^P^r? 
5SST 
A 
. h 
mjEmr 
FEU FOLLET 
By EDMUND F. L. JENNER 
1 SUPPOSE you must go, but come back 
as soon as you possibly can, and bring 
back a partridge or two if you stay out 
after Monday.” 
The speaker was my wife. I was oiling my 
light gun, preparatory to strapping it on my 
bicycle. Tom Crib, my wife’s bull terrier, 
watched the preparations with keen interest, 
ignorant of the fact that his company was not 
desired in the South Woods. 
A day or two previously, I had received a 
telegram which informed me that two friends 
were coming down to hunt with me. I had 
written Paddy Ryan, my deputy game warden, 
and he had replied, asking me to run out to 
the ground we proposed to hunt, see if the 
canoes were all right, and if the camps required 
any repairs. He was engaged guiding a party 
of American tourists, and could not attend to the 
matter himself. It would be about a three-days’ 
trip, taking my time and traveling easy. It was 
the latter end of September, the leaves had 
just changed, and I could hardly have asked for a 
more ideal time to take a trip in the woods. 
There was abundance of food in the first camp 
I intended to strike, and the only provisions I 
needed to carry were bread and butter. The 
bread I intended to take from home; the butter 
I would buy from Angus McKeen, at whose 
abode I intended to leave my bicycle. I took 
my sixteen-gauge cylinder gun with me, be¬ 
cause there were ducks in almost every pool, 
the partridge season commenced in two days, 
and there was always a remote possibility of 
meeting a bear on the blueberry barrens. 
For some reasons I should have been very 
glad of Tom Crib’s company. He was an in¬ 
telligent little beast, a grand watchdog, and de¬ 
voted to me. On the other hand, he was as 
terrible a fighter as his namesake, the former 
fistic champion of England; slayer of cats and 
a would-be slayer of porcupines. He weighed 
twenty-two pounds and would tackle anything 
from a chipmunk to an automobile when the 
spirit moved him. Therefore I relegated him 
to the wash-house at daylight on Saturday 
morning and mounted my bicycle to an accom-* 
paniment of heart-broken wails and yapping. 
I had some ten miles to ride before I dis¬ 
carded my bicycle. I had gone about one-third 
of the distance when I turned a sharp cornel, 
and the first object my eyes beheld was Tom 
Crib sitting in the middle of the road, the 
picture of guilty triumph. The little brute had 
escaped from durance, followed me, keeping 
out of sight in the bushes, and now that he 
judged he was too far from home to be taken 
back, he thought it expedient to show himself. 
I might as well have told my bicycle to go 
back to town without a rider. The wash-house 
window was guarded with stout wire netting to 
hinder a repetition of the time he went through 
the window sash after me, and the lower part of 
the door was lined with sheet zinc, in memory 
of a most heroic and almost successful attempt 
to gnaw his way out of captivity. There hap¬ 
pened to be a telephone office about two miles 
further on. I decided to stop there, inform my 
wife that her dog had broken his arrest and ask 
for explanations. 
As I approached the house, a little girl ran 
out to meet me. “Your wife called us up a few 
minutes ago and asked me to look out for you. 
She wants to speak to you. Will you bring 
Tommy in and make him dance?” 
I suggested that the cat should be shut up in 
the cellar, and when that had been done, I 
went in and conversed with my wife. “That 
stupid girl,” said she, “heard Tom crying in the 
wash-house, and went out to see what was the 
matter with him. He ran between her legs and 
went down the back street like a flash. Do you 
think you can get some one to bring him back?” 
I replied that I had no dog chain.and no time 
to spend making a crate. He would chew off 
a rope in two minutes, and if I put him in a 
sack and sent him home as one sends a small 
pig, the sack would have to be a leather one or 
he would eat his way out of it before he had 
gone a mile. I therefore concluded I would 
take him with me. I had a pair of pliers in my 
kit, and should be able to remove any quills he 
might pick up, should he happen to encounter a 
porcupine. 
When I had adjusted this matter, and Tom 
Crib had performed the “bear dance” to the 
delight of the children and stuffed himself with 
cookies to his own satisfaction, we pursued our 
journey to Angus McKeen’s. Angus is a par¬ 
ticularly “dour” Scotchman. He farms in the 
summer and lumbers in the winter. There was 
one thing in Angus’ favor, however. Anything 
you left at his house was safe. On a previous 
occasion I had left my bicycle at Jean De 
Vaux’s house in Francheville, and on my return 
I found that some one had stolen my kit-bag 
and acetylene lamp. Poor old Jean was heart¬ 
broken about the theft, and wanted to make my 
loss good. I would as soon have suspected 
jolly old Father Cormier of the crime, but I 
had no wish for the offense to be repeated, so 
I took the tote road which ran in from Angus 
McKeen’s in preference to the one which goes 
in from South Francheville. I suppose Angus 
was the only man in the polling section who did 
not keep a dog. His neighbors said he was too 
mean to feed one. He and his boy were dig¬ 
ging potatoes when I rode up to the house. He 
left his hack—a species of magnified four¬ 
toothed rake—in the field, and came to see 
what I wanted, and incidentally to “cadge” to¬ 
bacco from me. I was aware that he was al¬ 
ways “just out of tobacco and had no time to 
run down to the store before evening,” so I 
had provided myself with a fig of-strong plug. 
“And so ye’l be for spendin’ the Sawbath i’ 
the woods wi’ yer goon, an’ yon ill-favored look¬ 
in’ dog. Ye’d be the better if ye spent it to 
hame wi’ yer wife, an’ the Buik. I wonder ye 
are na’ feered that a judgment will fa’ on ye 
like it did on Jerome Saulnier. Ye’ve heered 
the tale of him, an’ how they fun’ his dead body 
i’ the camp he built on the Sawbath?” 
I had heard the story, and I had also con¬ 
versed with the doctor who held the post¬ 
mortem on Mr. Saulnier. According to his ac¬ 
count, Jerome had died from an aneurism of 
the heart of which he had been complaining for 
some time. The fact that the priest refused to 
bury him with the rites of the church had ac- 
casioned a great sensation among the French 
population. Which of his particular crimes had 
led to this refusal no one could say. He had 
passed the greater part of his life defying the 
civil law, when not expiating his offenses in jail 
or in the penitentiary; and he was in hiding 
from the sheriff when death put an end to his 
career. 
“Talking of Jerome Saulnier, how is his 
camp? It should be in pretty good order, and 
it would make a good stopping place between 
Lake Harris and St. Croix Lake. I never went 
to it, but I have a pretty good idea where it 
is. 
“Ye’l find na’ camp there if ye go where it 
was. I mysel’ set fire to the accursed place an’ 
burnt it a year gone. I wad no’ a slept anither 
nicht i’ the place for a’ the money Jerome stole, 
an’ a’ the fur he ever trapped. I laughed at thae 
Frenchmen when they said he ‘walked’, an’ that 
he had become ‘fi-follet’. I put nae trust i’ 
such things, but what I saw that night showed 
me that his spirit wad na’ rest i’ the grave the 
’Piscopal minister put his body intae.” 
Now of all the beings in the French-Can- 
adian demonology the Fi-follet, or Feu-follet is 
the most malignant. The loup garrou has power 
over the bodies of men only. The Lutins are 
harmless elves whose most prominent char¬ 
acteristic is their love for domestic animals. 
The ’Chasse-gallerie is variously explained as a 
form of penance for the souls of voyageurs 
