ttle green pebbles from Isle Royale, agates, and fragments of
fossils, the whole forming a rough mosaic, strong in its story of the
region. From two high shelves the fathers of the Church and the classics
of the world looked down upon this scene. But Pere Michaux was no
bookworm; his books were men. The needs and faults of his flock absorbed
all his days, and, when the moon was bright, his evenings also. "There
goes Pere Michaux," said the half-breeds, as the broad sail of his boat
went gleaming by in the summer night, or the sound of his sledge bells
came through their closed doors; "he has been to see the dying wife of
Jean," or "to carry medicine to Francois." On the wild nights and the
dark nights, when no one could stir abroad, the old priest lighted his
lamp, and fed his mind with its old-time nourishment. But he had nothing
modern; no newspapers. The nation was to him naught. He was one of a
small but distinctly marked class in America that have a distaste for
and disbelief in the present, its ideals, thoughts, and actions, and
turn for relief to the past; they represent a reaction. This class is
made up of foreigners like the priest, of native-born citizens with
artistic tastes who have lived much abroad, modern Tories who regret the
Revolution, High-Church Episcopalians who would like archbishops and an
Establishment, restless politicians who seek an empire--in all, a very
small number compared with the mass of the nation at large, and not
important enough to be counted at all numerically, yet not without its
influence. And not without its use too, its members serving their
country, unconsciously perhaps, but powerfully, by acting as a balance
to the self-asserting blatant conceit of the young nation--a drag on the
wheels of its too-rapidly speeding car. They are a sort of Mordecai at
the gate, and are no more disturbed than he was by being in a minority.
In any great crisis this element is fused with the rest at once, and
disappears; but in times of peace and prosperity up it comes again, and
lifts its scornful voice.

Pere Michaux occupied himself first with the boys. The religious
education of Louis, Gabriel, and Andre was not complex--a few plain
rules that three colts could have learned almost as well, provided they
had had speech. But the priest had the rare gift of holding the
attention of children while he talked with them, and thus the three boys
learned from him gradually and almost unconsciously the t