LAC EMMURAILLE 



Michel is content with these solitudes, 

 for they give unfailing employment to alert 

 eye and eager mind. Nothing that comes 

 within the range of his senses slips by un- 

 noticed; facts are fitted neatly into their 

 places, upon the sum of them his hypotheses 

 are framed, clean deductions follow in 

 their turn. Albeit he could scarcely spell 

 out the words 'formal and inductive logic', 

 and the labour of doing it would be vain, 

 his reasoning does not fail to observe the 

 canons. 



Though irrelevant here, I am tempted to 

 speak of something which befell him not 

 many winters ago — a bit of luck to be envied 

 by anyone who has held a rifle. Approach- 

 ing a lake through the deep woods, and 

 hearing a great ado, he quickened pace 

 without abating caution. When he ar- 

 rived, noiselessly and under shelter, the 

 tragedy was before his eyes — a hundred 

 yards out upon the ice. A caribou had 

 just been pulled down by thirteen of the 

 huge timber-wolves; they tore at the dying 

 animal and fought with one another in a 

 welter of leaping bodies and snapping jaws. 

 A Winchester was in his hand, a box of 

 cartridges in his pocket. Kicking off his 

 snowshoes — a woodsman never has to untie 

 81 

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