broad curves of silver bullets danced before them as they
swept over the surface. All around the homeless shores the evergreen
trees seemed to hunch their backs and crowd closer together in
patient misery. Not a bird had the heart to sing; only the
loon--storm-lover--laughed his crazy challenge to the elements, and
mocked us with his long-drawn maniac scream.

It seemed as if we were a thousand miles from everywhere and everybody.
Cities, factories, libraries, colleges, law-courts, theatres,
palaces,--what had we dreamed of these things? They were far off, in
another world. We had slipped back into a primitive life. Ferdinand was
telling me the naked story of human love and human hate, even as it has
been told from the beginning.

I cannot tell it just as he did. There was a charm in his speech too
quick for the pen: a woodland savour not to be found in any ink for sale
in the shops. I must tell it in my way, as he told it in his.

But at all events, nothing that makes any difference shall go into the
translation unless it was in the original. This is Ferdinand's story. If
you care for the real thing, here it is.

I

There were two young men in Abbeville who were easily the cocks of the
woodland walk. Their standing rested on the fact that they were the
strongest men in the parish. Strength is the thing that counts, when
people live on the edge of the wilderness. These two were well known all
through the country between Lake St. John and Chicoutimi as men of great
capacity. Either of them could shoulder a barrel of flour and walk off
with it as lightly as a common man would carry a side of bacon. There
was not a half-pound of difference between them in ability. But there
was a great difference in their looks and in their way of doing things.

Raoul Vaillantcoeur was the biggest and the handsomest man in the
village; nearly six feet tall, straight as a fir tree, and black as
a bull-moose in December. He had natural force enough and to spare.
Whatever he did was done by sheer power of back and arm. He could send
a canoe up against the heaviest water, provided he did not get mad and
break his paddle--which he often did. He had more muscle than he knew
how to use.

Prosper Leclere did not have so much, but he knew better how to handle
it. He never broke his paddle--unless it happened to be a bad one, and
then he generally had another all ready in the canoe. He was at least
four inches shorter than Vaillantcoeu