islands was cut out for him on a generous 
scale.  It is true that at first he had no regular canine labour to 
perform, for it was summer.  Seven months of the year, on the North 
Shore, a sledge-dog's occupation is gone.  He is the idlest creature 
in the universe.

But Pichou, being a new-comer, had to win his footing in the 
community; and that was no light task.  With the humans it was 
comparatively easy.  At the outset they mistrusted him on account of 
his looks.  Virgile Boulianne asked: "Why did you buy such an ugly 
dog?"  Ovide, who was the wit of the family, said: "I suppose 
M'sieu' Scott got a present for taking him."

"It's a good dog," said Dan Scott.  "Treat him well and he'll treat 
you well.  Kick him and I kick you."

Then he told what had happened off the point of Gran' Boule.  The 
village decided to accept Pichou at his master's valuation.  
Moderate friendliness, with precautions, was shown toward him by 
everybody, except Napoleon Bouchard, whose distrust was permanent 
and took the form of a stick.  He was a fat, fussy man; fat people 
seemed to have no affinity for Pichou.

But while the relations with the humans of Seven Islands were soon 
established on a fair footing, with the canines Pichou had a very 
different affair.  They were not willing to accept any 
recommendations as to character.  They judged for themselves; and 
they judged by appearances; and their judgment was utterly hostile 
to Pichou.

They decided that he was a proud dog, a fierce dog, a bad dog, a 
fighter.  He must do one of two things: stay at home in the yard of 
the Honourable H. B. Company, which is a thing that no self-
respecting dog would do in the summer-time, when cod-fish heads are 
strewn along the beach; or fight his way from one end of the village 
to the other, which Pichou promptly did, leaving enemies behind 
every fence.  Huskies never forget a grudge.  They are malignant to 
the core.  Hatred is the wine of cowardly hearts.  This is as true 
of dogs as it is of men.

Then Pichou, having settled his foreign relations, turned his 
attention to matters at home.  There were four other dogs in Dan 
Scott's team.  They did not want Pichou for a leader, and he knew 
it.  They were bitter with jealousy.  The black patch was loathsome 
to them.  They treated him disrespectfully, insultingly, grossly.  
Affairs came to a head when Pecan, a rusty gray dog who had great 
ambitions and little sense, disputed Pichou's tenure of a certain 
ham-bone.  Dan Scott looked on placidly while the dispute was 
terminated.  Then he washed the blood and sand from the gashes on 
Pecan's shoulder, and patted Pichou on the head.

"Good dog," he said.  "You're the boss."

There was no further question about Pichou's leadership of the team.  
But the obedience of his followers was unwilling and sullen.  There 
was no love in it.  Imagine an English captain, with a Boer company, 
campaigning in the Ashantee country, and you will have a fair idea 
of Pichou's position at Seven Islands.

He did not shrink from its responsibilities.  There were certain 
reforms in the community which seemed to him of vital importance, 
and he put them through.

First of all, he made up his mind that there ought to be peace and 
order on the village street.  In the yards of the houses that were 
strung along it there should be home rule, and every dog should deal 
with trespassers as he saw fit.  Also on the beach, and around the 
fish-shanties, and under the racks where the cod were drying, the 
right of the strong jaw should prevail, and differences of opinion 
should be adjusted in the old-fashioned way.  But on the sandy road, 
bordered with a broken board-walk, which ran between the houses and 
the beach, courtesy and propriety must be observed.  Visitors walked 
there.  Children played there.  It was the general promenade.  It 
must be kept peaceful and decent.  This was the First Law of the 
Dogs of Seven Islands.  If two dogs quarrel on the street they must 
go elsewhere to settle it.  It was highly unpopular, but Pichou 
enforced it with his teeth.

The Second Law was equally unpopular: No stealing from the 
Honourable H. B. Company.  If a man bought bacon or corned-beef or 
any other delicacy, and stored it an insecure place, or if he left 
fish on the beach over night, his dogs might act according to their 
inclination.  Though Pichou did not understand how honest dogs could 
steal from their own master, he was willing to admit that this was 
their affair.  His affair was that nobody should steal anything from 
the Post.  It cost him many night watches, and some large battles to 
carry it out, but he did it.  In the course of time it came to pass 
that the other dogs kept away from the Post altogether, to avoid 
temptations; and his own team spent most of their free time 
wandering about to escape discipline.

The Third Law was this.  Strange dogs must be decently treated as 
long as they behave decently.  This was contrary to all tradition, 
but Pichou insisted upon it.  If a strange dog wanted to fight he 
should be accommodated with an antagonist of his own size.  If he 
did not want to fight he should be politely smelled and allowed to 
pass through.

This Law originated on a day when a miserable, long-legged, black 
cur, a cross between a greyhound and a water-spaniel, strayed into 
Seven Islands from heaven knows where--weary, desolate, and 
bedraggled.  All the dogs in the place attacked the homeless beggar.  
There was a howling fracas on the beach; and when Pichou arrived, 
the trembling cur was standing up to the neck in the water, facing a 
semicircle of snarling, snapping bullies who dared not venture out 
any farther.  Pichou had no fear of the water.  He swam out to the 
stranger, paid the smelling salute as well as possible under the 
circumstances, encouraged the poor creature to come ashore, warned 
off the other dogs, and trotted by the wanderer's side for miles 
down the beach until they disappeared around the point.  What reward 
Pichou got for this polite escort, I do not know.  But I saw him do 
the gallant deed; and I suppose this was the origin of the well-
known and much-resisted Law of Strangers' Rights in Seven Islands.

The most recalcitrant subjects with whom Pichou had to deal in all 
these matters were the team of Ovide Boulianne.  There were five of 
them, and up to this time they had been the best team in the 
village.  They had one virtue: under the whip they could whirl a 
sledge over the snow farther and faster than a horse could trot in a 
day.  But they had innumerable vices.  Their leader, Carcajou, had a 
fleece like a merino ram.  But under this coat of innocence he 
carried a heart so black that he would bite while he was wagging his 
tail.  This smooth devil, and his four followers like unto himself, 
had sworn relentless hatred to Pichou, and they made his life 
difficult.

But his great and sufficient consolation for all toils and troubles 
was the friendship with his master.  In the long summer evenings, 
when Dan Scott was making up his accounts in the store, or studying 
his pocket cyclopaedia of medicine in the living-room of the Post, 
with its low beams and mysterious green-painted cupboards, Pichou 
would lie contentedly at his feet.  In the frosty autumnal mornings, 
when the brant were flocking in the marshes at the head of the bay, 
they would go out hunting together in a skiff.  And who could lie so 
still as Pichou when the game was approaching?  Or who could spring 
so quickly and joyously to retrieve a wounded bird?  But best of all 
were the long walks on Sunday afternoons, on the yellow beach that 
stretched away toward the Moisie, or through the fir-forest behind 
the Pointe des Chasseurs.  Then master and dog had fellowship 
together in silence.  To the dumb companion it was like walking with 
his God in the garden in the cool of the day.

When winter came, and snow fell, and waters froze, Pichou's serious 
duties began.  The long, slim COMETIQUE, with its curving prow, and 
its runners of whalebone, was put in order.  The harness of caribou-
hide was repaired and strengthened.  The dogs, even the most vicious 
of them, rejoiced at the prospect of doing the one thing that they 
could do best.  Each one strained at his trace as if he would drag 
the sledge alone.  Then the long tandem was straightened out, Dan 
Scott took his place on the low seat, cracked his whip, shouted 
"POUITTE!  POUITTE!" and the equipage darted along the snowy track 
like a fifty-foot arrow.

Pichou was in the lead, and he showed his metal from the start.  No 
need of the terrible FOUET to lash him forward or to guide his 
course.  A word was enough.  "Hoc!  Hoc!  Hoc!" and he swung to the 
right, avoiding an air-hole.  "Re-re!  Re-re!" and he veered to the 
left, dodging a heap of broken ice.  Past the mouth of the Ste. 
Marguerite, twelve miles; past Les Jambons, twelve miles more; past 
the River of Rocks and La Pentecote, fifteen miles more; into the 
little hamlet of Dead Men's Point, behind the Isle of the Wise 
Virgin, whither the amateur doctor had been summoned by telegraph to 
attend a patient with a broken arm--forty-three miles for the first 
day's run!  Not bad.  Then the dogs got their food for the day, one 
dried fish apiece; and at noon the next day, reckless of bleeding 
feet, they flew back over the same track, and broke their fast at 
Seven Islands before eight o'clock.  The ration was the same, a 
single fish; always the same, except when it was varied by a cube of 
ancient, evil-smelling, potent whale's flesh, which a dog can 
swallow at a single gulp.  Yet the dogs of the North Shore are never 
so full of vigour, courage, and joy of life as when the sledges are 
running.  It is in summer, when food is plenty and work slack, that 
they sicken and die.

Pichou's leadership of his team became famous.  Under his discipline 
the other dogs developed speed and steadiness.  One day they made 
the distance to the Godbout in a single journey, a wonderful run of 
over eighty miles.  But they loved their leader no better, though 
they followed him faster.  And as for the other teams, especially 
Carcajou's, they were still firm in their deadly hatred for the dog 
with the black patch.



III

It was in the second winter after Pichou's coming to Seven Islands 
that the great trial of his courage arrived.  Late in February an 
Indian runner on snowshoes staggered into the village.  He brought 
news from the hunting-parties that were wintering far up on the Ste. 
Marguerite--good news and bad.  First, they had already made a good 
hunting: for the pelletrie, that is to say.  They had killed many 
otter, some fisher and beaver, and four silver foxes--a marvel of 
fortune.  But then, for the food, the chase was bad, very bad--no 
caribou, no hare, no ptarmigan, nothing for many days.  Provisions 
were very low.  There were six families together.  Then la grippe 
had taken hold of them.  They were sick, starving.  They would 
probably die, at least most of the women and children.  It was a bad 
job.

Dan Scott had peculiar ideas of his duty toward the savages.  He was 
not romantic, but he liked to do the square thing.  Besides, he had 
been reading up on la grippe, and he had some new medicine for it, 
capsules from Montreal, very powerful--quinine, phenacetine, and 
morphine.  He was as eager to try this new medicine as a boy is to 
fire off a new gun.  He loaded the Cometique with provisions and the 
medicine-chest with capsules, harnessed his team, and started up the 
river.  Thermometer thirty degrees below zero; air like crystal; 
snow six feet deep on the level.

The first day's journey was slow, for the going was soft, and the 
track, at places, had to be broken out with snow-shoes.  Camp was 
made at the foot of the big fall--a hole in snow, a bed of boughs, a 
hot fire and a blanket stretched on a couple of sticks to reflect 
the heat, the dogs on the other side of the fire, and Pichou close 
to his master.

In the morning there was the steep hill beside the fall to climb, 
alternately soft and slippery, now a slope of glass and now a 
treacherous drift of yielding feathers; it was a road set on end.  
But Pichou flattened his back and strained his loins and dug his 
toes into the snow and would not give back an inch.  When the rest 
of the team balked the long whip slashed across their backs and 
recalled them to their duty.  At last their leader topped the ridge, 
and the others struggled after him.  Before them stretched the great 
dead-water of the river, a straight white path to No-man's-land.  
The snow was smooth and level, and the crust was hard enough to 
bear.  Pichou settled down to his work at a glorious pace.  He 
seemed to know that he must do his best, and that something 
important depended on the quickness of his legs.  On through the 
glittering solitude, on through the death-like silence, sped the 
COMETIQUE, between the interminable walls of the forest, past the 
mouths of nameless rivers, under the shadow of grim mountains.  At 
noon Dan Scott boiled the kettle, and ate his bread and bacon.  But 
there was nothing for the dogs, not even for Pichou; for discipline 
is discipline, and the best of sledge-dogs will not run well after 
he has been fed.

Then forward again, along the lifeless road, slowly over rapids, 
where the ice was rough and broken, swiftly over still waters, where 
the way was level, until they came to the foot of the last lake, and 
camped for the night.  The Indians were but a few miles away, at the 
head of the lake, and it would be easy to reach them in the morning.

But there was another camp on the Ste. Marguerite that night, and it 
was nearer to Dan Scott than the Indians were.  Ovide Boulianne had 
followed him up the river, close on his track, which made the going 
easier.

"Does that sacre bourgeois suppose that I allow him all that 
pelletrie to himself and the Compagnie?  Four silver fox, besides 
otter and beaver?  NON, MERCI!  I take some provision, and some 
whiskey.  I go to make trade also."  Thus spoke the shrewd Ovide, 
proving that commerce is no less daring, no less resolute, than 
philanthropy.  The only difference is in the motive, and that is not 
always visible.  Ovide camped the second night at a bend of the 
river, a mile below the foot of the lake.  Between him and Dan Scott 
there was a hill covered with a dense thicket of spruce.

By what magic did Carcajou know that Pichou, his old enemy, was so 
near him in that vast wilderness of white death?  By what mysterious 
language did he communicate his knowledge to his companions and stir 
the sleeping hatred in their hearts and mature the conspiracy of 
revenge?

Pichou, sleeping by the fire, was awakened by the fall of a lump of 
snow from the branch of a shaken evergreen.  That was nothing.  But 
there were other sounds in the forest, faint, stealthy, inaudible to 
an ear less keen than his.  He crept out of the shelter and looked 
into the wood.  He could see shadowy forms, stealing among the 
trees, gliding down the hill.  Five of them.  Wolves, doubtless!  He 
must guard the provisions.  By this time the rest of his team were 
awake.  Their eyes glittered.  They stirred uneasily.  But they did 
not move from the dying fire.  It was no concern of theirs what 
their leader chose to do out of hours.  In the traces they would 
follow him, but there was no loyalty in their hearts.  Pichou stood 
alone by the sledge, waiting for the wolves.

But these were no wolves.  They were assassins.  Like a company of 
soldiers, they lined up together and rushed silently down the slope.  
Like lightning they leaped upon the solitary dog and struck him 
down.  In an instant, before Dan Scott could throw off his blanket 
and seize the loaded butt of his whip, Pichou's throat and breast 
were torn to rags, his life-blood poured upon the snow, and his 
murderers were slinking away, slavering and muttering through the 
forest.

Dan Scott knelt beside his best friend.  At a glance he saw that the 
injury was fatal.  "Well done, Pichou!" he murmured, "you fought a 
good fight."

And the dog, by a brave effort, lifted the head with the black patch 
on it, for the last time, licked his master', hand, and then dropped 
back upon the snow--contented, happy, dead.

There is but one drawback to a dog's friendship.  It does not last 
long enough.


End of the story?  Well, if you care for the other people in it, you 
shall hear what became of them.  Dan Scott went on to the head of 
the lake and found the Indians, and fed them and gave them his 
medicine, and all of them got well except two, and they continued to 
hunt along the Ste. Marguerite every winter and trade with the 
Honourable H. B. Company.  Not with Dan Scott, however, for before 
that year was ended he resigned his post, and went to Montreal to 
finish his course in medicine; and now he is a respected physician 
in Ontario.  Married; three children; useful; prosperous.  But 
before he left Seven Islands he went up the Ste. Marguerite in the 
summer, by canoe, and made a grave for Pichou's bones, under a 
blossoming ash tree, among the ferns and wild flowers.  He put a 
cross over it.

"Being French," said he, "I suppose he was a Catholic.  But I'll 
swear he was a Christian."



