But a single favour does he stiffly refuse 

 a friend: that he should lay aside ax and 

 paddle for the laborious intractable pen, 

 and tell us children of the pavements about 

 his adventurous life in northern Quebec. 

 He holds it v^ould be a task excessive, 

 uncalled for, immodest, to write of his 

 many years with the Indians, the ups and 

 downs of fortune that visited them as they 

 ranged an unmapped wilderness in com- 

 pany — hunting, trapping, fishing. Speech 

 itself he distils only under pressure, in an 

 apologetic trickle, not with the fine free 

 gush of the tap that invites your turning, 

 or is adjusted to an automatic flow. 



Around the camp-fire, when the several 

 gifts of the company are thrown into 

 hotchpot, he does not withhold a story or a 

 song, but prefaces it with a disarming 

 word very recommendable to the coy per- 

 former (possibly no nightingale, either) 

 upon whom the entreaties of the drawing- 

 room converge :—£/2 bien! Depuis que 

 vous le voulez. On connait parfaitment 

 que chaqiie animal a son cri! 



Stimulated thus, or when some accident 

 181 



