a
green head on top--grow under ferns. Come on. Cards are ready! Who's
going to play?"

"Durn it! Them's Dutchman's breeches!" exclaimed the sun-browned
trapper. "O Goll! If that Little Stature finds any Dutchman's breeches,
she that's so scared of us men! O Goll! Won't she blush? Say, babe, why
don't y'r fill y'r hat with 'em and put 'em in her tent?" and the big
trapper set up a hoarse guffaw which led a general chorus. Then the men
gathered round, to play.

"Faith, lads!" interrupted the voice of the Irish priest, who had come
upon the group so quietly the gambler scarcely had time to tuck the
tell-tale cards under his buckskin smock, "I'm thinking ye've all
developed a mighty sudden interest in botany. Are there any bleeding
hearts in the bush?"

"There may be here," suggested the boy.

"It all comes of the Little Statute!" declared the big trapper.

"Oh! You and your Stature and Statute! Why can't you say Statue?" asked
the lad with the pompous scorn of youthful knowledge.

"Because, oh, babe with the chicken-down," answered the man, giving his
corrector a thud with his broad palm and sticking heroically by his slip
of the tongue, "I says the words I means and don't play no prig. She
don't pay more attention to you than if you wuz a stump, that's why
she's a statue, ain't it? And the fellows've got to stretch their necks
to come up to her ideas of what's proper, that's why she's a stature,
ain't it? And not a man of us, if His Reverence'll excuse me for saying
so, dare let out a cuss afore her. That's why she's a statute, ain't
it?"

And when I walked off to the bush with as great a show of indifference
as I could muster, I heard the priest crying "Bravo!" to the man's
defence. How came it that I was in the woods slushing through damp mold
up to my ankles in black ooze? I no longer had any fear of an ambushed
enemy; for Le Grand Diable, the knave, had forfeited his wages and
deserted at Fort William. He was not seen after the night of the meeting
with the Hudson's Bay canoe off the flats. I drew Father Holland's
attention to this, and the priest was no longer so sceptical about that
phantom boat. But it was not of these things I thought, as I tore a
great strip of bark from the trunk of a birch tree and twisted the piece
into a huge cornucopia. Nor had I the slightest expectation of
encountering father and daughter in the woods. That marble face was too
much in earnest for the vainest of men to suppose it