and fishing. It is a regret that the service has
given me no opportunity these four years for a breathing spell in the
woods. M'sieur will tell me the tale of his guide's superstition?"

A scheme began to form in my brain at that instant too delightful, it
seemed, to come true. I put it aside and went on with my story. "I have
one guide, a Huron half-breed," I said, "whom I particularly like. He's
an old fellow--sixty--but light and quick and powerful as a boy. More
interesting than a boy, because he's full of experiences. Two years ago
a bear swam across the lake where my camp is, and I went out in a canoe
with this Rafael and got him."

Colonel Raffre made of this fact an event larger than--I am sure--he
would have made of his winning of the war cross.

"You shame me, colonel," I said, and went on hurriedly. "Rafael, the
guide, was pleased about the bear. 'When gentlemens kill t'ings, guides
is more happy,' he explained to me, and he proceeded to tell an
anecdote. He prefaced it by informing me that one time he hunt bear and
he see devil. He had been hunting, it seemed, two or three winters
before with his brother-in-law at the headwaters of the St. Maurice
River, up north there," I elucidated, pointing through the window toward
the "long white street of Beauport," across the St. Lawrence. "It's very
lonely country, entirely wild, Indian hunting-ground yet. These two
Hurons, Rafael and his brother-in-law, were on a two months' trip to
hunt and trap, having their meagre belongings and provisions on sleds
which they dragged across the snow. They depended for food mostly on
what they could trap or shoot--moose, caribou, beaver, and small
animals. But they had bad luck. They set many traps but caught nothing,
and they saw no game to shoot. So that in a month they were hard
pressed. One cold day they went two miles to visit a beaver trap, where
they had seen signs. They hoped to find an animal caught and to feast on
beaver tail, which is good eating."

Here I had to stop and explain much about beaver tails, and the rest of
beavers, to the Frenchman, who was interested like a boy in this new,
almost unheard-of beast. At length:

"Rafael and his brother-in-law were disappointed. A beaver had been
close and eaten the bark off a birch stick which the men had left, but
nothing was in the trap. They turned and began a weary walk through the
desolate country back to their little tent. Small comfort waited for
them there, as