r; broad shoulders, long arms,
light hair, gray eyes; not a handsome fellow, but pleasant-looking and
very quiet. What he did was done more than half with his head.

He was the kind of a man that never needs more than one match to light a
fire.

But Vaillantcoeur--well, if the wood was wet he might use a dozen, and
when the blaze was kindled, as like as not he would throw in the rest of
the box.

Now, these two men had been friends and were changed into rivals. At
least that was the way that one of them looked at it. And most of the
people in the parish seemed to think that was the right view. It was a
strange thing, and not altogether satisfactory to the public mind,
to have two strongest men in the village. The question of comparative
standing in the community ought to be raised and settled in the usual
way. Raoul was perfectly willing, and at times (commonly on Saturday
nights) very eager. But Prosper was not.

"No," he said, one March night, when he was boiling maple-sap in the
sugar-bush with little Ovide Rossignol (who had a lyric passion for
holding the coat while another man was fighting)--"no, for what shall I
fight with Raoul? As boys we have played together. Once, in the rapids
of the Belle Riviere, when I have fallen in the water, I think he has
saved my life. He was stronger, then, than me. I am always a friend to
him. If I beat him now, am I stronger? No, but weaker. And if he beats
me, what is the sense of that? Certainly I shall not like it. What is to
gain?"

Down in the store of old Girard, that night, Vaillantcoeur was holding
forth after a different fashion. He stood among the cracker-boxes and
flour-barrels, with a background of shelves laden with bright-coloured
calicoes, and a line of tin pails hanging overhead, and stated his view
of the case with vigour. He even pulled off his coat and rolled up his
shirt-sleeve to show the knotty arguments with which he proposed to
clinch his opinion.

"That Leclere," said he, "that little Prosper Leclere! He thinks himself
one of the strongest--a fine fellow! But I tell you he is a coward.
If he is clever? Yes. But he is a poltroon. He knows well that I can
flatten him out like a crepe in the frying-pan. But he is afraid. He has
not as much courage as the musk-rat. You stamp on the bank. He dives. He
swims away. Bah!"

"How about that time he cut loose the jam of logs in the Rapide des
Cedres?" said old Girard from his corner.

Vaillantcoeur's black