Barbille, miller and moneymaster, applied to his home-scene, when he was
at the height of his career. Both winter and summer the place had a look
of content and comfort, even a kind of opulence. There is nothing like a
grove of pines to give a sense of warmth in winter and an air of coolness
in summer, so does the slightest breeze make the pine-needles swish like
the freshening sea. But to this scene, where pines made a friendly
background, there were added oak, ash, and hickory trees, though in less
quantity on the side of the river where were Jean Jacques Barbille's
house and mills. They flourished chiefly on the opposite side of the
Beau Cheval, whose waters flowed so waywardly--now with a rush, now
silently away through long reaches of country. Here the land was rugged
and bold, while farther on it became gentle and spacious, and was flecked
or striped with farms on which low, white houses with dormer-windows and
big stoops flashed to the passer-by the message of the pioneer, "It is
mine. I triumph."

At the Manor Cartier, not far from the town of Vilray, where Jean Jacques
was master, and above it and below it, there had been battles and the
ravages of war. At the time of the Conquest the stubborn habitants,
refusing to accept the yielding of Quebec as the end of French power
in their proud province, had remained in arms and active, and had only
yielded when the musket and the torch had done their work, and smoking
ruins marked the places where homes had been. They took their fortune
with something of the heroic calm of men to whom an idea was more than
aught else. Jean Jacques' father, grandfather, and great-great-
grandfather had lived here, no one of them rising far, but none worthless
or unnoticeable. They all had had "a way of their own," as their
neighbours said, and had been provident on the whole. Thus it was that
when Jean Jacques' father died, and he came into his own, he found
himself at thirty a man of substance, unmarried, who "could have had the