rgile 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 for