rity and its tardy
relief. Credit, that intangible, indefinable thing that alone makes
the life of the world go on, must be established at once. And it was
characteristic of Joseph Winthrop that, in endorsing the notes of
penniless, broken men, he did not feel that he was signing obligations
upon himself and his diocese. He was simply writing down his gospel of
his unbounded, unafraid faith in all true men. And it is a commentary
upon that faith of his that he was never presented with a single one
of the notes he signed that day.

All the day long men toiled with heart and will, dragging logs and
driftwood from the lake and cutting, splitting, shaping planks and
joists for a shanty, while the women picked burnt nails and spikes
from the ruins of what had been their homes. So that when night came
down over the hills there was an actual shelter over the heads of
women and children. And the light spirited, sanguine people raised
cheer after cheer as their imagination leaped ahead to the new French
Village that would rise glorious out of the ashes of the old. Then
Father Ponfret, catching their mood, raised for them the hymn to the
Good Saint Anne. They were all men from below Beaupre and from far
Chicothomi where the Good Saint holds the hearts of all. That hymn had
never been out of their childhood hearing. They sang it now, old and
young, good and bad, their eyes filling with the quick-welling tears,
their hearts rising high in hope and love and confidence on the lilt
of the air. Even the Bishop, whose singing voice approached a scandal
and whose French has been spoken of before, joined in loud and
unashamed.

Then mothers clucking softly to their offspring in the twilight
brooded them in to shelter from the night damp of the lake, and men,
sharing odd pieces and wisps of tobacco, lay down to talk and plan and
dropped dead asleep with the hot pipes still clenched in their teeth.

Also, a bishop, a very tired, weary man, a very old man to-night, laid
his head upon a saddle and a folded blanket and considered the
Mysteries of God and His world, as the beads slipped through his
fingers and unfolded their story to him.

Two men were stumbling fearfully down through the ashes of the far
slope to the lake. All day long they had lain on their faces in the
grass just beyond the highest line of the fire. The fire had gone on
past them leaving them safe. But behind them rose tier upon tier of
barren rocks, and behind those la