ice, "where you don't 'ave to begin with
the tailings. I know the place. But what's the good? All the same, you
want capital."

He went to the shelf in the wall above the stove, and took a pipe, which
he filled with tobacco, and then he drew some coals out on the stove
hearth. But before he dropped one of them on his pipe with his horny
thumb and finger, he asked politely, "You hobject to the smoking?"

Northwick said he did not, and Bird said, "It is one of three things you
can do here in the winter; smoke the pipe, cut the wood, court the
ladies." Northwick remembered his saying that before, too, and how it
had made his wife laugh. "I used to do all three. Now I smoke the pipe.
Well, while you are young, it is all right, and it is fun in the woods.
But I was always 'omesick for Quebec, more or less. You know what it is
to be 'omesick."

The word pierced Northwick through the vagary which clothed his
consciousness like a sort of fog, and made his heart bleed with
self-pity.

"Well, I been 'omesick forty years, and I don't know what for, any more.
I been back to Quebec; it is not the same. You know 'ow they pull down
those city gate? What they want to do that for? The gate did not keep
the stranger hout; it let them in! And there were too many people dead!
Now I think I am 'omesick just to get away from here. If I had some
capital--ten, fifteen thousand dollars--I would hopen that mine, and
take out my hundred, two hundred thousand dollar, and then, Good-by,
Haha Bay! I would make it hecho like it never hecho before. I don't want
nothing to work up the tailings of my mine, me! There is gold enough
there to pay, and I can hire those _habitans_ cheap, like dirt. What is
their time worth? The bush is cut away: they got nothing to do. It is
the time of a setting 'en, as you Americans say, their time."

Bird smoked away for a little while in silence, and then he seemed
aware, for the first time, that Northwick had not taken off his wraps,
and he said, hospitably, "I 'ope you will spend the night with me here?"

Northwick said, "Thank you, I don't know. Is it far to Chicoutimi?" He
knew, but he asked, hoping the man would exaggerate the distance, and
then he would not have to go.

"It is eleven mile, but the road is bad. Drifted."

"I will wait till to-morrow," said Northwick, and he began to unswathe
and unbutton, but so feebly that Bird noticed.

"Allow me!" he said, putting down his pipe, and coming to his aid. H