us. We have given back what the poor man wanted. God is not angry with
us now. But I am very tired--row me home, for I think my time is near
at hand."

The next day, just before sunset, was the day of my birth. My mother
Nataline told me, when I was a little boy, that I was born to good
fortune. And, you see, m'sieu', it was true, for I am the keeper of
her light.

THE COUNTERSIGN OF THE CRADLE

I cannot explain to you the connection between the two parts of this
story. They were divided, in their happening, by a couple of hundred
miles of mountain and forest. There were no visible or audible means
of communication between the two scenes. But the events occurred at
the same hour, and the persons who were most concerned in them were
joined by one of those vital ties of human affection which seem to
elude the limitations of time and space. Perhaps that was the
connection. Perhaps love worked the miracle. I do not know. I only
tell you the story.

I

It begins in the peaceful, homely village of Saint Gerome, on the
shore of Lake Saint John, at the edge of the vast northern wilderness.
Here was the home of my guide, Pat Mullarkey, whose name was as Irish
as his nature was French-Canadian, and who was so fond of children
that, having lost his only one, he was willing to give up smoking in
order to save money for the adoption of a baby from the foundling
asylum at Quebec. How his virtue was rewarded, and how his wife,
Angelique, presented him with twins of his own, to his double delight,
has been told in another story. The relation of parentage to a matched
brace of babies is likely to lead to further adventures.

The cradle, of course, being built for two, was a broad affair, and
little Jacques and Jacqueline rolled around in it inextricably mixed,
until Pat had the ingenious idea of putting a board down the middle
for a partition. Then the infants rocked side by side in harmony,
going up and down alternately, without a thought of debating the
eternal question of superiority between the sexes. Their weight was
the same. Their dark eyes and hair were alike. Their voices, whether
they wept or cooed, were indistinguishable. Everybody agreed that a
finer boy and girl had never been seen in Saint Gerome. But nobody
except Pat and Angelique could tell them apart as they swung in the
cradle, gently rising and falling, in unconscious illustration of the
equivalence and balancing of male and female.

Angelique, of