angements that remained to
be made at Tadousac for the smooth running of to-morrow's affair. He
ordered a good horse and a "_quatre roue_" to be ready for him at five
o'clock; and having parted with Ethel in the manner appropriate even
for so brief a separation, he was away for the river in due season.

The long road with its heavy stretches of sand, its incredibly steep
clay hills, its ruts and bumpers over which the buckboard rocked like a
boat in a choppy sea, and its succession of shadeless _habitant_ houses
and discouraged farms, had never seemed to him so monotonous. At eight
o'clock, when it was growing dusk, and the moon rising, he reached the
landing-place on the Branch, and found his canoe, with his two old
canoe-men, P'tit Louis, and Vieux Louis, waiting for him. With their
warm, homely greeting his spirits began to revive; and the swift run
through foaming rapids and eddying pools, along the four miles of the
Branch, brought him into a state of mind that was thoroughly cheerful,
not to say exhilarated. There was Brackett's Camp on the point above
the Forks; and there was the veteran painter-angler himself, with his
white beard and his knickerbockers, standing on the shore to wave a
salutation as the canoe shot by the point. There was the main river,
rushing down with full waters from the northwest, and roaring past the
island. There was the club-house among the white birches and the
balsams on the opposite bank, with the two flags fluttering in the
moonlight, and the lights twinkling from the long, low veranda. And
there were half a dozen canoe-men with a lantern at the landing-steps,
and old John the steward in his white apron rubbing his hands, and the
Colonel and the Doctor blowing the conch and the fish-horn in merry
welcome. It was all very jolly, and Chichester knew at once that he was
at home.

Dinner at nine o'clock, before the big open hearth, with a friendly
fire. Much chaffing and pleasant talk about the arrangements for
to-morrow. A man to be sent off at daybreak to have two buckboards ready
at the landing at seven for the drive to Tadousac. Then a reprehensible
quantity of tobacco smoked in the book-room, and the tale of the
season's angling told from the beginning with many embellishments and
divagations. There were stories of good luck and bad; vituperations of
the lumbermen for leaving tree-tops and broken branches in the stream to
get caught among the rocks and ruin the fishing; accounts of