THE WHITE BLOT

I

The real location of a city house depends upon the pictures which 
hang upon its walls.  They are its neighbourhood and its outlook.  
They confer upon it that touch of life and character, that power to 
beget love and bind friendship, which a country house receives from 
its surrounding landscape, the garden that embraces it, the stream 
that runs near it, and the shaded paths that lead to and from its 
door.

By this magic of pictures my narrow, upright slice of living-space 
in one of the brown-stone strata on the eastward slope of Manhattan 
Island is transferred to an open and agreeable site.  It has windows 
that look toward the woods and the sunset, watergates by which a 
little boat is always waiting, and secret passageways leading into 
fair places that are frequented by persons of distinction and charm.  
No darkness of night obscures these outlets; no neighbour's house 
shuts off the view; no drifted snow of winter makes them impassable.  
They are always free, and through them I go out and in upon my 
adventures.

One of these picture-wanderings has always appeared to me so 
singular that I would like, if it were possible, to put it into 
words.

It was Pierrepont who first introduced me to the picture--Pierrepont 
the good-natured: of whom one of his friends said that he was like 
Mahomet's Bridge of Paradise, because he was so hard to cross: to 
which another added that there was also a resemblance in the fact 
that he led to a region of beautiful illusions which he never 
entered.  He is one of those enthusiastic souls who are always 
discovering a new writer, a new painter, a new view from some old 
wharf by the river, a new place to obtain picturesque dinners at a 
grotesque price.  He swung out of his office, with his long-legged, 
easy stride, and nearly ran me down, as I was plodding up-town 
through the languor of a late spring afternoon, on one of those 
duty-walks which conscience offers as a sacrifice to digestion.

"Why, what is the matter with you?" he cried as he linked his arm 
through mine, "you look outdone, tired all the way through to your 
backbone.  Have you been reading the 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' or 
something by one of the new British female novelists?  You will have 
la grippe in your mind if you don't look out.  But I know what you 
need.  Come with me, and I will do you good."

So saying, he drew me out of clanging Broadway into one of the side 
streets that run toward the placid region of Washington Square.  
"No, no," I answered, feeling, even in the act of resistance, the 
pleasure of his cheerful guidance, "you are altogether wrong.  I 
don't need a dinner at your new-found Bulgarian table-d'hote--seven 
courses for seventy-five cents, and the wine thrown out; nor some of 
those wonderful Mexican cheroots warranted to eradicate the tobacco-
habit; nor a draught of your South American melon sherbet that cures 
all pains, except these which it causes.  None of these things will 
help me.  The doctor suggests that they do not suit my temperament.  
Let us go home together and have a shower-bath and a dinner of 
herbs, with just a reminiscence of the stalled ox--and a bout at 
backgammon to wind up the evening.  That will be the most 
comfortable prescription."

"But you mistake me," said he; "I am not thinking of any creature 
comforts for you.  I am prescribing for your mind.  There is a 
picture that I want you to see; not a coloured photograph, nor an 
exercise in anatomical drawing; but a real picture that will rest 
the eyes of your heart.  Come away with me to Morgenstern's gallery, 
and be healed."

As we turned into the lower end of Fifth Avenue, it seemed as if I 
were being gently floated along between the modest apartment-houses 
and old-fashioned dwellings, and prim, respectable churches, on the 
smooth current of Pierrepont's talk about his new-found picture.  
How often a man has cause to return thanks for the enthusiasms of 
his friends!  They are the little fountains that run down from the 
hills to refresh the mental desert of the despondent.

"You remember Falconer," continued Pierrepont, "Temple Falconer, 
that modest, quiet, proud fellow who came out of the South a couple 
of years ago and carried off the landscape prize at the Academy last 
year, and then disappeared?  He had no intimate friends here, and no 
one knew what had become of him.  But now this picture appears, to 
show what he has been doing.  It is an evening scene, a revelation 
of the beauty of sadness, an idea expressed in colours--or rather, a 
real impression of Nature that awakens an ideal feeling in the 
heart.  It does not define everything and say nothing, like so many 
paintings.  It tells no story, but I know it fits into one.  There 
is not a figure in it, and yet it is alive with sentiment; it 
suggests thoughts which cannot be put into words.  Don't you love 
the pictures that have that power of suggestion--quiet and strong, 
like Homer Martin's 'Light-house' up at the Century, with its 
sheltered bay heaving softly under the pallid greenish sky of 
evening, and the calm, steadfast glow of the lantern brightening 
into readiness for all the perils of night and coming storm?  How 
much more powerful that is than all the conventional pictures of 
light-houses on inaccessible cliffs, with white foam streaming from 
them like the ends of a schoolboy's comforter in a gale of wind!  I 
tell you the real painters are the fellows who love pure nature 
because it is so human.  They don't need to exaggerate, and they 
don't dare to be affected.  They are not afraid of the reality, and 
they are not ashamed of the sentiment.  They don't paint everything 
that they see, but they see everything that they paint.  And this 
picture makes me sure that Falconer is one of them."

By this time we had arrived at the door of the house where 
Morgenstern lives and moves and makes his profits, and were admitted 
to the shrine of the Commercial Apollo and the Muses in Trade.

It has often seemed to me as if that little house were a silent 
epitome of modern art criticism, an automatic indicator, or perhaps 
regulator, of the aesthetic taste of New York.  On the first floor, 
surrounded by all the newest fashions in antiquities and BRIC-A-
BRAC, you will see the art of to-day--the works of painters who are 
precisely in the focus of advertisement, and whose names call out an 
instant round of applause in the auction-room.  On the floors above, 
in degrees of obscurity deepening toward the attic, you will find 
the art of yesterday--the pictures which have passed out of the 
glare of popularity without yet arriving at the mellow radiance of 
old masters.  In the basement, concealed in huge packing-cases, and 
marked "PARIS--FRAGILE,"--you will find the art of to-morrow; the 
paintings of the men in regard to whose names, styles, and personal 
traits, the foreign correspondents and prophetic critics in the 
newspapers, are now diffusing in the public mind that twilight of 
familiarity and ignorance which precedes the sunrise of marketable 
fame.

The affable and sagacious Morgenstern was already well acquainted 
with the waywardness of Pierrepont's admiration, and with my own 
persistent disregard of current quotations in the valuation of works 
of art.  He regarded us, I suppose, very much as Robin Hood would 
have looked upon a pair of plain yeomen who had strayed into his 
lair.  The knights of capital, and coal barons, and rich merchants 
were his natural prey, but toward this poor but honest couple it 
would be worthy only of a Gentile robber to show anything but 
courteous and fair dealing.

He expressed no surprise when he heard what we wanted to see, but 
smiled tolerantly and led the way, not into the well-defined realm 
of the past, the present, or the future, but into a region of 
uncertain fortunes, a limbo of acknowledged but unrewarded merits, a 
large back room devoted to the works of American painters.  Here we 
found Falconer's picture; and the dealer, with that instinctive tact 
which is the best part of his business capital, left us alone to 
look at it.

It showed the mouth of a little river: a secluded lagoon, where the 
shallow tides rose and fell with vague lassitude, following the 
impulse of prevailing winds more than the strong attraction of the 
moon.  But now the unsailed harbour was quite still, in the pause of 
the evening; and the smooth undulations were caressed by a hundred 
opalescent hues, growing deeper toward the west, where the river 
came in.  Converging lines of trees stood dark against the sky; a 
cleft in the woods marked the course of the stream, above which the 
reluctant splendours of an autumnal day were dying in ashes of 
roses, while three tiny clouds, poised high in air, burned red with 
the last glimpse of the departed sun.

On the right was a reedy point running out into the bay, and behind 
it, on a slight rise of ground, an antique house with tall white 
pillars.  It was but dimly outlined in the gathering shadows; yet 
one could imagine its stately, formal aspect, its precise garden 
with beds of old-fashioned flowers and straight paths bordered with 
box, and a little arbour overgrown with honeysuckle.  I know not by 
what subtlety of delicate and indescribable touches--a slight 
inclination in one of the pillars, a broken line which might 
indicate an unhinged gate, a drooping resignation in the foliage of 
the yellowing trees, a tone of sadness in the blending of subdued 
colours--the painter had suggested that the place was deserted.  But 
the truth was unmistakable.  An air of loneliness and pensive sorrow 
breathed from the picture; a sigh of longing and regret.  It was 
haunted by sad, sweet memories of some untold story of human life.

In the corner Falconer had put his signature, T. F., "LARMONE," 189-, 
and on the border of the picture he had faintly traced some words, 
which we made out at last--

     "A spirit haunts the year's last hours."

Pierrepont took up the quotation and completed it--

     "A spirit haunts the year's last hours,
      Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers:
      To himself he talks;
      For at eventide, listening earnestly,
      At his work you may hear him sob and sigh,
      In the walks;
      Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks
      Of the mouldering flowers:
      Heavily hangs the broad sunflower
      Over its grave i' the earth so chilly;
      Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
      Heavily hangs the tiger-lily."

"That is very pretty poetry, gentlemen," said Morgenstern, who had 
come in behind us, "but is it not a little vague?  You like it, but 
you cannot tell exactly what it means.  I find the same fault in the 
picture from my point of view.  There is nothing in it to make a 
paragraph about, no anecdote, no experiment in technique.  It is 
impossible to persuade the public to admire a picture unless you can 
tell them precisely the points on which they must fix their 
admiration.  And that is why, although the painting is a good one, I 
should be willing to sell it at a low price."

He named a sum of money in three figures, so small that Pierrepont, 
who often buys pictures by proxy, could not conceal his surprise.

"Certainly I should consider that a good bargain, simply for 
investment," said he.  "Falconer's name alone ought to be worth more 
than that, ten years from now.  He is a rising man."

"No, Mr. Pierrepont," replied the dealer, "the picture is worth what 
I ask for it, for I would not commit the impertinence of offering a 
present to you or your friend; but it is worth no more.  Falconer's 
name will not increase in value.  The catalogue of his works is too 
short for fame to take much notice of it; and this is the last.  Did 
you not hear of his death last fall?  I do not wonder, for it 
happened at some place down on Long Island--a name that I never saw 
before, and have forgotten now.  There was not even an obituary in 
the newspapers."

"And besides," he continued, after a pause, "I must not conceal from 
you that the painting has a blemish.  It is not always visible, 
since you have failed to detect it; but it is more noticeable in 
some lights than in others; and, do what I will, I cannot remove it.  
This alone would prevent the painting from being a good investment.  
Its market value will never rise."

He turned the canvas sideways to the light, and the defect became 
apparent.

It was a dim, oblong, white blot in the middle distance; a nebulous 
blur in the painting, as if there had been some chemical impurity in 
the pigment causing it to fade, or rather as if a long drop of some 
acid, or perhaps a splash of salt water, had fallen upon the canvas 
while it was wet, and bleached it.  I knew little of the possible 
causes of such a blot, but enough to see that it could not be erased 
without painting over it, perhaps not even then.  And yet it seemed 
rather to enhance than to weaken the attraction which the picture 
had for me.

"Your candour does you credit, Mr. Morgenstern," said I, "but you 
know me well enough to be sure that what you have said will hardly 
discourage me.  For I have never been an admirer of 'cabinet finish' 
in works of art.  Nor have I been in the habit of buying them, as a 
Circassian father trains his daughters, with an eye to the market.  
They come into my house for my own pleasure, and when the time 
arrives that I can see them no longer, it will not matter much to me 
what price they bring in the auction-room.  This landscape pleases 
me so thoroughly that, if you will let us take it with us this 
evening, I will send you a check for the amount in the morning."

So we carried off the painting in a cab; and all the way home I was 
in the pleasant excitement of a man who is about to make an addition 
to his house; while Pierrepont was conscious of the glow of virtue 
which comes of having done a favour to a friend and justified your 
own critical judgment at one stroke.

After dinner we hung the painting over the chimney-piece in the room 
called the study (because it was consecrated to idleness), and sat 
there far into the night, talking of the few times we had met 
Falconer at the club, and of his reticent manner, which was broken 
by curious flashes of impersonal confidence when he spoke not of 
himself but of his art.  From this we drifted into memories of good 
comrades who had walked beside us but a few days in the path of 
life, and then disappeared, yet left us feeling as if we cared more 
for them than for the men whom we see every day; and of young 
geniuses who had never reached the goal; and of many other glimpses 
of "the light that failed," until the lamp was low and it was time 
to say good-night.



II

For several months I continued to advance in intimacy with my 
picture.  It grew more familiar, more suggestive; the truth and 
beauty of it came home to me constantly.  Yet there was something in 
it not quite apprehended; a sense of strangeness; a reserve which I 
had not yet penetrated.

One night in August I found myself practically alone, so far as 
human intercourse was concerned, in the populous, weary city.  A 
couple of hours of writing had produced nothing that would bear the 
test of sunlight, so I anticipated judgment by tearing up the 
spoiled sheets of paper, and threw myself upon the couch before the 
empty fireplace.  It was a dense, sultry night, with electricity 
thickening the air, and a trouble of distant thunder rolling far 
away on the rim of the cloudy sky--one of those nights of restless 
dulness, when you wait and long for something to happen, and yet 
feel despondently that nothing ever will happen again.  I passed 
through a region of aimless thoughts into one of migratory and 
unfinished dreams, and dropped from that into an empty gulf of 
sleep.

How late it was when I drifted back toward the shore of 
consciousness, I cannot tell.  But the student-lamp on the table had 
burned out, and the light of the gibbous moon was creeping in 
through the open windows.  Slowly the pale illumination crept up the 
eastern wall, like a tide rising as the moon declined.  Now it 
reached the mantel-shelf and overflowed the bronze heads of Homer 
and the Indian Bacchus and the Egyptian image of Isis with the 
infant Horus.  Now it touched the frame of the picture and lapped 
over the edge.  Now it rose to the shadowy house and the dim garden, 
in the midst of which I saw the white blot more distinctly than ever 
before.

It seemed now to have taken a new shape, like the slender form of a 
woman, robed in flowing white.  And as I watched it through half-
closed eyes, the figure appeared to move and tremble and wave to and 
fro, as if it were a ghost.

A haunted picture!  Why should it not be so?  A haunted ruin, a 
haunted forest, a haunted ship,--all these have been seen, or 
imagined, and reported, and there are learned societies for 
investigating such things.  Why should not a picture have a ghost in 
it?

My mind, in that curiously vivid state which lies between waking and 
sleeping, went through the form of careful reasoning over the 
question.  If there may be some subtle connection between a house 
and the spirits of the people who have once lived in it,--and wise 
men have believed this,--why should there be any impassable gulf 
between a picture and the vanished lives out of which it has grown?  
All the human thought and feeling which have passed into it through 
the patient toil of art, remain forever embodied there.  A picture 
is the most living and personal thing that a man can leave behind 
him.  When we look at it we see what he saw, hour after hour, day 
after day, and we see it through his mood and impression, coloured 
by his emotion, tinged with his personality.  Surely, if the spirits 
of the dead are not extinguished, but only veiled and hidden, and if 
it were possible by any means that their presence could flash for a 
moment through the veil, it would be most natural that they should 
come back again to hover around the work into which their experience 
and passion had been woven.  Here, if anywhere, they would "Revisit 
the pale glimpses of the moon."  Here, if anywhere, we might catch 
fleeting sight, as in a glass darkly, of the visions that passed 
before them while they worked.

