The Ruling Passion

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