oking yesterday. You can get anything you
want at the store."

What a breakfast they did have, to be sure! the Baptistes eating while
they worked. Back and forward they dashed till late afternoon, driving
ringed spikes into the deals, running light ropes through the rings,
and, when a good string had thus been made, going ashore to haul in.
At that hauling Delima and _Memere_, even little Andre and Odillon
gave a hand.

Everybody in the little hamlet made money that day, but the Larocques
twice as much as any other family, because they had an eddy and a low
shore. With the help of the people "the big _Bourgeois_" who owned the
broken raft got it away that evening, and saved his fat contract after
all.

"Did I not say so?" said "_Memere_," at night, for the hundredth time.
"Did I not say so? Yes, indeed, _le bon Dieu_ watches over us all."

"Yes, indeed, grandmother," echoed little Baptiste, thinking of his
failure on the night-line. "We may take as much trouble as we like,
but it's no use unless _le bon Dieu_ helps us. Only--I don' know what
de big Bourgeois say about that--his raft was all broke up so bad."

"Ah, _oui_," said _Memere_, looking puzzled for but a moment. "But he
didn't put his trust in _le bon Dieu_; that's it, for sure. Besides,
maybe _le bon Dieu_ want to teach him a lesson; he'll not try for run
a whole band of deals next time. You see that was a tempting of
Providence; and then--the big Bourgeois is a Protestant."

THE RIDE BY NIGHT.

Mr. Adam Baines is a little Gray about the temples, but still looks so
young that few could suppose him to have served in the Civil War.
Indeed, he was in the army less than a year. How he went out of it he
told me in some such words as these:--

An orderly from the direction of Meade's headquarters galloped into
our parade ground, and straight for the man on guard before the
colonel's tent. That was pretty late in the afternoon of a bright
March day in 1865, but the parade ground was all red mud with shallow
pools. I remember well how the hind hoofs of the orderly's galloper
threw away great chunks of earth as he splashed diagonally across the
open.

His rider never slowed till he brought his horse to its haunches
before the sentry. There he flung himself off instantly, caught up his
sabre, and ran through the middle opening of the high screen of
sapling pines stuck on end, side by side, all around the acre or so
occupied by the officers' quarters.