This much of my train of reasoning along the edge of the dark, I 
remember sharply.  But after this, all was confused and misty.  The 
shore of consciousness receded.  I floated out again on the ocean of 
forgotten dreams.  When I woke, it was with a quick start, as if my 
ship had been made fast, silently and suddenly, at the wharf of 
reality, and the bell rang for me to step ashore.

But the vision of the white blot remained clear and distinct.  And 
the question that it had brought to me, the chain of thoughts that 
had linked themselves to it, lingered through the morning, and made 
me feel sure that there was an untold secret in Falconer's life and 
that the clew to it must be sought in the history of his last 
picture.

But how to trace the connection?  Every one who had known Falconer, 
however slightly, was out of town.  There was no clew to follow.  
Even the name "Larmone" gave me no help; for I could not find it on 
any map of Long Island.  It was probably the fanciful title of some 
old country-place, familiar only to the people who had lived there.

But the very remoteness of the problem, its lack of contact with the 
practical world, fascinated me.  It was like something that had 
drifted away in the fog, on a sea of unknown and fluctuating 
currents.  The only possible way to find it was to commit yourself 
to the same wandering tides and drift after it, trusting to a 
propitious fortune that you might be carried in the same direction; 
and after a long, blind, unhurrying chase, one day you might feel a 
faint touch, a jar, a thrill along the side of your boat, and, 
peering through the fog, lay your hand at last, without surprise, 
upon the very object of your quest.



III

As it happened, the means for such a quest were at my disposal.  I 
was part owner of a boat which had been built for hunting and 
fishing cruises on the shallow waters of the Great South Bay.  It 
was a deliberate, but not inconvenient, craft, well named the 
Patience; and my turn for using it had come.  Black Zekiel, the 
captain, crew, and cook, was the very man that I would have chosen 
for such an expedition.  He combined the indolent good-humour of the 
negro with the taciturnity of the Indian, and knew every shoal and 
channel of the tortuous waters.  He asked nothing better than to set 
out on a voyage without a port; sailing aimlessly eastward day after 
day, through the long chain of landlocked bays, with the sea 
plunging behind the sand-dunes on our right, and the shores of Long 
Island sleeping on our left; anchoring every evening in some little 
cove or estuary, where Zekiel could sit on the cabin roof, smoking 
his corn-cob pipe, and meditating on the vanity and comfort of life, 
while I pushed off through the mellow dusk to explore every creek 
and bend of the shore, in my light canoe.

There was nothing to hasten our voyage.  The three weeks' vacation 
was all but gone, when the Patience groped her way through a narrow, 
crooked channel in a wide salt-meadow, and entered the last of the 
series of bays.  A few houses straggled down a point of land; the 
village of Quantock lay a little farther back.  Beyond that was a 
belt of woods reaching to the water; and from these the south-
country road emerged to cross the upper end of the bay on a low 
causeway with a narrow bridge of planks at the central point.  Here 
was our Ultima Thule.  Not even the Patience could thread the eye of 
this needle, or float through the shallow marsh-canal farther to the 
east.

We anchored just in front of the bridge, and as I pushed the canoe 
beneath it, after supper, I felt the indefinable sensation of having 
passed that way before.  I knew beforehand what the little boat 
would drift into.  The broad saffron light of evening fading over a 
still lagoon; two converging lines of pine trees running back into 
the sunset; a grassy point upon the right; and behind that a 
neglected garden, a tangled bower of honeysuckle, a straight path 
bordered with box, leading to a deserted house with a high, white-
pillared porch--yes, it was Larmone.

In the morning I went up to the village to see if I could find trace 
of my artist's visit to the place.  There was no difficulty in the 
search, for he had been there often.  The people had plenty of 
recollections of him, but no real memory, for it seemed as if none 
of them had really known him.

"Queer kinder fellow," said a wrinkled old bayman with whom I walked 
up the sandy road, "I seen him a good deal round here, but 'twan't 
like havin' any 'quaintance with him.  He allus kep' himself to 
himself, pooty much.  Used ter stay round 'Squire Ladoo's place most 
o' the time--keepin' comp'ny with the gal I guess.  Larmone?  Yaas, 
that's what THEY called it, but we don't go much on fancy names down 
here.  No, the painter didn' 'zactly live there, but it 'mounted to 
the same thing.  Las' summer they was all away, house shet up, 
painter hangin' round all the time, 's if he looked fur 'em to come 
back any minnit.  Purfessed to be paintin', but I don' see's he did 
much.  Lived up to Mort Halsey's; died there too; year ago this 
fall.  Guess Mis' Halsey can tell ye most of any one 'bout him."

At the boarding-house (with wide, low verandas, now forsaken by the 
summer boarders), which did duty for a village inn, I found Mrs. 
Halsey; a notable housewife, with a strong taste for ancestry, and 
an uncultivated world of romance still brightening her soft brown 
eyes.  She knew all the threads in the story that I was following; 
and the interest with which she spoke made it evident that she had 
often woven them together in the winter evenings on patterns of her 
own.

Judge Ledoux had come to Quantock from the South during the war, and 
built a house there like the one he used to live in.  There were 
three things he hated: slavery and war and society.  But he always 
loved the South more than the North, and lived like a foreigner, 
polite enough, but very retired.  His wife died after a few years, 
and left him alone with a little girl.  Claire grew up as pretty as 
a picture, but very shy and delicate.  About two years ago Mr. 
Falconer had come down from the city; he stayed at Larmone first, 
and then he came to the boarding-house, but he was over at the 
Ledoux' house almost all the time.  He was a Southerner too, and a 
relative of the family; a real gentleman, and very proud though he 
was poor.  It seemed strange that he should not live with them, but 
perhaps he felt more free over here.  Every one thought he must be 
engaged to Claire, but he was not the kind of a man that you could 
ask questions about himself.  A year ago last winter he had gone up 
to the city and taken all his things with him.  He had never stayed 
away so long before.  In the spring the Ledoux had gone to Europe; 
Claire seemed to be falling into a decline; her sight seemed to be 
failing, and her father said she must see a famous doctor and have a 
change of air.

"Mr. Falconer came back in May," continued the good lady, "as if he 
expected to find them.  But the house was shut up and nobody knew 
just where they were.  He seemed to be all taken aback; it was queer 
if he didn't know about it, intimate as he had been; but he never 
said anything, and made no inquiries; just seemed to be waiting, as 
if there was nothing else for him to do.  We would have told him in 
a minute, if we had anything to tell.  But all we could do was to 
guess there must have been some kind of a quarrel between him and 
the Judge, and if there was, he must know best about it himself.

"All summer long he kept going over to the house and wandering 
around in the garden.  In the fall he began to paint a picture, but 
it was very slow painting; he would go over in the afternoon and 
come back long after dark, damp with the dew and fog.  He kept 
growing paler and weaker and more silent.  Some days he did not 
speak more than a dozen words, but always kind and pleasant.  He was 
just dwindling away; and when the picture was almost done a fever 
took hold of him.  The doctor said it was malaria, but it seemed to 
me more like a trouble in the throat, a kind of dumb misery.  And 
one night, in the third quarter of the moon, just after the tide 
turned to run out, he raised up in the bed and tried to speak, but 
he was gone.

"We tried to find out his relations, but there didn't seem to be 
any, except the Ledoux, and they were out of reach.  So we sent the 
picture up to our cousin in Brooklyn, and it sold for about enough 
to pay Mr. Falconer's summer's board and the cost of his funeral.  
There was nothing else that he left of any value, except a few 
books; perhaps you would like to look at them, if you were his 
friend?

"I never saw any one that I seemed to know so little and like so 
well.  It was a disappointment in love, of course, and they all said 
that he died of a broken heart; but I think it was because his heart 
was too full, and wouldn't break.

"And oh!--I forgot to tell you; a week after he was gone there was a 
notice in the paper that Claire Ledoux had died suddenly, on the 
last of August, at some place in Switzerland.  Her father is still 
away travelling.  And so the whole story is broken off and will 
never be finished.  Will you look at the books?"

Nothing is more pathetic, to my mind, than to take up the books of 
one who is dead.  Here is his name, with perhaps a note of the place 
where the volume was bought or read, and the marks on the pages that 
he liked best.  Here are the passages that gave him pleasure, and 
the thoughts that entered into his life and formed it; they became 
part of him, but where has he carried them now?

Falconer's little library was an unstudied choice, and gave a hint 
of his character.  There was a New Testament in French, with his 
name written in a slender, woman's hand; three or four volumes of 
stories, Cable's "Old Creole Days," Allen's "Kentucky Cardinal," 
Page's "In Old Virginia," and the like; "Henry Esmond" and Amiel's 
"Journal" and Lamartine's "Raphael"; and a few volumes of poetry, 
among them one of Sidney Lanier's, and one of Tennyson's earlier 
poems.

There was also a little morocco-bound book of manuscript notes.  
This I begged permission to carry away with me, hoping to find in it 
something which would throw light upon my picture, perhaps even some 
message to be carried, some hint or suggestion of something which 
the writer would fain have had done for him, and which I promised 
myself faithfully to perform, as a test of an imagined friendship--
imagined not in the future, but in the impossible past.

I read the book in this spirit, searching its pages carefully, 
through the long afternoon, in the solitary cabin of my boat.  There 
was nothing at first but an ordinary diary; a record of the work and 
self-denials of a poor student of art.  Then came the date of his 
first visit to Larmone, and an expression of the pleasure of being 
with his own people again after a lonely life, and some chronicle of 
his occupations there, studies for pictures, and idle days that were 
summed up in a phrase: "On the bay," or "In the woods."

After this the regular succession of dates was broken, and there 
followed a few scraps of verse, irregular and unfinished, bound 
together by the thread of a name--"Claire among her Roses," "A Ride 
through the Pines with Claire," "An Old Song of Claire's" "The Blue 
Flower in Claire's Eyes."  It was not poetry, but such an 
unconscious tribute to the power and beauty of poetry as unfolds 
itself almost inevitably from youthful love, as naturally as the 
blossoms unfold from the apple trees in May.  If you pick them they 
are worthless.  They charm only in their own time and place.

A date told of his change from Larmone to the village, and this was 
written below it: "Too heavy a sense of obligation destroys freedom, 
and only a free man can dare to love."

Then came a number of fragments indicating trouble of mind and 
hesitation; the sensitiveness of the artist, the delicate, self-
tormenting scruples of the lonely idealist, the morbid pride of the 
young poor man, contending with an impetuous passion and forcing it 
to surrender, or at least to compromise.

"What right has a man to demand everything and offer nothing in 
return except an ambition and a hope?  Love must come as a giver, 
not as a beggar."

"A knight should not ask to wear his lady's colours until he has won 
his spurs."

"King Cophetua and the beggar-maid--very fine! but the other way--
humiliating!"

"A woman may take everything from a man, wealth and fame and 
position.  But there is only one thing that a man may accept from a 
woman--something that she alone can give--happiness."

"Self-respect is less than love, but it is the trellis that holds 
love up from the ground; break it down, and all the flowers are in 
the dust, the fruit is spoiled."

"And yet"--so the man's thought shone through everywhere--"I think 
she must know that I love her, and why I cannot speak."

One entry was written in a clearer, stronger hand: "An end of 
hesitation.  The longest way is the shortest.  I am going to the 
city to work for the Academy prize, to think of nothing else until I 
win it, and then come back with it to Claire, to tell her that I 
have a future, and that it is hers.  If I spoke of it now it would 
be like claiming the reward before I had done the work.  I have told 
her only that I am going to prove myself an artist, AND TO LIVE FOR 
WHAT I LOVE BEST.  She understood, I am sure, for she would not lift 
her eyes to me, but her hand trembled as she gave me the blue flower 
from her belt."

The date of his return to Larmone was marked, but the page was 
blank, as the day had been.

Some pages of dull self-reproach and questioning and bewildered 
regret followed.

"Is it possible that she has gone away, without a word, without a 
sign, after what has passed between us?  It is not fair.  Surely I 
had some claim."

"But what claim, after all?  I asked for nothing.  And was it not 
pride that kept me silent, taking it for granted that if I asked, 
she would give?"

"It was a mistake; she did not understand, nor care."

"It was my fault; I might at least have told her that I loved her, 
though she could not have answered me."

"It is too late now.  To-night, while I was finishing the picture, I 
saw her in the garden.  Her spirit, all in white, with a blue flower 
in her belt.  I knew she was dead across the sea.  I tried to call 
to her, but my voice made no sound.  She seemed not to see me.  She 
moved like one in a dream, straight on, and vanished.  Is there no 
one who can tell her?  Must she never know that I loved her?"

The last thing in the book was a printed scrap of paper that lay 
between the leaves:


      IRREVOCABLE

     "Would the gods might give
      Another field for human strife;
      Man must live one life
      Ere he learns to live.
      Ah, friend, in thy deep grave,
      What now can change; what now can save?"


So there was a message after all, but it could never be carried; a 
task for a friend, but it was impossible.  What better thing could I 
do with the poor little book than bury it in the garden in the 
shadow of Larmone?  The story of a silent fault, hidden in silence.  
How many of life's deepest tragedies are only that: no great 
transgression, no shock of conflict, no sudden catastrophe with its 
answering thrill of courage and resistance: only a mistake made in 
the darkness, and under the guidance of what seemed a true and noble 
motive; a failure to see the right path at the right moment, and a 
long wandering beyond it; a word left unspoken until the ears that 
should have heard it are sealed, and the tongue that should have 
spoken it is dumb.

The soft sea-fog clothed the night with clinging darkness; the faded 
leaves hung slack and motionless from the trees, waiting for their 
fall; the tense notes of the surf beyond the sand-dunes vibrated 
through the damp air like chords from some mighty VIOLONO; large, 
warm drops wept from the arbour while I sat in the garden, holding 
the poor little book, and thinking of the white blot in the record 
of a life that was too proud to bend to the happiness that was meant 
for it.

There are men like that: not many perhaps, but a few; and they are 
the ones who suffer most keenly in this world of half-understanding 
and clouded knowledge.  There is a pride, honourable and sensitive, 
that imperils the realization of love, puts it under a spell of 
silence and reserve, makes it sterile of blossoms and impotent of 
fruits.  For what is it, after all, but a subtle, spiritual worship 
of self?  And what was Falconer's resolve not to tell this girl that 
he loved her until he had won fame and position, but a secret, 
unconscious setting of himself above her?  For surely, if love is 
supreme, it does not need to wait for anything else to lend it worth 
and dignity.  The very sweetness and power of it lie in the 
confession of one life as dependent upon another for its fulfilment.  
It is made strong in its very weakness.  It is the only thing, after 
all, that can break the prison bars and set the heart free from 
itself.  The pride that hinders it, enslaves it.  Love's first duty 
is to be true to itself, in word and deed.  Then, having spoken 
truth and acted verity, it may call on honour to keep it pure and 
steadfast.

If Falconer had trusted Claire, and showed her his heart without 
reserve, would she not have understood him and helped him?  It was 
the pride of independence, the passion of self-reliance that drew 
him away from her and divided his heart from hers in a dumb 
isolation.  But Claire,--was not she also in fault?  Might she not 
have known, should not she have taken for granted, the truth which 
must have been so easy to read in Falconer's face, though he never 
put it into words?  And yet with her there was something very 
different from the pride that kept him silent.  The virgin reserve 
of a young girl's heart is more sacred than any pride of self.  It 
is the maiden instinct which makes the woman always the shrine, and 
never the pilgrim.  She is not the seeker, but the one sought.  She 
dares not take anything for granted.  She has the right to wait for 
the voice, the word, the avowal.  Then, and not till then, if the 
pilgrim be the chosen one, the shrine may open to receive him.

