the thing there. For four days, and then I see that
the White Chief will never get back to Fort Pentecost; but he read the
dead man's book much...."

"I cannot forget that one day. He lies down looking at the
world--nothing but the waves of snow, shining blue and white, on and on.
The sun lift an eye of blood in the north, winking like a devil as I try
to drive Death away by calling in his ear. He wake all at once; but
his eyes seem asleep. He tell me to take the book to a great man
in Montreal--he give me the name. Then he take out his watch--it is
stop--and this knife, and put them into my hands, and then he pat my
shoulder. He motion to have the bag drawn over his head. I do it.... Of
course that was the end!"

"But what about the book?" Medallion asked.

"That book? It is strange. I took it to the man in Montreal--tonnerre,
what a fine house and good wine had he!--and told him all. He whip out a
scarf, and blow his nose loud, and say very angry: 'So, she's lost
both now! What a scoundrel he was!...' Which one did he mean? I not
understan' ever since."

UNCLE JIM

He was no uncle of mine, but it pleased me that he let me call him Uncle
Jim.

It seems only yesterday that, for the first time, on a farm "over the
border," from the French province, I saw him standing by a log outside
the wood-house door, splitting maple knots. He was all bent by years and
hard work, with muscles of iron, hands gnarled and lumpy, but clinching
like a vise; grey head thrust forward on shoulders which had carried
forkfuls of hay and grain, and leaned to the cradle and the scythe,
and been heaped with cordwood till they were like hide and metal; white
straggling beard and red watery eyes, which, to me, were always hung
with an intangible veil of mystery--though that, maybe, was my boyish
fancy. Added to all this he was so very deaf that you had to speak clear
and loud into his ear; and many people he could not hear at all, if
their words were not sharp-cut, no matter how loud. A silent, withdrawn
man he was, living close to Mother Earth, twin-brother of Labour, to
whom Morning and Daytime were sounding-boards for his axe, scythe, saw,
flail, and milking-pail, and Night a round hollow of darkness into which
he crept, shutting the doors called Silence behind him, till the impish
page of Toil came tapping again, and he stepped awkwardly into the
working world once more. Winter and summer saw him putting the kettle
on the fire a fe