pered
inside, fat cattle pasturing or in the stable; for people well
stocked with implements and who keep their health, could there be
anything better or happier?"

Paradis, looked at the floor without making answer, perhaps a trifle
ashamed of these wrong-headed tastes of his. "A fine life for those
who are fond of the land," he said at last, "but I should never have
been content."

It was the everlasting conflict between the types: pioneer and
farmer, the peasant from France who brought to new lands his ideals
of ordered life and contented immobility, and that other in whom the
vast wilderness awakened distant atavistic instincts for wandering
and adventure.

Accustomed for fifteen years to hear her mother vaunting the idyllic
happiness of the farmer in the older settlements, Maria had very
naturally come to believe that she was of the same mind; now she was
no longer certain about it. But whoever was right she well knew that
not one of the well-to-do young fellows at St. Prime, with his
Sunday coat of fine cloth and his fur collar, was the equal of
Paradis in muddy boots and faded woollen jersey.

Replying to further questions he spoke of his journeys on the North
Shore and to the head-waters of the rivers--of it all very naturally
and with a shade of hesitation, scarcely knowing what to tell and
what to leave out, for the people he was speaking to lived in much
the same kind of country and their manner of life was little
different.

"Up there the winters are harder yet than here, and still longer. We
have only dogs to draw our sleds, fine strong dogs, but bad-tempered
and often half wild, and we feed them but once a day, in the
evening, on frozen fish.... Yes, there are settlements, but
almost no farming; the men live by trapping and fishing ... No, I
never had any difficulty with the Indians; I always got on very well
with them. I know nearly all those on the Mistassini and this river,
for they used to come to our place before my father died. You see he
often went trapping in winter when he was not in the shanties, and
one season when he was at the head of the Riviere aux Foins, quite
alone, a tree that he was cutting for firewood slipped in falling,
and it was the Indians who found him by chance next day, crushed and
half-frozen though the weather was mild. He was in their game
preserve, and they might very well have pretended not to see him and
have left him to die there; but they put him on their tobogga