Not all women believe this; but those who do are the ones best worth 
seeking and winning.  And Claire was one of them.  It seemed to me, 
as I mused, half dreaming, on the unfinished story of these two 
lives that had missed each other in the darkness, that I could see 
her figure moving through the garden, beyond where the pallid bloom 
of the tall cosmos-flower bent to the fitful breeze.  Her robe was 
like the waving of the mist.  Her face was fair, and very fair, for 
all its sadness: a blue flower, faint as a shadow on the snow, 
trembled at her waist, as she paced to and fro along the path.

I murmured to myself, "Yet he loved her: and she loved him.  Can 
pride be stronger than love?"

Perhaps, after all, the lingering and belated confession which 
Falconer had written in his diary might in some way come to her.  
Perhaps if it were left here in the bower of honeysuckles where they 
had so often sat together, it might be a sign and omen of the 
meeting of these two souls that had lost each other in the dark of 
the world.  Perhaps,--ah, who can tell that it is not so?--for those 
who truly love, with all their errors, with all their faults, there 
is no "irrevocable"--there is "another field."

As I turned from the garden, the tense note of the surf vibrated 
through the night.  The pattering drops of dew rustled as they fell 
from the leaves of the honeysuckle.  But underneath these sounds it 
seemed as if I heard a deep voice saying "Claire!" and a woman's 
lips whispering "Temple!"



A YEAR OF NOBILITY

I

ENTER THE MARQUIS

The Marquis sat by the camp-fire peeling potatoes.

To look at him, you never would have taken him for a marquis.  His 
costume was a pair of corduroy trousers; a blue flannel shirt, 
patched at elbows with gray; lumberman's boots, flat-footed, 
shapeless, with loose leather legs strapped just below the knee, and 
wrinkled like the hide of an ancient rhinoceros; and a soft brown 
hat with several holes in the crown, as if it had done duty, at some 
time in its history, as an impromptu target in a shooting-match.  A 
red woollen scarf twisted about his loins gave a touch of colour and 
picturesqueness.

It was not exactly a court dress, but it sat well on the powerful 
sinewy figure of the man.  He never gave a thought to his looks, but 
peeled his potatoes with a dexterity which betrayed a past-master of 
the humble art, and threw the skins into the fire.

"Look you, m'sieu'," he said to young Winthrop Alden, who sat on a 
fallen tree near him, mending the fly-rod which he had broken in the 
morning's fishing, "look you, it is an affair of the most strange, 
yet of the most certain.  We have known always that ours was a good 
family.  The name tells it.  The Lamottes are of la haute classe in 
France.  But here, in Canada, we are poor.  Yet the good blood dies 
not with the poverty.  It is buried, hidden, but it remains the 
same.  It is like these pataques.  You plant good ones for seed: you 
get a good crop.  You plant bad ones: you get a bad crop.  But we 
did not know about the title in our family.  No.  We thought ours 
was a side-branch, an off-shoot.  It was a great surprise to us.  
But it is certain,--beyond a doubt."

Jean Lamotte's deep voice was quiet and steady.  It had the tone of 
assured conviction.  His bright blue eyes above his ruddy mustache 
and bronzed cheeks, were clear and tranquil as those of a child.

Alden was immensely interested and amused.  He was a member of the 
Boston branch of the Society for Ancestral Culture, and he 
recognized the favourite tenet of his sect,--the doctrine that 
"blood will tell."  He was also a Harvard man, knowing almost 
everything and believing hardly anything.  Heredity was one of the 
few unquestioned articles of his creed.  But the form in which this 
familiar confession of faith came to him, on the banks of the Grande 
Decharge, from the lips of a somewhat ragged and distinctly 
illiterate Canadian guide, was grotesque enough to satisfy the most 
modern taste for new sensations.  He listened with an air of 
gravity, and a delighted sense of the humour of the situation.

"How did you find it out?" he asked.

"Well, then," continued Jean, "I will tell you how the news came to 
me.  It was at St. Gedeon, one Sunday last March.  The snow was good 
and hard, and I drove in, ten miles on the lake, from our house 
opposite Grosse Ile.  After mass, a man, evidently of the city, 
comes to me in the stable while I feed the horse, and salutes me.

"'Is this Jean Lamotte?'

"'At your service, m'sieu'.'

"'Son of Francois Louis Lamotte?'

"'Of no other.  But he is dead, God give him repose.'

"'I been looking for you all through Charlevoix and Chicoutimi.'

"'Here you find me then, and good-day to you,' says I, a little 
short, for I was beginning to be shy of him.

"'Chut, chut,' says he, very friendly.  'I suppose you have time to 
talk a bit.  How would you like to be a marquis and have a castle in 
France with a hundred thousand dollars?'

"For a moment I think I will lick him; then I laugh.  'Very well 
indeed,' says I, 'and also a handful of stars for buckshot, and the 
new moon for a canoe.'

"'But no,' answers the man.  'I am earnest, Monsieur Lamotte.  I 
want to talk a long talk with you.  Do you permit that I accompany 
you to your residence?'

"Residence!  You know that little farm-house of logs where my mother 
lives,--you saw it last summer.  But of course it is a pretty good 
house.  It is clean.  It is warm.  So I bring the man home in the 
sleigh.  All that evening he tells the story.  How our name Lamotte 
is really De la Motte de la Luciere.  How there belongs to that name 
an estate and a title in France, now thirty years with no one to 
claim it.  How he, being an AVOCAT, has remarked the likeness of the 
names.  How he has tracked the family through Montmorency and 
Quebec, in all the parish books.  How he finds my great-
grandfather's great-grandfather, Etienne de La Motte who came to 
Canada two hundred years ago, a younger son of the Marquis de la 
Luciere.  How he has the papers, many of them, with red seals on 
them.  I saw them.  'Of course,' says he, 'there are others of the 
family here to share the property.  It must be divided.  But it is 
large--enormous--millions of francs.  And the largest share is 
yours, and the title, and a castle--a castle larger than Price's 
saw-mill at Chicoutimi; with carpets, and electric lights, and 
coloured pictures on the wall, like the hotel at Roberval.'

"When my mother heard about that she was pleased.  But me--when I 
heard that I was a marquis, I knew it was true."

Jean's blue eyes were wide open now, and sparkling brightly.  He had 
put down the pan of potatoes.  He was holding his head up and 
talking eagerly.

Alden turned away his face to light his pipe, and hide a smile.  
"Did he get--any money--out of you?"--came slowly between the puffs 
of smoke.

"Money!" answered Jean, "of course there must be money to carry on 
an affair of this kind.  There was seventy dollars that I had 
cleaned up on the lumber-job last winter, and the mother had forty 
dollars from the cow she sold in the fall.  A hundred and ten 
dollars,--we gave him that.  He has gone to France to make the claim 
for us.  Next spring he comes back, and I give him a hundred dollars 
more; when I get my property five thousand dollars more.  It is 
little enough.  A marquis must not be mean."

Alden swore softly in English, under his breath.  A rustic comedy, a 
joke on human nature, always pleased him; but beneath his cynical 
varnish he had a very honest heart, and he hated cruelty and 
injustice.  He knew what a little money meant in the backwoods; what 
hard and bitter toil it cost to rake it together; what sacrifices 
and privations must follow its loss.  If the smooth prospector of 
unclaimed estates in France had arrived at the camp on the Grande 
Decharge at that moment, Alden would have introduced him to the most 
unhappy hour of his life.

But with Jean Lamotte it was by no means so easy to deal.  Alden 
perceived at once that ridicule would be worse than useless.  The 
man was far too much in earnest.  A jest about a marquis with holes 
in his hat!  Yes, Jean would laugh at that very merrily; for he was 
a true VOYAGEUR.  But a jest about the reality of the marquis!  That 
struck him as almost profane.  It was a fixed idea with him.  
Argument could not shake it.  He had seen the papers.  He knew it 
was true.  All the strength of his vigorous and healthy manhood 
seemed to have gone into it suddenly, as if this was the news for 
which he had been waiting, unconsciously, since he was born.

It was not in the least morbid, visionary, abstract.  It was 
concrete, actual, and so far as Alden could see, wholesome.  It did 
not make Jean despise his present life.  On the contrary, it 
appeared to lend a zest to it, as an interesting episode in the 
career of a nobleman.  He was not restless; he was not discontented.  
His whole nature was at once elated and calmed.  He was not at all 
feverish to get away from his familiar existence, from the woods and 
the waters he knew so well, from the large liberty of the unpeopled 
forest, the joyous rush of the great river, the splendid breadth of 
the open sky.  Unconsciously these things had gone into his blood.  
Dimly he felt the premonitions of homesickness for them all.  But he 
was lifted up to remember that the blood into which these things had 
entered was blue blood, and that though he lived in the wilderness 
he really belonged to la haute classe.  A breath of romance, a 
spirit of chivalry from the days when the high-spirited courtiers of 
Louis XIV sought their fortune in the New World, seemed to pass into 
him.  He spoke of it all with a kind of proud simplicity.

"It appears curious to m'sieu', no doubt, but it has been so in 
Canada from the beginning.  There were many nobles here in the old 
time.  Frontenac,--he was a duke or a prince.  Denonville,--he was a 
grand seigneur.  La Salle, Vaudreuil,--these are all noble, counts 
or barons.  I know not the difference, but the cure has told me the 
names.  And the old Jacques Cartier, the father of all, when he went 
home to France, I have heard that the King made him a lord and gave 
him a castle.  Why not?  He was a capable man, a brave man; he could 
sail a big ship, he could run the rapids of the great river in his 
canoe.  He could hunt the bear, the lynx, the carcajou.  I suppose 
all these men,--marquises and counts and barons,--I suppose they all 
lived hard, and slept on the ground, and used the axe and the paddle 
when they came to the woods.  It is not the fine coat that makes the 
noble.  It is the good blood, the adventure, the brave heart."

"Magnificent!" thought Alden.  "It is the real thing, a bit of the 
seventeenth century lost in the forest for two hundred years.  It is 
like finding an old rapier beside an Indian trail.  I suppose the 
fellow may be the descendant of some gay young lieutenant of the 
regiment Carignan-Salieres, who came out with De Tracy, or 
Courcelles.  An amour with the daughter of a habitant,--a name taken 
at random,--who can unravel the skein?  But here's the old thread of 
chivalry running through all the tangles, tarnished but unbroken."

This was what he said to himself.  What he said to Jean was, "Well, 
Jean, you and I have been together in the woods for two summers now, 
and marquis or no marquis, I hope this is not going to make any 
difference between us."

"But certainly NOT!" answered Jean.  "I am well content with 
m'sieu', as I hope m'sieu' is content with me.  While I am AU BOIS, 
I ask no better than to be your guide.  Besides, I must earn those 
other hundred dollars, for the payment in the spring."

Alden tried to make him promise to give nothing more to the lawyer 
until he had something sure to show for his money.  But Jean was 
politely non-committal on that point.  It was evident that he felt 
the impossibility of meanness in a marquis.  Why should he be 
sparing or cautious?  That was for the merchant, not for the noble.  
A hundred, two hundred, three hundred dollars: What was that to an 
estate and a title?  Nothing risk, nothing gain!  He must live up to 
his role.  Meantime he was ready to prove that he was the best guide 
on the Grande Decharge.

And so he was.  There was not a man in all the Lake St. John country 
who knew the woods and waters as well as he did.  Far up the great 
rivers Peribonca and Misstassini he had pushed his birch canoe, 
exploring the network of lakes and streams along the desolate Height 
of Land.  He knew the Grand Brule, where the bears roam in September 
on the fire-scarred hills among the wide, unharvested fields of 
blueberries.  He knew the hidden ponds and slow-creeping little 
rivers where the beavers build their dams, and raise their silent 
water-cities, like Venice lost in the woods.  He knew the vast 
barrens, covered with stiff silvery moss, where the caribou fed in 
the winter.  On the Decharge itself,--that tumultuous flood, never 
failing, never freezing, by which the great lake pours all its 
gathered waters in foam and fury down to the deep, still gorge of 
the Saguenay,--there Jean was at home.  There was not a curl or eddy 
in the wild course of the river that he did not understand.  The 
quiet little channels by which one could drop down behind the 
islands while the main stream made an impassable fall; the precise 
height of the water at which it was safe to run the Rapide Gervais; 
the point of rock on the brink of the Grande Chute where the canoe 
must whirl swiftly in to the shore if you did not wish to go over 
the cataract; the exact force of the tourniquet that sucked downward 
at one edge of the rapid, and of the bouillon that boiled upward at 
the other edge, as if the bottom of the river were heaving, and the 
narrow line of the FILET D'EAU along which the birch-bark might 
shoot in safety; the treachery of the smooth, oily curves where the 
brown water swept past the edge of the cliff, silent, gloomy, 
menacing; the hidden pathway through the foam where the canoe could 
run out securely and reach a favourite haunt of the ouananiche, the 
fish that loves the wildest water,--all these secrets were known to 
Jean.  He read the river like a book.  He loved it.  He also 
respected it.  He knew it too well to take liberties with it.

The camp, that June, was beside the Rapide des Cedres.  A great 
ledge stretched across the river; the water came down in three 
leaps, brown above, golden at the edge, white where it fell.  Below, 
on the left bank, there was a little cove behind a high point of 
rocks, a curving beach of white sand, a gentle slope of ground, a 
tent half hidden among the birches and balsams.  Down the river, the 
main channel narrowed and deepened.  High banks hemmed it in on the 
left, iron-coasted islands on the right.  It was a sullen, powerful, 
dangerous stream.  Beyond that, in mid-river, the Ile Maligne reared 
its wicked head, scarred, bristling with skeletons of dead trees.  
On either side of it, the river broke away into a long fury of 
rapids and falls in which no boat could live.

It was there, on the point of the island, that the most famous 
fishing in the river was found; and there Alden was determined to 
cast his fly before he went home.  Ten days they had waited at the 
Cedars for the water to fall enough to make the passage to the 
island safe.  At last Alden grew impatient.  It was a superb 
morning,--sky like an immense blue gentian, air full of fragrance 
from a million bells of pink Linnaea, sunshine flattering the great 
river,--a morning when danger and death seemed incredible.

"To-day we are going to the island, Jean; the water must be low 
enough now."

"Not yet, m'sieu', I am sorry, but it is not yet."

Alden laughed rather unpleasantly.  "I believe you are afraid.  I 
thought you were a good canoeman--"

"I am that," said Jean, quietly, "and therefore,--well, it is the 
bad canoeman who is never afraid."

"But last September you took your monsieur to the island and gave 
him fine fishing.  Why won't you do it for me?  I believe you want 
to keep me away from this place and save it for him."

Jean's face flushed.  "M'sieu' has no reason to say that of me.  I 
beg that he will not repeat it."

Alden laughed again.  He was somewhat irritated at Jean for taking 
the thing so seriously, for being so obstinate.  On such a morning 
it was absurd.  At least it would do no harm to make an effort to 
reach the island.  If it proved impossible they could give it up.  
"All right, Jean," he said, "I'll take it back.  You are only timid, 
that's all.  Francois here will go down with me.  We can manage the 
canoe together.  Jean can stay at home and keep the camp.  Eh, 
Francois?"

