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 jok