kindness as an old
acquaintance. He would have liked to ask if he still caught wild animals
for showmen, and how his trade prospered; if he had always lived at Haha
Bay since they met. But he was the more decided to ignore their former
meeting because the man addressed him in English at once, and apparently
knew him for an American. Perhaps other defaulters had been there
before; perhaps the mines had brought Americans there prospecting.

"Good morning, sir!" cried the Canadian. "I am glad to see you! Let me
'elp you hout, sir. Well, it is a pleasure to speak a little English
with some one! The English close hup with the river in the autumn, but
it open early this year. I 'ope you are a sign of many Americans. They
are the life of our country. Without the Americans we could not live.
No, sir. Not a day. Come in, come in. You will find you' room ready for
you, sir."

Northwick hung back suspiciously. "Were you expecting me?" he asked.

"No one!" cried the man, with a shrug and opening of the hands. "But
hall the travellers they stop with Bird, and where there are honly two
rooms, 'eat with one stove between the walls, their room is always
ready. Do me the pleasure!" He set the door open, and bowed Northwick
in. "Baptiste!" he called to the driver over his shoulder, "take you'
'orse to the stable." He added a long queue of unintelligible French to
his English, and the driver responded, "Hall right."

"I am the only person at Haha Bay who speaks English," he said, in the
same terms he had used twenty years before, when he presented himself to
Northwick and his wife on their steamboat, and asked them if they would
like to drive before breakfast. "But you must know me? Bird--_Oiseau_?
You have been here before?"

"No," said Northwick, with one lie for all. The man, with his cheer and
gayety, was even terribly familiar; and Northwick could have believed
that the room and the furniture in it were absolutely unchanged. There
was the little window that he knew opened on the poor vegetable garden,
with its spindling corn, and its beans for soup and coffee. There was
the chair his wife had sat in to look out on the things; but for the
frost on the pane he could doubtless see them growing now.

He sank into the chair, and said to himself that he should die there,
and it would be as well, it would be easy. He felt very old and weak;
and he did not try to take off the wraps which he had worn in the
sledge. He wished that he mi