opinions; but in his dazed
intelligence he could not find the answers.

Bird roared out, "Haw! Do not regard him! He is a man of the other
world--an angel--a mere imbecile--about business!" The priest threw
himself back in his chair and laughed tolerantly, showing his beautiful
teeth. "All those rich men they give work to the poor. If I had a few
thousand dollars to hopen up that place in the 'ill, I would furnish
work to every man in Haha Bay--to hundreds. Are the miners more
miserable than those _habitans_, eh?"

"The good God seems to think so," returned the priest, seriously. "At
least, he has put the gold in the rocks so that you cannot get it out.
What would you give the devil to help you?" he asked, with a smile.

"When I want to make a bargain with the devil, I don't come to you, Pere
Etienne; I go to a notary. You ever hear, sir," said Bird, turning to
Northwick, "about that notary at Montreal--"

"I think I will go to bed," said Northwick, abruptly. "I am not feeling
very well--I am very tired, that is." He had suddenly lost account of
what and where he was. It seemed to him that he was both there and at
Hatboro'; that there were really two Northwicks, and that there was a
third self somewhere in space, conscious of them both.

It was this third Northwick whom Bird and the priest would have helped
to bed if he had suffered them, but who repulsed their offers. He made
shift to undress himself, while he heard them talking in French with
lowered voices in the next room. Their debate seemed at an end. After a
little while he heard the door shut, as if the priest had gone away.
Afterwards he appeared to have come back.

VI.

The talk went on all night in Northwick's head between those two
Frenchmen, who pretended to be of contrary opinions, but were really
leagued to get the better of him, and lure him on to put his money into
that mine. In the morning his fever was gone; but he was weak, and he
could not command his mind, could not make it stay by him long enough to
decide whether any harm would come from remaining over a day before he
pushed on to Chicoutimi. He tried to put in order or sequence the
reasons he had for coming so deep into the winter and the wilderness;
but when he passed from one to the next, the former escaped him.

Bird looked in with his blue woollen bonnet on his head, and his pipe in
his mouth, and he removed each to ask how Northwick was, and whether he
would like to have s