Francois, the second guide, was a mush of vanity and good nature, 
with just sense enough to obey Jean's orders, and just jealousy 
enough to make him jump at a chance to show his independence.  He 
would like very well to be first man for a day,--perhaps for the 
next trip, if he had good luck.  He grinned and nodded his head--
"All ready, m'sieu'; I guess we can do it."

But while he was holding the canoe steady for Alden to step out to 
his place in the bow, Jean came down and pushed him aside.  "Go to 
bed, dam' fool," he muttered, shoved the canoe out into the river, 
and jumped lightly to his own place in the stern.

Alden smiled to himself and said nothing for a while.  When they 
were a mile or two down the river he remarked, "So I see you changed 
your mind, Jean.  Do you think better of the river now?"

"No, m'sieu', I think the same."

"Well then?"

"Because I must share the luck with you whether it is good or bad.  
It is no shame to have fear.  The shame is not to face it.  But one 
thing I ask of you--"

"And that is?"

"Kneel as low in the canoe as you can, paddle steady, and do not 
dodge when a wave comes."

Alden was half inclined to turn back, and give it up.  But pride 
made it difficult to say the word.  Besides the fishing was sure to 
be superb; not a line had been wet there since last year.  It was 
worth a little risk.  The danger could not be so very great after 
all.  How fair the river ran,--a current of living topaz between 
banks of emerald!  What but good luck could come on such a day?

The canoe was gliding down the last smooth stretch.  Alden lifted 
his head, as they turned the corner, and for the first time saw the 
passage close before him.  His face went white, and he set his teeth.

The left-hand branch of the river, cleft by the rocky point of the 
island, dropped at once into a tumult of yellow foam and raved 
downward along the northern shore.  The right-hand branch swerved 
away to the east, running with swift, silent fury.  On the lower 
edge of this desperate race of brown billows, a huge whirlpool 
formed and dissolved every two or three minutes, now eddying round 
in a wide backwater into a rocky bay on the end of the island, now 
swept away by the rush of waves into the white rage of the rapids 
below.

There was the secret pathway.  The trick was, to dart across the 
right-hand current at the proper moment, catch the rim of the 
whirlpool as it swung backward, and let it sweep you around to the 
end of the island.  It was easy enough at low water.  But now?

The smooth waves went crowding and shouldering down the slope as if 
they were running to a fight.  The river rose and swelled with 
quick, uneven passion.  The whirlpool was in its place one minute; 
the next, it was blotted out; everything rushed madly downward--and 
below was hell.

Jean checked the boat for a moment, quivering in the strong current, 
waiting for the TOURNIQUET to form again.  Five seconds--ten 
seconds--"Now!" he cried.

The canoe shot obliquely into the stream, driven by strong, quick 
strokes of the paddles.  It seemed almost to leap from wave to wave.  
All was going well.  The edge of the whirlpool was near.  Then came 
the crest of a larger wave,--slap--into the boat.  Alden shrank 
involuntarily from the cold water, and missed his stroke.  An eddy 
caught the bow and shoved it out.  The whirlpool receded, dissolved.  
The whole river rushed down upon the canoe and carried it away like 
a leaf.

Who says that thought is swift and clear in a moment like that?  Who 
talks about the whole of a man's life passing before him in a flash 
of light?  A flash of darkness!  Thought is paralyzed, dumb.  "What 
a fool!"  "Good-bye!"  "If--"  That is about all it can say.  And if 
the moment is prolonged, it says the same thing over again, stunned, 
bewildered, impotent.  Then?--The rocking waves; the sinking boat; 
the roar of the fall; the swift overturn; the icy, blinding, 
strangling water--God!

Jean was flung shoreward.  Instinctively he struck out, with the 
current and half across it, toward a point of rock.  His foot 
touched bottom.  He drew himself up and looked back.  The canoe was 
sweeping past, bottom upward, Alden underneath it.

Jean thrust himself out into the stream again, still going with the 
current, but now away from shore.  He gripped the canoe, flinging 
his arm over the stern.  Then he got hold of the thwart and tried to 
turn it over.  Too heavy!  Groping underneath he caught Alden by the 
shoulder and pulled him out.  They would have gone down together but 
for the boat.

"Hold on tight," gasped Jean, "put your arm over the canoe--the 
other side!"

Alden, half dazed, obeyed him.  The torrent carried the dancing, 
slippery bark past another point.  Just below it, there was a little 
eddy.

"Now," cried Jean; "the back-water--strike for the land!"

They touched the black, gliddery rocks.  They staggered out of the 
water; waist-deep, knee-deep, ankle-deep; falling and rising again.  
They crawled up on the warm moss. . . .

The first thing that Alden noticed was the line of bright red spots 
on the wing of a cedar-bird fluttering silently through the branches 
of the tree above him.  He lay still and watched it, wondering that 
he had never before observed those brilliant sparks of colour on the 
little brown bird.  Then he wondered what made his legs ache so.  
Then he saw Jean, dripping wet, sitting on a stone and looking down 
the river.

He got up painfully and went over to him.  He put his hand on the 
man's shoulder.

"Jean, you saved my life--I thank you, Marquis!"

"M'sieu'," said Jean, springing up, "I beg you not to mention it.  
It was nothing.  A narrow shave,--but LA BONNE CHANCE!  And after 
all, you were right,--we got to the island!  But now how to get off?"



II

AN ALLIANCE OF RIVALS

Yes, of course they got off--the next day.  At the foot of the 
island, two miles below, there is a place where the water runs 
quieter, and a BATEAU can cross from the main shore.  Francois was 
frightened when the others did not come back in the evening.  He 
made his way around to St. Joseph d'Alma, and got a boat to come up 
and look for their bodies.  He found them on the shore, alive and 
very hungry.  But all that has nothing to do with the story.

Nor does it make any difference how Alden spent the rest of his 
summer in the woods, what kind of fishing he had, or what moved him 
to leave five hundred dollars with Jean when he went away.  That is 
all padding: leave it out.  The first point of interest is what Jean 
did with the money.  A suit of clothes, a new stove, and a set of 
kitchen utensils for the log house opposite Grosse Ile, a trip to 
Quebec, a little game of "Blof Americain" in the back room of the 
Hotel du Nord,--that was the end of the money.

This is not a Sunday-school story.  Jean was no saint.  Even as a 
hero he had his weak points.  But after his own fashion he was a 
pretty good kind of a marquis.  He took his headache the next 
morning as a matter of course, and his empty pocket as a trick of 
fortune.  With the nobility, he knew very well, such things often 
happen; but the nobility do not complain about it.  They go ahead, 
as if it was a bagatelle.

Before the week was out Jean was on his way to a lumber-shanty on 
the St. Maurice River, to cook for a crew of thirty men all winter.

The cook's position in camp is curious,--half menial, half superior.  
It is no place for a feeble man.  But a cook who is strong in the 
back and quick with his fists can make his office much respected.  
Wages, forty dollars a month; duties, to keep the pea-soup kettle 
always hot and the bread-pan always full, to stand the jokes of the 
camp up to a certain point, and after that to whip two or three of 
the most active humourists.

Jean performed all his duties to perfect satisfaction.  Naturally 
most of the jokes turned upon his great expectations.  With two of 
the principal jokers he had exchanged the usual and conclusive form 
of repartee,--flattened them out literally.  The ordinary BADINAGE 
he did not mind in the least; it rather pleased him.

But about the first of January a new hand came into the camp,--a 
big, black-haired fellow from Three Rivers, Pierre Lamotte DIT 
Theophile.  With him it was different.  There seemed to be something 
serious in his jests about "the marquis."  It was not fun; it was 
mockery; always on the edge of anger.  He acted as if he would be 
glad to make Jean ridiculous in any way.

Finally the matter came to a head.  Something happened to the soup 
one Sunday morning--tobacco probably.  Certainly it was very bad, 
only fit to throw away; and the whole camp was mad.  It was not 
really Pierre who played the trick; but it was he who sneered that 
the camp would be better off if the cook knew less about castles and 
more about cooking.  Jean answered that what the camp needed was to 
get rid of a badreux who thought it was a joke to poison the soup.  
Pierre took this as a personal allusion and requested him to discuss 
the question outside.  But before the discussion began he made some 
general remarks about the character and pretensions of Jean.

"A marquis!" said he.  "This bagoulard gives himself out for a 
marquis!  He is nothing of the kind,--a rank humbug.  There is a 
title in the family, an estate in France, it is true.  But it is 
mine.  I have seen the papers.  I have paid money to the lawyer.  I 
am waiting now for him to arrange the matter.  This man knows 
nothing about it.  He is a fraud.  I will fight him now and settle 
the matter."

If a bucket of ice-water had been thrown over Jean he could not have 
cooled off more suddenly.  He was dazed.  Another marquis?  This was 
a complication he had never dreamed of.  It overwhelmed him like an 
avalanche.  He must have time to dig himself out of this difficulty.

"But stop," he cried; "you go too fast.  This is more serious than a 
pot of soup.  I must hear about this.  Let us talk first, Pierre, 
and afterwards--"

The camp was delighted.  It was a fine comedy,--two fools instead of 
one.  The men pricked up their ears and clamoured for a full 
explanation, a debate in open court.

But that was not Jean's way.  He had made no secret of his 
expectations, but he did not care to confide all the details of his 
family history to a crowd of fellows who would probably not 
understand and would certainly laugh.  Pierre was wrong of course, 
but at least he was in earnest.  That was something.

"This affair is between Pierre and me," said Jean.  "We shall speak 
of it by ourselves."

In the snow-muffled forest, that afternoon, where the great tree-
trunks rose like pillars of black granite from a marble floor, and 
the branches of spruce and fir wove a dark green roof above their 
heads, these two stray shoots of a noble stock tried to untangle 
their family history.  It was little that they knew about it.  They 
could get back to their grandfathers, but beyond that the trail was 
rather blind.  Where they crossed neither Jean nor Pierre could 
tell.  In fact, both of their minds had been empty vessels for the 
plausible lawyer to fill, and he had filled them with various and 
windy stuff.  There were discrepancies and contradictions, denials 
and disputes, flashes of anger and clouds of suspicion.

But through all the voluble talk, somehow or other, the two men were 
drawing closer together.  Pierre felt Jean's force of character, his 
air of natural leadership, his bonhommie.  He thought, "It was a 
shame for that lawyer to trick such a fine fellow with the story 
that he was the heir of the family."  Jean, for his part, was 
impressed by Pierre's simplicity and firmness of conviction.  He 
thought, "What a mean thing for that lawyer to fool such an innocent 
as this into supposing himself the inheritor of the title."  What 
never occurred to either of them was the idea that the lawyer had 
deceived them both.  That was not to be dreamed of.  To admit such a 
thought would have seemed to them like throwing away something of 
great value which they had just found.  The family name, the papers, 
the links of the genealogy which had been so convincingly set 
forth,--all this had made an impression on their imagination, 
stronger than any logical argument.  But which was the marquis?  
That was the question.

"Look here," said Jean at last, "of what value is it that we fight?  
We are cousins.  You think I am wrong.  I think you are wrong.  But 
one of us must be right.  Who can tell?  There will certainly be 
something for both of us.  Blood is stronger than currant juice.  
Let us work together and help each other.  You come home with me 
when this job is done.  The lawyer returns to St. Gedeon in the 
spring.  He will know.  We can see him together.  If he has fooled 
you, you can do what you like to him.  When--PARDON, I mean if--I 
get the title, I will do the fair thing by you.  You shall do the 
same by me.  Is it a bargain?"

On this basis the compact was made.  The camp was much amazed, not 
to say disgusted, because there was no fight.  Well-meaning efforts 
were made at intervals through the winter to bring on a crisis.  But 
nothing came of it.  The rival claimants had pooled their stock.  
They acknowledged the tie of blood, and ignored the clash of 
interests.  Together they faced the fire of jokes and stood off the 
crowd; Pierre frowning and belligerent, Jean smiling and scornful.  
Practically, they bossed the camp.  They were the only men who 
always shaved on Sunday morning.  This was regarded as foppish.

The popular disappointment deepened into a general sense of injury.  
In March, when the cut of timber was finished and the logs were all 
hauled to the edge of the river, to lie there until the ice should 
break and the "drive" begin, the time arrived for the camp to close.  
The last night, under the inspiration drawn from sundry bottles 
which had been smuggled in to celebrate the occasion, a plan was 
concocted in the stables to humble "the nobility" with a grand 
display of humour.  Jean was to be crowned as marquis with a bridle 
and blinders:

Pierre was to be anointed as count, with a dipperful of harness-oil; 
after that the fun would be impromptu.

The impromptu part of the programme began earlier than it was 
advertised.  Some whisper of the plan had leaked through the chinks 
of the wall between the shanty and the stable.  When the crowd came 
shambling into the cabin, snickering and nudging one another, Jean 
and Pierre were standing by the stove at the upper end of the long 
table.

"Down with the canaille!" shouted Jean.

"Clean out the gang!" responded Pierre.

Brandishing long-handled frying-pans, they charged down the sides of 
the table.  The mob wavered, turned, and were lost!  Helter-skelter 
they fled, tumbling over one another in their haste to escape.  The 
lamp was smashed.  The benches were upset.  In the smoky hall a 
furious din arose,--as if Sir Galahad and Sir Percivale were once 
more hewing their way through the castle of Carteloise.  Fear fell 
upon the multitude, and they cried aloud grievously in their dismay.  
The blows of the weapons echoed mightily in the darkness, and the 
two knights laid about them grimly and with great joy.  The door was 
too narrow for the flight.  Some of the men crept under the lowest 
berths; others hid beneath the table.  Two, endeavouring to escape 
by the windows, stuck fast, exposing a broad and undefended mark to 
the pursuers.  Here the last strokes of the conflict were delivered.

"One for the marquis!" cried Jean, bringing down his weapon with a 
sounding whack.

"Two for the count!" cried Pierre, making his pan crack like the 
blow of a beaver's tail when he dives.

Then they went out into the snowy night, and sat down together on 
the sill of the stable-door, and laughed until the tears ran down 
their cheeks.

"My faith!" said Jean.  "That was like the ancient time.  It is from 
the good wood that strong paddles are made,--eh, cousin?"  And after 
that there was a friendship between the two men that could not have 
been cut with the sharpest axe in Quebec.



III

A HAPPY ENDING WHICH IS ALSO A BEGINNING

The plan of going back to St. Gedeon, to wait for the return of the 
lawyer, was not carried out.  Several of the little gods that use 
their own indiscretion in arranging the pieces on the puzzle-map of 
life, interfered with it.

The first to meddle was that highly irresponsible deity with the bow 
and arrows, who has no respect for rank or age, but reserves all his 
attention for sex.

When the camp on the St. Maurice dissolved, Jean went down with 
Pierre to Three Rivers for a short visit.  There was a snug house on 
a high bank above the river, a couple of miles from the town.  A 
wife and an armful of children gave assurance that the race of La 
Motte de la Luciere should not die out on this side of the ocean.

