AVOCAT, has remarked the likeness of the names. How he has tracked the
family through Montmorency and Quebec, in all the parish books. How he
finds my great-grandfather's great-grandfather, Etienne de La Motte who
came to Canada two hundred years ago, a younger son of the Marquis de la
Luciere. How he has the papers, many of them, with red seals on them. I
saw them. 'Of course,' says he, 'there are others of the family
here to share the property. It must be divided. But it is
large--enormous--millions of francs. And the largest share is yours,
and the title, and a castle--a castle larger than Price's saw-mill at
Chicoutimi; with carpets, and electric lights, and coloured pictures on
the wall, like the hotel at Roberval.'

"When my mother heard about that she was pleased. But me--when I heard
that I was a marquis, I knew it was true."

Jean's blue eyes were wide open now, and sparkling brightly. He had
put down the pan of potatoes. He was holding his head up and talking
eagerly.

Alden turned away his face to light his pipe, and hide a smile. "Did he
get--any money--out of you?"--came slowly between the puffs of smoke.

"Money!" answered Jean, "of course there must be money to carry on an
affair of this kind. There was seventy dollars that I had cleaned up on
the lumber-job last winter, and the mother had forty dollars from the
cow she sold in the fall. A hundred and ten dollars,--we gave him that.
He has gone to France to make the claim for us. Next spring he comes
back, and I give him a hundred dollars more; when I get my property five
thousand dollars more. It is little enough. A marquis must not be mean."

Alden swore softly in English, under his breath. A rustic comedy, a joke
on human nature, always pleased him; but beneath his cynical varnish
he had a very honest heart, and he hated cruelty and injustice. He knew
what a little money meant in the backwoods; what hard and bitter toil it
cost to rake it together; what sacrifices and privations must follow
its loss. If the smooth prospector of unclaimed estates in France had
arrived at the camp on the Grande Decharge at that moment, Alden would
have introduced him to the most unhappy hour of his life.

But with Jean Lamotte it was by no means so easy to deal. Alden
perceived at once that ridicule would be worse than useless. The man was
far too much in earnest. A jest about a marquis with holes in his hat!
Yes, Jean would laugh at that very merrily; for he was a