Dan Murphy was mightily pleased with himself and with the bit of the
world about him, for there lay his winter's cut of logs in the river
below him snug and secure and held tight by a boom across the mouth,
just where it flowed into the Nation. In a few days he would have his
crib made, and his outfit ready to start for the Ottawa mills. He was
sure to be ahead of the big timber rafts that took up so much space,
and whose crews with unbearable effrontery considered themselves the
aristocrats of the river.

Yes, it was a pleasant and satisfying sight, some three solid miles of
logs boomed at the head of the big water. Suddenly Murphy turned his
face up the river.

"What's that now, d'ye think, LeNware?" he asked.

LeNoir, or "LeNware," as they all called it in that country, was Dan
Murphy's foreman, and as he himself said, "for haxe, for hit (eat),
for fight de boss on de reever Hottawa! by Gar!" Louis LeNoir was a
French-Canadian, handsome, active, hardy, and powerfully built. He had
come from the New Brunswick woods some three years ago, and had wrought
and fought his way, as he thought, against all rivals to the proud
position of "boss on de reever," the topmost pinnacle of a lumberman's
ambition. It was something to see LeNoir "run a log" across the river
and back; that is, he would balance himself upon a floating log, and by
spinning it round, would send it whither he would. At Murphy's question
LeNoir stood listening with bent head and open mouth. Down the river
came the sound of singing. "Don-no me! Ah oui! be dam! Das Macdonald
gang for sure! De men from Glengarrie, les diables! Dey not hout de
reever yet." His boss went off into a volley of oaths--