There was also a little sister-in-law, Alma Grenou.  If you had seen 
her you would not have wondered at what happened.  Eyes like a deer, 
face like a mayflower, voice like the "D" string in a 'cello,--she 
was the picture of Drummond's girl in "The Habitant":


     "She's nicer girl on whole Comte, an' jus' got eighteen year--
      Black eye, black hair, and cheek rosee dat's lak wan Fameuse 
        on de fall;
      But don't spik much,--not of dat kin',--I can't say she love 
        me at all."


With her Jean plunged into love.  It was not a gradual approach, 
like gliding down a smooth stream.  It was not a swift descent, like 
running a lively rapid.  It was a veritable plunge, like going over 
a chute.  He did not know precisely what had happened to him at 
first; but he knew very soon what to do about it.

The return to Lake St. John was postponed till a more convenient 
season: after the snow had melted and the ice had broken up--
probably the lawyer would not make his visit before that.  If he 
arrived sooner, he would come back again; he wanted his money, that 
was certain.  Besides, what was more likely than that he should come 
also to see Pierre?  He had promised to do so.  At all events, they 
would wait at Three Rivers for a while.

The first week Jean told Alma that she was the prettiest girl he had 
ever seen.  She tossed her head and expressed a conviction that he 
was joking.  She suggested that he was in the habit of saying the 
same thing to every girl.

The second week he made a long stride in his wooing.  He took her 
out sleighing on the last remnant of the snow,--very thin and 
bumpy,--and utilized the occasion to put his arm around her waist.  
She cried "Laisse-moi tranquille, Jean!" boxed his ears, and said 
she thought he must be out of his mind.

The following Saturday afternoon he craftily came behind her in the 
stable as she was milking the cow, and bent her head back and kissed 
her on the face.  She began to cry, and said he had taken an unfair 
advantage, while her hands were busy.  She hated him.

"Well, then," said he, still holding her warm shoulders, "if you 
hate me, I am going home tomorrow."

The sobs calmed down quickly.  She bent herself forward so that he 
could see the rosy nape of her neck with the curling tendrils of 
brown hair around it.

"But," she said, "but, Jean,--do you love me for sure?"

After that the path was level, easy, and very quickly travelled.  On 
Sunday afternoon the priest was notified that his services would be 
needed for a wedding, the first week in May.  Pierre's consent was 
genial and hilarious.  The marriage suited him exactly.  It was a 
family alliance.  It made everything move smooth and certain.  The 
property would be kept together.

But the other little interfering gods had not yet been heard from.  
One of them, who had special charge of what remained of the soul of 
the dealer in unclaimed estates, put it into his head to go to Three 
Rivers first, instead of to St. Gedeon.

He had a good many clients in different parts of the country,--
temporary clients, of course,--and it occurred to him that he might 
as well extract another fifty dollars from Pierre Lamotte DIT 
Theophile, before going on a longer journey.  On his way down from 
Montreal he stopped in several small towns and slept in beds of 
various quality.

Another of the little deities (the one that presides over unclean 
villages; decidedly a false god, but sufficiently powerful) arranged 
a surprise for the travelling lawyer.  It came out at Three Rivers.

He arrived about nightfall, and slept at the hotel, feeling 
curiously depressed.  The next morning he was worse; but he was a 
resolute and industrious dog, after his own fashion.  So he hired a 
buggy and drove out through the mud to Pierre's place.  They heard 
the wagon stop at the gate, and went out to see who it was.

The man was hardly recognizable: face pale, lips blue, eyes dull, 
teeth chattering.

"Get me out of this," he muttered.  "I am dying.  God's sake, be 
quick!"

They helped him to the house, and he immediately went into a 
convulsion.  From this he passed into a raging fever.  Pierre took 
the buggy and drove posthaste to town for a doctor.

The doctor's opinion was evidently serious, but his remarks were 
non-committal.

"Keep him in this room.  Give him ten drops of this in water every 
hour.  One of these powders if he becomes violent.  One of you must 
stay with him all the time.  Only one, you understand.  The rest 
keep away.  I will come back in the morning."

In the morning the doctor's face was yet more grave.  He examined 
the patient carefully.  Then he turned to Jean, who had acted as 
nurse.

"I thought so," said he; "you must all be vaccinated immediately.  
There is still time, I hope.  But what to do with this gentleman, 
God knows.  We can't send him back to the town.  He has the small-
pox."

That was a pretty prelude to a wedding festival.  They were all at 
their wit's end.  While the doctor scratched their arms, they 
discussed the situation, excitedly and with desperation.  Jean was 
the first to stop chattering and begin to think.

"There is that old cabane of Poulin's up the road.  It is empty 
these three years.  But there is a good spring of water.  One could 
patch the roof at one end and put up a stove."

"Good!" said the doctor.  "But some one to take care of him?  It 
will be a long job, and a bad one."

"I am going to do that," said Jean; "it is my place.  This gentleman 
cannot be left to die in the road.  Le bon Dieu did not send him 
here for that.  The head of the family"--here he stopped a moment 
and looked at Pierre, who was silent--"must take the heavy end of 
the job, and I am ready for it."

"Good!" said the doctor again.  But Alma was crying in the corner of 
the room.

Four weeks, five weeks, six weeks the vigil in the cabane lasted.  
The last patches of snow disappeared from the fields one night, as 
if winter had picked up its rags and vanished.  The willows along 
the brook turned yellow; the grass greened around the spring.  
Scarlet buds flamed on the swamp maples.  A tender mist of foliage 
spread over the woodlands.  The chokecherries burst into a glory of 
white blossoms.  The bluebirds came back, fluting love-songs; and 
the robins, carolling ballads of joy; and the blackbirds, creaking 
merrily.

The priest came once and saw the sick man, but everything was going 
well.  It was not necessary to run any extra risks.  Every week 
after that he came and leaned on the fence, talking with Jean in the 
doorway.  When he went away he always lifted three fingers--so--you 
know the sign?  It is a very pleasant one, and it did Jean's heart 
good.

Pierre kept the cabane well supplied with provisions, leaving them 
just inside of the gate.  But with the milk it was necessary to be a 
little careful; so the can was kept in a place by itself, under the 
out-of-door oven, in the shade.  And beside this can Jean would 
find, every day, something particular,--a blossom of the red 
geranium that bloomed in the farmhouse window, a piece of cake with 
plums in it, a bunch of trailing arbutus,--once it was a little bit 
of blue ribbon, tied in a certain square knot--so--perhaps you know 
that sign too?  That did Jean's heart good also.

But what kind of conversation was there in the cabane when the sick 
man's delirium had passed and he knew what had happened to him?  Not 
much at first, for the man was too weak.  After he began to get 
stronger, he was thinking a great deal, fighting with himself.  In 
the end he came out pretty well--for a lawyer of his kind.  Perhaps 
he was desirous to leave the man whom he had deceived, and who had 
nursed him back from death, some fragment, as much as possible, of 
the dream that brightened his life.  Perhaps he was only anxious to 
save as much as he could of his own reputation.  At all events, this 
is what he did.

He told Jean a long story, part truth, part lie, about his 
investigations.  The estate and the title were in the family; that 
was certain.  Jean was the probable heir, if there was any heir; 
that was almost sure.  The part about Pierre had been a--well, a 
mistake.  But the trouble with the whole affair was this.  A law 
made in the days of Napoleon limited the time for which an estate 
could remain unclaimed.  A certain number of years, and then the 
government took everything.  That number of years had just passed.  
By the old law Jean was probably a marquis with a castle.  By the 
new law?--Frankly, he could not advise a client to incur any more 
expense.  In fact, he intended to return the amount already paid.  A 
hundred and ten dollars, was it not?  Yes, and fifty dollars for the 
six weeks of nursing.  VOILA, a draft on Montreal, a hundred and 
sixty dollars,--as good as gold!  And beside that, there was the 
incalculable debt for this great kindness to a sick man, for which 
he would always be M. de la Motte's grateful debtor!

The lawyer's pock-marked face--the scars still red and angry--lit up 
with a curious mixed light of shrewdness and gratitude.  Jean was 
somewhat moved.  His castle was in ruins.  But he remained noble--by 
the old law; that was something!

A few days later the doctor pronounced it safe to move the patient.  
He came with a carriage to fetch him.  Jean, well fumigated and 
dressed in a new suit of clothes, walked down the road beside them 
to the farm-house gate.  There Alma met him with both hands.  His 
eyes embraced her.  The air of June was radiant about them.  The 
fragrance of the woods breathed itself over the broad valley.  A 
song sparrow poured his heart out from a blossoming lilac.  The 
world was large, and free, and very good.  And between the lovers 
there was nothing but a little gate.

"I understand," said the doctor, smiling, as he tightened up the 
reins, "I understand that there is a title in your family, M. de la 
Motte, in effect that you are a marquis?"

"It is true," said Jean, turning his head, "at least so I think."

"So do I," said the doctor "But you had better go in, MONSIEUR LE 
MARQUIS--you keep MADAME LA MARQUISE waiting."



THE KEEPER OF THE LIGHT

At long distance, looking over the blue waters of the Gulf of St. 
Lawrence in clear weather, you might think that you saw a lonely 
sea-gull, snow-white, perching motionless on a cobble of gray rock.  
Then, as your boat drifted in, following the languid tide and the 
soft southern breeze, you would perceive that the cobble of rock was 
a rugged hill with a few bushes and stunted trees growing in the 
crevices, and that the gleaming speck near the summit must be some 
kind of a building--if you were on the coast of Italy or Spain you 
would say a villa or a farm-house.  Then, as you floated still 
farther north and drew nearer to the coast, the desolate hill would 
detach itself from the mainland and become a little mountain-isle, 
with a flock of smaller islets clustering around it as a brood of 
wild ducks keep close to their mother, and with deep water, nearly 
two miles wide, flowing between it and the shore; while the shining 
speck on the seaward side stood out clearly as a low, whitewashed 
dwelling with a sturdy round tower at one end, crowned with a big 
eight-sided lantern--a solitary lighthouse.

That is the Isle of the Wise Virgin.  Behind it the long blue 
Laurentian Mountains, clothed with unbroken forest, rise in sombre 
ranges toward the Height of Land.  In front of it the waters of the 
gulf heave and sparkle far away to where the dim peaks of St. Anne 
des Monts are traced along the southern horizon.  Sheltered a 
little, but not completely, by the island breakwater of granite, 
lies the rocky beach of Dead Men's Point, where an English navy was 
wrecked in a night of storm a hundred years ago.

There are a score of wooden houses, a tiny, weather-beaten chapel, a 
Hudson Bay Company's store, a row of platforms for drying fish, and 
a varied assortment of boats and nets, strung along the beach now.  
Dead Men's Point has developed into a centre of industry, with a 
life, a tradition, a social character of its own.  And in one of 
those houses, as you sit at the door in the lingering June twilight, 
looking out across the deep channel to where the lantern of the 
tower is just beginning to glow with orange radiance above the 
shadow of the island--in that far-away place, in that mystical hour, 
you should hear the story of the light and its keeper.



I

When the lighthouse was built, many years ago, the island had 
another name.  It was called the Isle of Birds.  Thousands of sea-
fowl nested there.  The handful of people who lived on the shore 
robbed the nests and slaughtered the birds, with considerable 
profit.  It was perceived in advance that the building of the 
lighthouse would interfere with this, and with other things.  Hence 
it was not altogether a popular improvement.  Marcel Thibault, the 
oldest inhabitant, was the leader of the opposition.

"That lighthouse!" said he, "what good will it be for us?  We know 
the way in and out when it makes clear weather, by day or by night.  
But when the sky gets swampy, when it makes fog, then we stay with 
ourselves at home, or we run into La Trinite, or Pentecote.  We know 
the way.  What?  The stranger boats?  B'EN! the stranger boats need 
not to come here, if they know not the way.  The more fish, the more 
seals, the more everything will there be left for us.  Just because 
of the stranger boats, to build something that makes all the birds 
wild and spoils the hunting--that is a fool's work.  The good God 
made no stupid light on the Isle of Birds.  He saw no necessity of 
it."

"Besides," continued Thibault, puffing slowly at his pipe, "besides--
those stranger boats, sometimes they are lost, they come ashore.  
It is sad!  But who gets the things that are saved, all sorts of 
things, good to put into our houses, good to eat, good to sell, 
sometimes a boat that can be patched up almost like new--who gets 
these things, eh?  Doubtless those for whom the good God intended 
them.  But who shall get them when this sacre lighthouse is built, 
eh?  Tell me that, you Baptiste Fortin."

Fortin represented the party of progress in the little parliament of 
the beach.  He had come down from Quebec some years ago bringing 
with him a wife and two little daughters, and a good many new 
notions about life.  He had good luck at the cod-fishing, and built 
a house with windows at the side as well as in front.  When his 
third girl, Nataline, was born, he went so far as to paint the house 
red, and put on a kitchen, and enclose a bit of ground for a yard.  
This marked him as a radical, an innovator.  It was expected that he 
would defend the building of the lighthouse.  And he did.

"Monsieur Thibault," he said, "you talk well, but you talk too late.  
It is of a past age, your talk.  A new time comes to the Cote Nord.  
We begin to civilize ourselves.  To hold back against the light 
would be our shame.  Tell me this, Marcel Thibault, what men are 
they that love darkness?"

"TORRIEUX!" growled Thibault, "that is a little strong.  You say my 
deeds are evil?"

"No, no," answered Fortin; "I say not that, my friend, but I say 
this lighthouse means good: good for us, and good for all who come 
to this coast.  It will bring more trade to us.  It will bring a 
boat with the mail, with newspapers, perhaps once, perhaps twice a 
month, all through the summer.  It will bring us into the great 
world.  To lose that for the sake of a few birds--CA SERA B'EN DE 
VALEUR!  Besides, it is impossible.  The lighthouse is coming, 
certain."

Fortin was right, of course.  But Thibault's position was not 
altogether unnatural, nor unfamiliar.  All over the world, for the 
past hundred years, people have been kicking against the sharpness 
of the pricks that drove them forward out of the old life, the wild 
life, the free life, grown dear to them because it was so easy.  
There has been a terrible interference with bird-nesting and other 
things.  All over the world the great Something that bridges rivers, 
and tunnels mountains, and fells forests, and populates deserts, and 
opens up the hidden corners of the earth, has been pushing steadily 
on; and the people who like things to remain as they are have had to 
give up a great deal.  There was no exception made in favour of Dead 
Men's Point.  The Isle of Birds lay in the line of progress.  The 
lighthouse arrived.

It was a very good house for that day.  The keeper's dwelling had 
three rooms and was solidly built.  The tower was thirty feet high.  
The lantern held a revolving light, with a four-wick Fresnel lamp, 
burning sperm oil.  There was one of Stevenson's new cages of 
dioptric prisms around the flame, and once every minute it was 
turned by clockwork, flashing a broad belt of radiance fifteen miles 
across the sea.  All night long that big bright eye was opening and 
shutting.  "BAGUETTE!" said Thibault, "it winks like a one-eyed 
Windigo."

The Department of Marine and Fisheries sent down an expert from 
Quebec to keep the light in order and run it for the first summer.  
He took Fortin as his assistant.  By the end of August he reported 
to headquarters that the light was all right, and that Fortin was 
qualified to be appointed keeper.  Before October was out the 
certificate of appointment came back, and the expert packed his bag 
to go up the river.

"Now look here, Fortin," said he, "this is no fishing trip.  Do you 
think you are up to this job?"

"I suppose," said Fortin.

