truth. The cats of
m'sieu were fourteen; how could I kill so many? No, but I fed them and
put them away in the barns--yes--and nailed up the little doors, it is
true, for I could not do my work with the cats of m'sieu always between
the feet. I spoke of them once to you, because there were two who
wished to enter your room, lie on the bed----"

"Yes, yes! Le Cid and Montcalm. Good cats, good friends!"

"Lie on the bed, but I could not allow them. Thus, for three days they
sat outside the door of m'sieu."

"And the peacock? Is it that I shall find him banished also when I
walk forth from my house? Mlle. Pauline has rid herself of him?"

"Not so, m'sieu. I have cared for the bird and indeed for all the
animals."

Clairville, quieter now, was thinking.

"Did some one sing to me about cats as I lay there on my bed?"

Madame reddened.

"Yes, m'sieu--it was I who made a song about the 'Cats of Clairville'.
To amuse myself only, m'sieu, I often do like that."

He looked at her, then down at his speckled, bony hands.

"We are both mad, I think," he said in the most matter-of-fact way,
"but you, of course, more so than I am. Well, to-day I have walked in
here. To-morrow I shall walk all over this house, and next week,
madame, next week I shall walk to the village--well, half-way. Some
day I may even go to church. Oh--you shall see, you shall see!"

And with that, natural fatigue, engendered by the wholly unusual
exercise intervened; his nurse moved a sofa into the hall, and there he
slept for many hours, while she routed out his room as well as she
could; his physical recovery from that day was miraculously rapid, and
in a fortnight he was as quick and light upon his feet and as much
given to the open air and walking as he had been previously doggedly
convinced that he could not use his legs and that the least breath or
whiff of fresh air would destroy him. So much for the after-effects of
the "Pic" and the sweet uses of adversity.

The fine November days that followed were the days that Canada can give
in wonderful perfection--when the thick canopy of leaves has been
caught up, shrivelled, and disappeared, when a great expanse of sky,
forest and river lies before the enraptured vision, with every twig and
branch, every stump and hollow in the ground, every undulation and
hillock of withered grass, showing as clearly cut and sharply defined
as in winter, while the air is frequently warmer than in June