me Paradis had caught seventeen small dore, four suckers, and
eleven channel-catfish before she used up all the worms in her
tomato-can. Therefore she was in a cheerful and loquacious humor when
I came along and offered her some of my bait.

"Merci; non, M'sieu. Dat's 'nuff fishin' for me. I got too old now for
fish too much. You like me make you present of six or seven dore? Yes?
All right. Then you make me present of one quarter dollar."

When this transaction was completed, the old lady got out her short
black clay pipe, and filled it with _tabac blanc_.

"Ver' good smell for scare mosquitoes," said she. "Sit down, M'sieu.
For sure I like to be here, me, for see the river when she's like
this."

Indeed the scene was more than picturesque. Her fishing-platform
extended twenty feet from the rocky shore of the great Rataplan Rapid
of the Ottawa, which, beginning to tumble a mile to the westward,
poured a roaring torrent half a mile wide into the broader, calm brown
reach below. Noble elms towered on the shores. Between their trunks we
could see many whitewashed cabins, whose doors of blue or green or red
scarcely disclosed their colors in that light.

The sinking sun, which already touched the river, seemed somehow the
source of the vast stream that flowed radiantly from its blaze.
Through the glamour of the evening mist and the maze of June flies we
could see a dozen men scooping for fish from platforms like that of
Ma'ame Paradis.

Each scooper lifted a great hoop-net set on a handle some fifteen feet
long, threw it easily up stream, and swept it on edge with the
current to the full length of his reach. Then it was drawn out and at
once thrown upward again, if no capture had been made. In case he had
taken fish, he came to the inshore edge of his platform, and upset the
net's contents into a pool separated from the main rapid by an
improvised wall of stones.

"I'm too old for scoop some now," said Ma'ame Paradis, with a sigh.

"You were never strong enough to scoop, surely," said I.

"No, eh? All right, M'sieu. Then you hain't nev' hear 'bout the time
Old Man Savarin was catched up with. No, eh? Well, I'll tol' you 'bout
that." And this was her story as she told it to me.

* * * * *

"Der was fun dose time. Nobody ain't nev' catch up with dat old rascal
ony other time since I'll know him first. Me, I'll be only fifteen
den. Dat's long time 'go, eh? Well, for sure, I ain't so