, while they got
ready the shanties behind them for their own occupancy; but everywhere
Northwick was received with that pathetic deference which the poor
render to those capable of bettering their condition. The secret of the
treasure he had brought with him remained safe with the doctor and the
priest, and with Bird who had discovered it with them; but Bird was not
the man to conceal from his neighbors the fact that his guest was a
great American capitalist, who had come to develop the mineral,
agricultural, and manufacturing interests of Haha Bay on the American
scale; and to enrich the whole region, buying land of those who wished
to sell, and employing all those who desired to work. If he was
impatient for the verification of these promises by Northwick, he was
too polite to urge it; and did nothing worse than brag to him as he
bragged about him. He probably had his own opinion of Northwick's
reasons for the silence he maintained concerning himself in all
respects; he knew from the tag fastened to the bag Northwick had bought
in Quebec that his name was Warwick, and he knew from Northwick himself
that he was from Chicago; beyond this, if he conjectured that he was the
victim of financial errors, he smoothly kept his guesses to himself and
would not mar the chances of good that Northwick might do with his money
by hinting any question of its origin. The American defaulter was a sort
of hero in Bird's fancy; he had heard much of that character; he would
have experienced no shock at realizing him in Northwick; he would have
accounted for Northwick, and excused him to himself, if need be. The
doctor observed a professional reticence; his affair was with
Northwick's body, which he had treated skilfully. He left his soul to
Pere Etienne, who may have had his diffidence, his delicacy, in dealing
with it, as the soul of a Protestant and a foreigner.

VII.

It took the young priest somewhat longer than it would have taken a man
of Northwick's own language and nation to perceive that his gentlemanly
decorum and grave repose of manner masked a complete ignorance of the
things that interest cultivated people, and that he was merely and
purely a business man, a figment of commercial civilization, with only
the crudest tastes and ambitions outside of the narrow circle of
money-making. He found that he had a pleasure in horses and cattle, and
from hints which Northwick let fall, regarding his life at home, that he
was f