"Well now, do you remember all this business about the machinery 
that turns the lenses?  That 's the main thing.  The bearings must 
be kept well oiled, and the weight must never get out of order.  The 
clock-face will tell you when it is running right.  If anything gets 
hitched up here's the crank to keep it going until you can 
straighten the machine again.  It's easy enough to turn it.  But you 
must never let it stop between dark and daylight.  The regular turn 
once a minute--that's the mark of this light.  If it shines steady 
it might as well be out.  Yes, better!  Any vessel coming along here 
in a dirty night and seeing a fixed light would take it for the Cap 
Loup-Marin and run ashore.  This particular light has got to revolve 
once a minute every night from April first to December tenth, 
certain.  Can you do it?"

"Certain," said Fortin.

"That's the way I like to hear a man talk!  Now, you've got oil 
enough to last you through till the tenth of December, when you 
close the light, and to run on for a month in the spring after you 
open again.  The ice may be late in going out and perhaps the 
supply-boat can't get down before the middle of April, or 
thereabouts.  But she'll bring plenty of oil when she comes, so 
you'll be all right."

"All right," said Fortin.

"Well, I've said it all, I guess.  You understand what you've got to 
do?  Good-by and good luck.  You're the keeper of the light now."

"Good luck," said Fortin, "I am going to keep it."  The same day he 
shut up the red house on the beach and moved to the white house on 
the island with Marie-Anne, his wife, and the three girls, Alma, 
aged seventeen, Azilda, aged fifteen, and Nataline, aged thirteen.  
He was the captain, and Marie-Anne was the mate, and the three girls 
were the crew.  They were all as full of happy pride as if they had 
come into possession of a great fortune.

It was the thirty-first day of October.  A snow-shower had silvered 
the island.  The afternoon was clear and beautiful.  As the sun 
sloped toward the rose-coloured hills of the mainland the whole 
family stood out in front of the lighthouse looking up at the tower.

"Regard him well, my children," said Baptiste; "God has given him to 
us to keep, and to keep us.  Thibault says he is a Windigo.  B'EN!  
We shall see that he is a friendly Windigo.  Every minute all the 
night he shall wink, just for kindness and good luck to all the 
world, till the daylight."



II

On the ninth of November, at three o'clock in the afternoon, 
Baptiste went into the tower to see that the clockwork was in order 
for the night.  He set the dial on the machine, put a few drops of 
oil on the bearings of the cylinder, and started to wind up the 
weight.

It rose a few inches, gave a dull click, and then stopped dead.  He 
tugged a little harder, but it would not move.  Then he tried to let 
it down.  He pushed at the lever that set the clockwork in motion.

He might as well have tried to make the island turn around by 
pushing at one of the little spruce trees that clung to the rock.

Then it dawned fearfully upon him that something must be wrong.  
Trembling with anxiety, he climbed up and peered in among the 
wheels.

The escapement wheel was cracked clean through, as if some one had 
struck it with the head of an axe, and one of the pallets of the 
spindle was stuck fast in the crack.  He could knock it out easily 
enough, but when the crack came around again, the pallet would catch 
and the clock would stop once more.  It was a fatal injury.

Baptiste turned white, then red, gripped his head in his hands, and 
ran down the steps, out of the door, straight toward his canoe, 
which was pulled up on the western side of the island.

"DAME!" he cried, "who has done this?  Let me catch him!  If that 
old Thibault--"

As he leaped down the rocky slope the setting sun gleamed straight 
in his eyes.  It was poised like a ball of fire on the very edge of 
the mountains.  Five minutes more and it would be gone.  Fifteen 
minutes more and darkness would close in.  Then the giant's eye must 
begin to glow, and to wink precisely once a minute all night long.  
If not, what became of the keeper's word, his faith, his honour?

No matter how the injury to the clockwork was done.  No matter who 
was to be blamed or punished for it.  That could wait.  The question 
now was whether the light would fail or not.  And it must be 
answered within a quarter of an hour.

That red ray of the vanishing sun was like a blow in the face to 
Baptiste.  It stopped him short, dazed and bewildered.  Then he came 
to himself, wheeled, and ran up the rocks faster than he had come 
down.

"Marie-Anne!  Alma!" he shouted, as he dashed past the door of the 
house, "all of you!  To me, in the tower!"

He was up in the lantern when they came running in, full of 
curiosity, excited, asking twenty questions at once.  Nataline 
climbed up the ladder and put her head through the trap-door.

"What is it?" she panted.  "What has hap--"

"Go down," answered her father, "go down all at once.  Wait for me.  
I am coming.  I will explain."

The explanation was not altogether lucid and scientific.  There were 
some bad words mixed up with it.

Baptiste was still hot with anger and the unsatisfied desire to whip 
somebody, he did not know whom, for something, he did not know what.  
But angry as he was, he was still sane enough to hold his mind hard 
and close to the main point.  The crank must be adjusted; the 
machine must be ready to turn before dark.  While he worked he 
hastily made the situation clear to his listeners.

That crank must be turned by hand, round and round all night, not 
too slow, not too fast.  The dial on the machine must mark time with 
the clock on the wall.  The light must flash once every minute until 
daybreak.  He would do as much of the labour as he could, but the 
wife and the two older girls must help him.  Nataline could go to 
bed.

At this Nataline's short upper lip trembled.  She rubbed her eyes 
with the sleeve of her dress, and began to weep silently.

"What is the matter with you?" said her mother, "bad child, have you 
fear to sleep alone?  A big girl like you!"

"No," she sobbed, "I have no fear, but I want some of the fun."

"Fun!" growled her father.  "What fun?  NOM D'UN CHIEN!  She calls 
this fun!"  He looked at her for a moment, as she stood there, half 
defiant, half despondent, with her red mouth quivering and her big 
brown eyes sparkling fire; then he burst into a hearty laugh.

"Come here, my little wild-cat," he said, drawing her to him and 
kissing her; "you are a good girl after all.  I suppose you think 
this light is part yours, eh?"

The girl nodded.

"B'EN!  You shall have your share, fun and all.  You shall make the 
tea for us and bring us something to eat.  Perhaps when Alma and 
'Zilda fatigue themselves they will permit a few turns of the crank 
to you.  Are you content?  Run now and boil the kettle."

It was a very long night.  No matter how easily a handle turns, 
after a certain number of revolutions there is a stiffness about it.  
The stiffness is not in the handle, but in the hand that pushes it.

Round and round, evenly, steadily, minute after minute, hour after 
hour, shoving out, drawing in, circle after circle, no swerving, no 
stopping, no varying the motion, turn after turn--fifty-five, fifty-
six, fifty-seven--what's the use of counting?  Watch the dial; go to 
sleep--no! for God's sake, no sleep!  But how hard it is to keep 
awake!  How heavy the arm grows, how stiffly the muscles move, how 
the will creaks and groans.  BATISCAN!  It is not easy for a human 
being to become part of a machine.

Fortin himself took the longest spell at the crank, of course.  He 
went at his work with a rigid courage.  His red-hot anger had cooled 
down into a shape that was like a bar of forged steel.  He meant to 
make that light revolve if it killed him to do it.  He was the 
captain of a company that had run into an ambuscade.  He was going 
to fight his way through if he had to fight alone.

The wife and the two older girls followed him blindly and bravely, 
in the habit of sheer obedience.  They did not quite understand the 
meaning of the task, the honour of victory, the shame of defeat.  
But Fortin said it must be done, and he knew best.  So they took 
their places in turn, as he grew weary, and kept the light flashing.

And Nataline--well, there is no way of describing what Nataline did, 
except to say that she played the fife.

She felt the contest just as her father did, not as deeply, perhaps, 
but in the same spirit.  She went into the fight with darkness like 
a little soldier.  And she played the fife.

When she came up from the kitchen with the smoking pail of tea, she 
rapped on the door and called out to know whether the Windigo was at 
home to-night.

She ran in and out of the place like a squirrel.  She looked up at 
the light and laughed.  Then she ran in and reported.  "He winks," 
she said, "old one-eye winks beautifully.  Keep him going.  My turn 
now!"

She refused to be put off with a shorter spell than the other girls.  
"No," she cried, "I can do it as well as you.  You think you are so 
much older.  Well, what of that?  The light is part mine; father 
said so.  Let me turn.  va-t-en."

When the first glimmer of the little day came shivering along the 
eastern horizon, Nataline was at the crank.  The mother and the two 
older girls were half asleep.  Baptiste stepped out to look at the 
sky.  "Come," he cried, returning.  "We can stop now, it is growing 
gray in the east, almost morning."

"But not yet," said Nataline; "we must wait for the first red.  A 
few more turns.  Let's finish it up with a song."

She shook her head and piped up the refrain of the old Canadian 
chanson:


     "En roulant ma boule-le roulant
      En roulant ma bou-le."


And to that cheerful music the first night's battle was carried 
through to victory.

The next day Fortin spent two hours in trying to repair the 
clockwork.  It was of no use.  The broken part was indispensable and 
could not be replaced.

At noon he went over to the mainland to tell of the disaster, and 
perhaps to find out if any hostile hand was responsible for it.  He 
found out nothing.  Every one denied all knowledge of the accident.  
Perhaps there was a flaw in the wheel; perhaps it had broken itself.  
That was possible.  Fortin could not deny it; but the thing that 
hurt him most was that he got so little sympathy.  Nobody seemed to 
care whether the light was kept burning or not.  When he told them 
how the machine had been turned all night by hand, they were 
astonished.  "CRE-IE!" they cried, "you must have had a great misery 
to do that."  But that he proposed to go on doing it for a month 
longer, until December tenth, and to begin again on April first, and 
go on turning the light by hand for three or four weeks more until 
the supply-boat came down and brought the necessary tools to repair 
the machine--such an idea as this went beyond their horizon.

"But you are crazy, Baptiste," they said, "you can never do it; you 
are not capable."

"I would be crazy," he answered, "if I did not see what I must do.  
That light is my charge.  In all the world there is nothing else so 
great as that for me and for my family--you understand?  For us it 
is the chief thing.  It is my Ten Commandments.  I shall keep it or 
be damned."

There was a silence after this remark.  They were not very 
particular about the use of language at Dead Men's Point, but this 
shocked them a little.  They thought that Fortin was swearing a 
shade too hard.  In reality he was never more reverent, never more 
soberly in earnest.

After a while he continued, "I want some one to help me with the 
work on the island.  We must be up all the nights now.  By day we 
must get some sleep.  I want another man or a strong boy.  Is there 
any who will come?  The Government will pay.  Or if not, I will pay, 
moi-meme."

There was no response.  All the men hung back.  The lighthouse was 
still unpopular, or at least it was on trial.  Fortin's pluck and 
resolution had undoubtedly impressed them a little.  But they still 
hesitated to commit themselves to his side.

"B'en," he said, "there is no one.  Then we shall manage the affair 
en famille.  Bon soir, messieurs!"

He walked down to the beach with his head in the air, without 
looking back.  But before he had his canoe in the water he heard 
some one running down behind him.  It was Thibault's youngest son, 
Marcel, a well-grown boy of sixteen, very much out of breath with 
running and shyness.

"Monsieur Fortin," he stammered, "will you--do you think--am I big 
enough?"

Baptiste looked him in the face for a moment.  Then his eyes 
twinkled.

"Certain," he answered, "you are bigger than your father.  But what 
will he say to this?"

"He says," blurted out Marcel--"well, he says that he will say 
nothing if I do not ask him."

So the little Marcel was enlisted in the crew on the island.  For 
thirty nights those six people--a man, and a boy, and four women 
(Nataline was not going to submit to any distinctions on the score 
of age, you may be sure)--for a full month they turned their 
flashing lantern by hand from dusk to day-break.

The fog, the frost, the hail, the snow beleaguered their tower.  
Hunger and cold, sleeplessness and weariness, pain and 
discouragement, held rendezvous in that dismal, cramped little room.  
Many a night Nataline's fife of fun played a feeble, wheezy note.  
But it played.  And the crank went round.  And every bit of glass in 
the lantern was as clear as polished crystal.  And the big lamp was 
full of oil.  And the great eye of the friendly giant winked without 
ceasing, through fierce storm and placid moonlight.

When the tenth of December came, the light went to sleep for the 
winter, and the keepers took their way across the ice to the 
mainland.  They had won the battle, not only on the island, fighting 
against the elements, but also at Dead Men's Point, against public 
opinion.  The inhabitants began to understand that the lighthouse 
meant something--a law, an order, a principle.

Men cannot help feeling respect for a thing when they see others 
willing to fight or to suffer for it.

When the time arrived to kindle the light again in the spring, 
Fortin could have had any one that he wanted to help him.  But no; 
he chose the little Marcel again; the boy wanted to go, and he had 
earned the right.  Besides, he and Nataline had struck up a close 
friendship on the island, cemented during the winter by various 
hunting excursions after hares and ptarmigan.  Marcel was a skilful 
setter of snares.  But Nataline was not content until she had won 
consent to borrow her father's CARABINE.  They hunted in 
partnership.  One day they had shot a fox.  That is, Nataline had 
shot it, though Marcel had seen it first and tracked it.  Now they 
wanted to try for a seal on the point of the island when the ice 
went out.  It was quite essential that Marcel should go.

"Besides," said Baptiste to his wife, confidentially, "a boy costs 
less than a man.  Why should we waste money?  Marcel is best."

A peasant-hero is seldom averse to economy in small things, like 
money.

But there was not much play in the spring session with the light on 
the island.  It was a bitter job.  December had been lamb-like 
compared with April.  First, the southeast wind kept the ice driving 
in along the shore.  Then the northwest wind came hurtling down from 
the Arctic wilderness like a pack of wolves.  There was a snow-storm 
of four days and nights that made the whole world--earth and sky and 
sea--look like a crazy white chaos.  And through it all, that weary, 
dogged crank must be kept turning--turning from dark to daylight.

It seemed as if the supply-boat would never come.  At last they saw 
it, one fair afternoon, April the twenty-ninth, creeping slowly down 
the coast.  They were just getting ready for another night's work.

Fortin ran out of the tower, took off his hat, and began to say his 
prayers.  The wife and the two elder girls stood in the kitchen 
door, crossing themselves, with tears in their eyes.  Marcel and 
Nataline were coming up from the point of the island, where they had 
been watching for their seal.  She was singing


     "Mon pere n'avait fille que moi,
      Encore sur la mer il m'envoi-e-eh!"


When she saw the boat she stopped short for a minute.

"Well," she said, "they find us awake, n'est-c'pas?  And if they 
don't come faster than that we'll have another chance to show them 
how we make the light wink, eh?"

Then she went on with her song--

     "Sautez, mignonne, Cecilia.
      Ah, ah, ah, ah, Cecilia!"



III

You did not suppose that was the end of the story, did you?

No, an out-of-doors story does not end like that, broken off in the 
middle, with a bit of a song.  It goes on to something definite, 
like a wedding or a funeral.

You have not heard, yet, how near the light came to failing, and how 
the keeper saved it and something else too.  Nataline's story is not 
told; it is only begun.  This first part is only the introduction, 
just to let you see what kind of a girl she was, and how her life 
was made.  If you want to hear the conclusion, we must hurry along a 
little faster or we shall never get to it.

