From the curé’s I cut across the fields to escape further delay, and so, avoiding the westerly skirts of the village, came out upon the Canard trail. I made the utmost haste, for the afternoon was already on the wane. For some three miles beyond the village the road runs through a piece of old woods, mostly of beech, birch, and maple, whose young greenery exhaled a most pleasant smell on the fresh June air. By the wayside grew the flowers of later spring, purple wake-robins, the pink and white wild honeysuckle, the solitary painted triangle of the trillium, and the tender pink bells of the linn?a, revealed by their perfume. Once I frightened a scurrying covey of young partridges. As for the squirrels, chipmunks, and rabbits, so pert were they in their fearless curiosity that I was ready to pretend they were the same as those which of old in my boyish vagabondings I had taught to be unafraid of my approach. With the one half of 88my soul I was a boy again, retraversing these dear familiar woods; the other half of me, meanwhile, was bowed with a presentiment of disaster. The confidence in the priest’s tone still thrilled me with fear. But under whatever alternations of hope and despair, deep down in my heart where the great resolves take form deliberately my purpose settled into the shape which does not change. By the time I emerged from the wood I was ready to laugh at Father Fafard or anyone else who should tell me that success would not be mine at the last.

“She may not know it yet herself, but she is mine,” I declared to the open marshes, as I set foot out upon the raised way which led over to the Habitants Ferry.

The ferry-boat which crosses the deep and turbid tide of the Habitants is a clumsy scow propelled by a single oar thrust out from the stern. The river is hardly passable save for an hour on either side of full flood. The rest of the time it is a shrinking yet ever-turbulent stream which roars along between precipitous banks of red engulfing slime. When I reached the shore of this unstable water it lacked but a few minutes of flood. The scow was just putting off for the opposite shore, with one passenger. I recognized the ferryman, yellow Ba’tiste Chouan, ever a friend to me in the dear old days. I shouted for him to wait.

89The scow was already some half score feet from land, but Ba’tiste, seeing the prospect of more silver, stopped and made as if to turn back. At once, however, his passenger interfered, with vehement gestures, and eager speech which I could not hear. Eying him closely, I perceived that it was none other than that ruffian of Vaurin’s whom I had so incontinently discomfited at the forge. His haste I could now well understand, and I saw him urging it with such effective silvern argument that Ba’tiste began to yield.

“Ba’tiste,” I cried sharply, “don’t you know me? Take a good look at me; my haste is urgent.”

My voice caught him. “Tiens! It’s Master Paul,” he cried, and straightway thrust back to shore, calmly ignoring threats and bribes alike.

As I sprang aboard and grasped Ba’tiste’s gaunt claw I expected nothing less than a second bout with my adversary of the morning. But he, while I talked with the ferryman of this and that, according to the wont of old acquaintances long apart, kept a discreet silence at the other end of the scow, where, as I casually noted, he stood with folded arms looking out over the water. A scarlet feather stuck foppishly in his dark cap became him very well; and I could not but account him a proper figure of a man, though somewhat short.

Presently, at a pause in our talk, he turned and 90approached us. To my astonishment he wore a civil smile.

“I was in the wrong this morning, Monsieur Grande,” he said, in a hearty, frank voice such as I like, though well I know it is no certificate of an honest heart. “I interfered in a gentleman’s private business; and though your rebuke was something more sharp than I could have wished, I deserved it. Allow me to make my apologies.”

Now............