ound them out, and so
disgusted with myself that, for a time, I thought of becoming a
type-setter. By Jove! you know; a fellow doesn't expect to find a keg
outside a canoe. Now does he?"

But I am not one of those who believe there are good women and bad
women. Some are elemental and others are not; that is the only
difference. I will maintain this to the very day my tongue wears out.

Justine's white father must have had a head and shoulders of the most
perfect classical type. As she sits on the beach with a light shawl
drawn down over her head, this girl resembles greatly the Madonna of
Bouguereau. I tell her this, and we talk for a long while. She thinks
my suggestion that she marry a riverman, or a trapper, and have quite a
large family, a wholly foolish suggestion. It causes her to think
little of both my discernment and my knowledge of men. Rivermen, she
would have me understand, hardly ever come home, and when they do, only
to get drunk and beat their wives. A white man won't marry a breed
girl, nowadays, and if he should give her his heart, he expects it to
be returned sometime. Still, Justine considers his transient
affections to be preferable to those of the breed's, in that a white
man seldom strikes his girl. Justine gives me a short lesson in Cree,
and, among other words, I learn that _saky hagen_ is the equivalent of
"one I love," and that _nichimoos_ means "sweetheart." The former is
usually applied to a child, the latter to an adult.

When I ask Justine to tell me a story about the North, she complies
because she has been educated in a mission school and speaks English
well. And then she is not in the least afraid of me since I showed so
lamentable a lack of insight about marriage. Now listen to the story.

Once a mallard who was sick of love asked a blackbird to marry him.
"Marry me," he said, "and I will give you fish to eat and wild rice.
And when the sun is hot, I will hide you in the rushes and keep you
under my wings."

And so they lived together as man and wife and the blackbird bore her
husband three sons, but soon he tired of her and made believe he was
dead so that she went away and left him in peace.

And then the mallard went in search of another wife.... It was a story
I craved of Justine, and lo! she has told me a parable.

CHAPTER IX

AT THE LANDING.

A city founded is no city built
Till faith becomes prolific by the fathering tale
Of good report and