e said: "My child, _le bon Dieu_ never
asks the unreasonable. Is not God kinder than you; and will he demand of
you and Francois what you would not of another?"

"Monsieur, is it possible that that is true?" sobbed she, weeping freer.

"Does not your heart say so?" said he.

"I know not. It must be so. You speak like a priest."

"Think," he said, "and pray to Him about it, and hope a little for
Francois. He loves you. It would be so cruel to him to lose you."

Henri's voice broke joyously out of the shrubbery:--

"Good at all times
Is sweet bread,
But specially when
With sugar spread."

Chrysler moved away, and passing through the trees stood on the bank,
looking down on the beach and the sunny surface of the River. He had
helped to right one little matter anyway, in Dormilliere.

A guttural call in a low voice startled him,--a subdued longdrawn
"Hoioch!--hoioch!--hoioch!" followed by a few words of instructions
rapidly uttered in what seemed a kind of patois--and on turning he saw
below, along the shore at the left, the little figure of the Bonhomme
rapidly pulling in one end of a net through the water, while the other
end was managed by a younger fisherman attired as rudely and queerly. It
needed a close glance to see that the second man was Francois, assisting
his father. Together they suggested that strange caste--the fishers of
the great river--a caste living in the midst of a civilization, yet as
little of it as the gipsies--families handing down apart among
themselves from generation to generation manners, customs, haunts,
unique secrets of localities, and sometimes apparently a marvellous
skill. These are the true geographers and unboasting Nimrods. You who
have ever seen the strange sight of the spearing under the flame of
immense torches in the rapids of the Buisson, where no straining of your
own eyes could ever discern the trace of a fish; and you with whom it
was an article of faith that certain death waited in every channel,
swirl and white horse of the thundering Lachine Rapids, until one day
some one speculated how the market boats of the lake above could turn up
every morning safe and regular at the Bonsecours Market,--will be ready
to understand.

However, it was not long before the net was drawn up and Chrysler stood
beside them, the greetings were over and all three were duly seated,
each on his chosen boulder under the green poplar saplings, talking:

"Francois," said th