al to a certificate of membership in a Fenian society.

But in effect, from the turned-up toes of his bottes sauvages to
the ends of his black mustache, the proprietor of this name was a
Frenchman--Canadian French, you understand, and therefore even more
proud and tenacious of his race than if he had been born in Normandy.
Somewhere in his family tree there must have been a graft from the
Green Isle. A wandering lumberman from County Kerry had drifted up the
Saguenay into the Lake St. John region, and married the daughter of a
habitant, and settled down to forget his own country and his father's
house. But every visible trace of this infusion of new blood had
vanished long ago, except the name; and the name itself was transformed
on the lips of the St. Geromians. If you had heard them speak it in
their pleasant droning accent,--"Patrique Moullarque,"--you would have
supposed that it was made in France. To have a guide with such a name as
that was as good as being abroad.

Even when they cut it short and called him "Patte," as they usually did,
it had a very foreign sound. Everything about him was in harmony with
it; he spoke and laughed and sang and thought and felt in French--the
French of two hundred years ago, the language of Samuel de Champlain and
the Sieur de Monts, touched with a strong woodland flavour. In short,
my guide, philosopher, and friend, Pat, did not have a drop of Irish
in him, unless, perhaps, it was a certain--well, you shall judge for
yourself, when you have heard this story of his virtue, and the way it
was rewarded.

It was on the shore of the Lac a la Belle Riviere, fifteen miles back
from St. Gerome, that I came into the story, and found myself, as
commonly happens in the real stories which life is always bringing out
in periodical form, somewhere about the middle of the plot. But Patrick
readily made me acquainted with what had gone before. Indeed, it is
one of life's greatest charms as a story-teller that there is never
any trouble about getting a brief resume of the argument, and even a
listener who arrives late is soon put into touch with the course of the
narrative.

We had hauled our canoes and camp-stuff over the terrible road that
leads to the lake, with much creaking and groaning of wagons, and
complaining of men, who declared that the mud grew deeper and the hills
steeper every year, and vowed their customary vow never to come that way
again. At last our tents were pitched in a gr