his pipe. "It is a
girl AND a boy!"

Sure enough, as I entered the door, I beheld Angelique rocking the other
half of the reward of virtue in the new cradle.

III. A BRAVE HEART

"That was truly his name, m'sieu'--Raoul Vaillantcoeur--a name of the
fine sound, is it not? You like that word,--a valiant heart,--it pleases
you, eh! The man who calls himself by such a name as that ought to be a
brave fellow, a veritable hero? Well, perhaps. But I know an Indian
who is called Le Blanc; that means white. And a white man who is called
Lenoir; that means black. It is very droll, this affair of the names. It
is like the lottery."

Silence for a few moments, broken only by the ripple of water under the
bow of the canoe, the persistent patter of the rain all around us,
and the SLISH, SLISH of the paddle with which Ferdinand, my Canadian
voyageur, was pushing the birch-bark down the lonely length of Lac
Moise. I knew that there was one of his stories on the way. But I must
keep still to get it. A single ill-advised comment, a word that would
raise a question of morals or social philosophy, might switch the
narrative off the track into a swamp of abstract discourse in which
Ferdinand would lose himself. Presently the voice behind me began again.

"But that word VAILLANT, m'sieu'; with us in Canada it does not mean
always the same as with you. Sometimes we use it for something that
sounds big, but does little; a gun that goes off with a terrible crack,
but shoots not straight nor far. When a man is like that he is FANFARON,
he shows off well, but--well, you shall judge for yourself, when you
hear what happened between this man Vaillantcoeur and his friend Prosper
Leclere at the building of the stone tower of the church at Abbeville.
You remind yourself of that grand church with the tall tower--yes? With
permission I am going to tell you what passed when that was made. And
you shall decide whether there was truly a brave heart in the story, or
not; and if it went with the name."

Thus the tale began, in the vast solitude of the northern forest, among
the granite peaks of the ancient Laurentian Mountains, on a lake that
knew no human habitation save the Indian's wigwam or the fisherman's
tent.

How it rained that day! The dark clouds had collapsed upon the hills in
shapeless folds. The waves of the lake were beaten flat by the lashing
strokes of the storm. Quivering sheets of watery gray were driven before
the wind; and