year will bring more. The winter after
the next, if we have the good chance, we go to the city, the goodwife
and me, and we come home with the little boy--or maybe the little girl.
Does m'sieu' approve?"

"You are a man of virtue, Pat," said I; "and since you will not take
your share of the tobacco on this trip, it shall go to the other men;
but you shall have the money instead, to put into your box on the
mantel-piece."

After supper that evening I watched him with some curiosity to see what
he would do without his pipe. He seemed restless and uneasy. The other
men sat around the fire, smoking; but Patrick was down at the landing,
fussing over one of the canoes, which had been somewhat roughly handled
on the road coming in. Then he began to tighten the tent-ropes, and
hauled at them so vigorously that he loosened two of the stakes. Then
he whittled the blade of his paddle for a while, and cut it an inch too
short. Then he went into the men's tent, and in a few minutes the sound
of snoring told that he had sought refuge in sleep at eight o'clock,
without telling a single caribou story, or making any plans for the next
day's sport.

II

For several days we lingered on the Lake of the Beautiful River, trying
the fishing. We explored all the favourite meeting-places of the trout,
at the mouths of the streams and in the cool spring-holes, but we did
not have remarkable success. I am bound to say that Patrick was not
at his best that year as a fisherman. He was as ready to work, as
interested, as eager, as ever; but he lacked steadiness, persistence,
patience. Some tranquillizing influence seemed to have departed from
him. That placid confidence in the ultimate certainty of catching fish,
which is one of the chief elements of good luck, was wanting. He did not
appear to be able to sit still in the canoe. The mosquitoes troubled
him terribly. He was just as anxious as a man could be to have me take
plenty of the largest trout, but he was too much in a hurry. He even
went so far as to say that he did not think I cast the fly as well as I
did formerly, and that I was too slow in striking when the fish rose. He
was distinctly a weaker man without his pipe, but his virtuous resolve
held firm.

There was one place in particular that required very cautious angling.
It was a spring-hole at the mouth of the Riviere du Milieu--an open
space, about a hundred feet long and fifteen feet wide, in the midst
of the lily-pads, a