arrive back here to-night tired as a dog, but once more at daybreak
it will be Dominique who sets forth to carry the wounded man up to
Fort Amitie. And why? Because, when a thing needs to be done well,
he is to be trusted; you would turn to him then and trust him rather
than any of yourselves, and you know it. Do you grumble, then, that
the Seigneur knows it? I say to you that a man is born thus, or
thus; responsible or not responsible; and a man that is born
responsible, though he add pound to pound and field to field, is a
man to be thankful for. Moreover, if he keep his own counsel, you
may go to him at a pinch with the more certainty that he will keep
yours."

"What did I tell you?" whispered La Marmite to Jo Lagasse, who had
joined the little crowd. "The Father's eye turns you inside out: he
knows how we have been grumbling all day. But all the same," she
added aloud, "he is young and ought to laugh."

"I have told you," said Father Launoy, "that you should judge a man
by his virtues: but, where that is hard, at least you should judge
him by help of your own pity. All this day Dominique has been
copying his dead father; and the same remembrance that has been to
him a sorrowful incitement, has been to you but food for uncharitable
thoughts. If I am not saying the truth, correct me."

They were silent. The priest had a great gift of personal talk,
straight and simple; and treated them as brothers and sisters of a
family, holding up the virtues of this one, or the faults of that, to
the common gaze. They might not agree with this laudation of
Dominique: but no one cared to challenge it at the risk of finding
himself pilloried for public laughter. Father Launoy knew all the
peccadilloes of this small flock, and had a tongue which stripped
your clothes off--to use an expression of La Marmite's.

They followed him down to the shore where the Etchemins held the
canoe ready. There they knelt, and he blessed them before embarking.
Dominique stepped on board after him, and the two Indians took up
their paddles.

Long after the boat had been pushed off and was speeding down the
broad waterway, the harvesters stood and watched it. The sunset
followed it, gleaming along its wake and on its polished quarter,
flashing as the paddles rose and dipped; until it rounded the corner
by Bout de l'lsle, where the rapids began.

The distant voice of these rapids filled the air with its humming;
but their ears were