s 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."

V. 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 d