Nataline grew up like a young birch tree--stately and strong, good 
to look at.  She was beautiful in her place; she fitted it exactly.  
Her bronzed face with an under-tinge of red; her low, black 
eyebrows; her clear eyes like the brown waters of a woodland stream; 
her dark, curly hair with little tendrils always blowing loose 
around the pillar of her neck; her broad breast and sloping 
shoulders; her firm, fearless step; her voice, rich and vibrant; her 
straight, steady looks--but there, who can describe a thing like 
that?  I tell you she was a girl to love out-of-doors.

There was nothing that she could not do.  She could cook; she could 
swing an axe; she could paddle a canoe; she could fish; she could 
shoot; and, best of all, she could run the lighthouse.  Her father's 
devotion to it had gone into her blood.  It was the centre of her 
life, her law of God.  There was nothing about it that she did not 
understand and love.  From the first of April to the tenth of 
December the flashing of that light was like the beating of her 
heart--steady, even, unfaltering.  She kept time to it as 
unconsciously as the tides follow the moon.  She lived by it and for 
it.

There were no more accidents to the clockwork after the first one 
was repaired.  It ran on regularly, year after year.

Alma and Azilda were married and went away to live, one on the South 
Shore, the other at Quebec.  Nataline was her father's right-hand 
man.  As the rheumatism took hold of him and lamed his shoulders and 
wrists, more and more of the work fell upon her.  She was proud of it.

At last it came to pass, one day in January, that Baptiste died.  He 
was not gathered to his fathers, for they were buried far away 
beside the Montmorenci, and on the rocky coast of Brittany.  But the 
men dug through the snow behind the tiny chapel at Dead Men's Point, 
and made a grave for Baptiste Fortin, and the young priest of the 
mission read the funeral service over it.

It went without saying that Nataline was to be the keeper of the 
light, at least until the supply-boat came down again in the spring 
and orders arrived from the Government in Quebec.  Why not?  She was 
a woman, it is true.  But if a woman can do a thing as well as a 
man, why should she not do it?  Besides, Nataline could do this 
particular thing much better than any man on the Point.  Everybody 
approved of her as the heir of her father, especially young Marcel 
Thibault.

What?

Yes, of course.  You could not help guessing it.  He was Nataline's 
lover.  They were to be married the next summer.  They sat together 
in the best room, while the old mother was rocking to and fro and 
knitting beside the kitchen stove, and talked of what they were 
going to do.  Once in a while, when Nataline grieved for her father, 
she would let Marcel put his arm around her and comfort her in the 
way that lovers know.  But their talk was mainly of the future, 
because they were young, and of the light, because Nataline's life 
belonged to it.

Perhaps the Government would remember that year when it was kept 
going by hand for two months, and give it to her to keep as long as 
she lived.  That would be only fair.  Certainly, it was hers for the 
present.  No one had as good a right to it.  She took possession 
without a doubt.  At all events, while she was the keeper the light 
should not fail.

But that winter was a bad one on the North Shore, and particularly 
at Dead Men's Point.  It was terribly bad.  The summer before, the 
fishing had been almost a dead failure.  In June a wild storm had 
smashed all the salmon nets and swept most of them away.  In July 
they could find no caplin for bait for the cod-fishing, and in 
August and September they could find no cod.  The few bushels of 
potatoes that some of the inhabitants had planted, rotted in the 
ground.  The people at the Point went into the winter short of money 
and very short of food.

There were some supplies at the store, pork and flour and molasses, 
and they could run through the year on credit and pay their debts 
the following summer if the fish came back.  But this resource also 
failed them.  In the last week of January the store caught fire and 
burned up.  Nothing was saved.  The only hope now was the seal-
hunting in February and March and April.  That at least would bring 
them meat and oil enough to keep them from starvation.

But this hope failed, too.  The winds blew strong from the north and 
west, driving the ice far out into the gulf.  The chase was long and 
perilous.  The seals were few and wild.  Less than a dozen were 
killed in all.  By the last week in March Dead Men's Point stood 
face to face with famine.

Then it was that old Thibault had an idea.

"There is sperm oil on the Island of Birds," said he, "in the 
lighthouse, plenty of it, gallons of it.  It is not very good to 
taste, perhaps, but what of that?  It will keep life in the body.  
The Esquimaux drink it in the north, often.  We must take the oil of 
the lighthouse to keep us from starving until the supply-boat comes 
down."

"But how shall we get it?" asked the others.  "It is locked up.  
Nataline Fortin has the key.  Will she give it?"

"Give it?" growled Thibault.  "Name of a name! of course she will 
give it.  She must.  Is not a life, the life of all of us, more than 
a light?"

A self-appointed committee of three, with Thibault at the head, 
waited upon Nataline without delay, told her their plan, and asked 
for the key.  She thought it over silently for a few minutes, and 
then refused point-blank.

"No," she said, "I will not give the key.  That oil is for the lamp.  
If you take it, the lamp will not be lighted on the first of April; 
it will not be burning when the supply-boat comes.  For me, that 
would be shame, disgrace, worse than death.  I am the keeper of the 
light.  You shall not have the oil."

They argued with her, pleaded with her, tried to browbeat her.  She 
was a rock.  Her round under-jaw was set like a steel trap.  Her 
lips straightened into a white line.  Her eyebrows drew together, 
and her eyes grew black.

"No," she cried, "I tell you no, no, a thousand times no.  All in 
this house I will share with you.  But not one drop of what belongs 
to the light!  Never."

Later in the afternoon the priest came to see her; a thin, pale 
young man, bent with the hardships of his life, and with sad dreams 
in his sunken eyes.  He talked with her very gently and kindly.

"Think well, my daughter; think seriously what you do.  Is it not 
our first duty to save human life?  Surely that must be according to 
the will of God.  Will you refuse to obey it?"

Nataline was trembling a little now.  Her brows were unlocked.  The 
tears stood in her eyes and ran down her cheeks.  She was twisting 
her hands together.

"My father," she answered, "I desire to do the will of God.  But how 
shall I know it?  Is it not His first command that we should love 
and serve Him faithfully in the duty which He has given us?  He gave 
me this light to keep.  My father kept it.  He is dead.  If I am 
unfaithful what will he say to me?  Besides, the supply-boat is 
coming soon--I have thought of this--when it comes it will bring 
food.  But if the light is out, the boat may be lost.  That would be 
the punishment for my sin.  No, MON PERE, we must trust God.  He 
will keep the people.  I will keep the light."'

The priest looked at her long and steadily.  A glow came into his 
face.  He put his hand on her shoulder.  "You shall follow your 
conscience," he said quietly.  "Peace be with you, Nataline."

That evening just at dark Marcel came.  She let him take her in his 
arms and kiss her.  She felt like a little child, tired and weak.

"Well," he whispered, "you have done bravely, sweetheart.  You were 
right not to give the key.  That would have been a shame to you.  
But it is all settled now.  They will have the oil without your 
fault.  To-night they are going out to the lighthouse to break in 
and take what they want.  You need not know.  There will be no 
blame--"

She straightened in his arms as if an electric shock had passed 
through her.  She sprang back, blazing with anger.

"What?" she cried, "me a thief by round-about,--with my hand behind 
my back and my eyes shut?  Never.  Do you think I care only for the 
blame?  I tell you that is nothing.  My light shall not be robbed, 
never, never!"

She came close to him and took him by the shoulders.  Their eyes 
were on a level.  He was a strong man, but she was the stronger 
then.

"Marcel Thibault," she said, "do you love me?"

"My faith," he gasped, "I do.  You know I do."

"Then listen," she continued; "this is what you are going to do.  
You are going down to the shore at once to make ready the big canoe.  
I am going to get food enough to last us for the month.  It will be 
a hard pinch, but it will do.  Then we are going out to the island 
to-night, in less than an hour.  Day after to-morrow is the first of 
April.  Then we shall light the lantern, and it shall burn every 
night until the boat comes down.  You hear?  Now go: and be quick 
and bring your gun."



IV

They pushed off in the black darkness, among the fragments of ice 
that lay along the shore.  They crossed the strait in silence, and 
hid their canoe among the rocks on the island.  They carried their 
stuff up to the house and locked it in the kitchen.  Then they 
unlocked the tower, and went in, Marcel with his shot-gun, and 
Nataline with her father's old carabine.  They fastened the door 
again, and bolted it, and sat down in the dark to wait.

Presently they heard the grating of the prow of the barge on the 
stones below, the steps of men stumbling up the steep path, and 
voices mingled in confused talk.  The glimmer of a couple of 
lanterns went bobbing in and out among the rocks and bushes.  There 
was a little crowd of eight or ten men, and they came on carelessly, 
chattering and laughing.  Three of them carried axes, and three 
others a heavy log of wood which they had picked up on their way.

"The log is better than the axes," said one; "take it in your hands 
this way, two of you on one side, another on the opposite side in 
the middle.  Then swing it back and forwards and let it go.  The 
door will come down, I tell you, like a sheet of paper.  But wait 
till I give the word, then swing hard.  One--two--"

"Stop!" cried Nataline, throwing open the little window.  "If you 
dare to touch that door, I shoot."

She thrust out the barrel of the rifle, and Marcel's shot-gun 
appeared beside it.  The old rifle was not loaded, but who knew 
that?  Besides, both barrels of the shot-gun were full.

There was amazement in the crowd outside the tower, and 
consternation, and then anger.

"Marcel," they shouted, "you there?  MAUDIT POLISSON!  Come out of 
that.  Let us in.  You told us--"

"I know," answered Marcel, "but I was mistaken, that is all.  I 
stand by Mademoiselle Fortin.  What she says is right.  If any man 
tries to break in here, we kill him.  No more talk!"

The gang muttered; cursed; threatened; looked at the guns; and went 
off to their boat.

"It is murder that you will do," one of them called out, "you are a 
murderess, you Mademoiselle Fortin! you cause the people to die of 
hunger!"

"Not I," she answered; "that is as the good God pleases.  No matter.  
The light shall burn."

They heard the babble of the men as they stumbled down the hill; the 
grinding of the boat on the rocks as they shoved off; the rattle of 
the oars in the rowlocks.  After that the island was as still as a 
graveyard.

Then Nataline sat down on the floor in the dark, and put her face in 
her hands, and cried.  Marcel tried to comfort her.  She took his 
hand and pushed it gently away from her waist.

"No, Marcel," she said, "not now!  Not that, please, Marcel!  Come 
into the house.  I want to talk with you."

They went into the cold, dark kitchen, lit a candle and kindled a 
fire in the stove.  Nataline busied herself with a score of things.  
She put away the poor little store of provisions, sent Marcel for a 
pail of water, made some tea, spread the table, and sat down 
opposite to him.  For a time she kept her eyes turned away from him, 
while she talked about all sorts of things.  Then she fell silent 
for a little, still not looking at him.  She got up and moved about 
the room, arranged two or three packages on the shelves, shut the 
damper of the stove, glancing at Marcel's back out of the corners of 
her eyes.  Then she came back to her chair, pushed her cup aside, 
rested both elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, and 
looked Marcel square in the face with her clear brown eyes.

"My friend," she said, "are you an honest man, un brave garcon?"

For an instant he could say nothing.  He was so puzzled.  "Why yes, 
Nataline," he answered, "yes, surely--I hope."

"Then let me speak to you without fear," she continued.  "You do not 
suppose that I am ignorant of what I have done this night.  I am not 
a baby.  You are a man.  I am a girl.  We are shut up alone in this 
house for two weeks, a month, God knows how long.  You know what 
that means, what people will say.  I have risked all that a girl has 
most precious.  I have put my good name in your hands."

Marcel tried to speak, but she stopped him.

"Let me finish.  It is not easy to say.  I know you are honourable.  
I trust you waking and sleeping.  But I am a woman.  There must be 
no love-making.  We have other work to do.  The light must not fail.  
You will not touch me, you will not embrace me--not once--till after 
the boat has come.  Then"--she smiled at him like a sunburned angel--
"well, is it a bargain?"

She put out one hand across the table.  Marcel took it in both of 
his own.  He did not kiss it.  He lifted it up in front of his face.

"I swear to you, Nataline, you shall be to me as the Blessed Virgin 
herself."

The next day they put the light in order, and the following night 
they kindled it.  They still feared another attack from the 
mainland, and thought it needful that one of them should be on guard 
all the time, though the machine itself was working beautifully and 
needed little watching.  Nataline took the night duty; it was her 
own choice; she loved the charge of the lamp.  Marcel was on duty 
through the day.  They were together for three or four hours in the 
morning and in the evening.

It was not a desperate vigil like that affair with the broken 
clockwork eight years before.  There was no weary turning of the 
crank.  There was just enough work to do about the house and the 
tower to keep them busy.  The weather was fair.  The worst thing was 
the short supply of food.  But though they were hungry, they were 
not starving.  And Nataline still played the fife.  She jested, she 
sang, she told long fairy stories while they sat in the kitchen.  
Marcel admitted that it was not at all a bad arrangement.

But his thoughts turned very often to the arrival of the supply-
boat.  He hoped it would not be late.  The ice was well broken up 
already and driven far out into the gulf.  The boat ought to be able 
to run down the shore in good time.

One evening as Nataline came down from her sleep she saw Marcel 
coming up the rocks dragging a young seal behind him.

"Hurra!" he shouted, "here is plenty of meat.  I shot it out at the 
end of the island, about an hour ago."

But Nataline said that they did not need the seal.  There was still 
food enough in the larder.  On shore there must be greater need.  
Marcel must take the seal over to the mainland that night and leave 
it on the beach near the priest's house.  He grumbled a little, but 
he did it.

That was on the twenty-third of April.  The clear sky held for three 
days longer, calm, bright, halcyon weather.  On the afternoon of the 
twenty-seventh the clouds came down from the north, not a long 
furious tempest, but a brief, sharp storm, with considerable wind 
and a whirling, blinding fall of April snow.  It was a bad night for 
boats at sea, confusing, bewildering, a night when the lighthouse 
had to do its best.  Nataline was in the tower all night, tending 
the lamp, watching the clockwork.  Once it seemed to her that the 
lantern was so covered with snow that light could not shine through.  
She got her long brush and scraped the snow away.  It was cold work, 
but she gloried in it.  The bright eye of the tower, winking, 
winking steadily through the storm seemed to be the sign of her 
power in the world.  It was hers.  She kept it shining.

When morning came the wind was still blowing fitfully off shore, but 
the snow had almost ceased.  Nataline stopped the clockwork, and was 
just climbing up into the lantern to put out the lamp, when Marcel's 
voice hailed her.

"Come down, Nataline, come down quick.  Make haste!"

She turned and hurried out, not knowing what was to come; perhaps a 
message of trouble from the mainland, perhaps a new assault on the 
lighthouse.

As she came out of the tower, her brown eyes heavy from the night-
watch, her dark face pale from the cold, she saw Marcel standing on 
the rocky knoll beside the house and pointing shoreward.

She ran up beside him and looked.  There, in the deep water between 
the island and the point, lay the supply-boat, rocking quietly on 
the waves.

It flashed upon her in a moment what it meant--the end of her fight, 
relief for the village, victory!  And the light that had guided the 
little ship safe through the stormy night into the harbour was hers.

She turned and looked up at the lamp, still burning.

"I kept you!" she cried.

Then she turned to Marcel; the colour rose quickly in her cheeks, 
the light sparkled in her eyes; she smiled, and held out both her 
hands, whispering, "Now you shall keep me!"

There was a fine wedding on the last day of April, and from that 
time the island took its new name,--the Isle of the Wise Virgin.





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke