Frenchman--Canadian French, you understand, and therefore even more
proud and tenacious of his race than if he had been born in
Normandy. Somewhere in his family tree there must have been a graft
from the Green Isle. A wandering lumberman from County Kerry had
drifted up the Saguenay into the Lake St. John region, and married
the daughter of a habitant, and settled down to forget his own
country and his father's house. But every visible trace of this
infusion of new blood had vanished long ago, except the name; and
the name itself was transformed on the lips of the St. Geromians.
If you had heard them speak it in their pleasant droning accent,--
"Patrique Moullarque,"--you would have supposed that it was made in
France. To have a guide with such a name as that was as good as
being abroad.

Even when they cut it short and called him "Patte," as they usually
did, it had a very foreign sound. Everything about him was in
harmony with it; he spoke and laughed and sang and thought and felt
in French--the French of two hundred years ago, the language of
Samuel de Champlain and the Sieur de Monts, touched with a strong
woodland flavour. In short, my guide, philosopher, and friend, Pat,
did not have a drop of Irish in him, unless, perhaps, it was a
certain--well, you shall judge for yourself, when you have heard
this story of his virtue, and the way it was rewarded.

It was on the shore of the Lac a la Belle Riviere, fifteen miles
back from St. Gerome, that I came into the story, and found myself,
as commonly happens in the real stories which life is always
bringing out in periodical form, somewhere about the middle of the
plot. But Patrick readily made me acquainted with what had gone
before. Indeed, it is one of life's greatest charms as a story-