s_, small farmers, very poor, thinking
in terms of narrowest economy, of one pig and ten children, of
painstaking thrift and a bare margin to subsistence. Such conditions
stifle world interests. The earthquake which threatened civilization
disturbed the _habitant_ merely because it hazarded his critical balance
on the edge of want. The cataclysm over the ocean was none of his
affair. And his affairs pressed. What about the pig if one went to war?
And could Alphonse, who is fourteen, manage the farm so that there would
be vegetables for winter? Tell me that.

When in September, 1914, I went to Canada for two weeks of camping I had
heard of this point of view. Dick Lindsley and I were met at the Club
Station on the casual railway which climbs the mountains through Quebec
Province, by four guides, men from twenty to thirty-five, powerfully
built chaps, deep-shouldered and slim-waisted, lithe as wild-cats. It
was a treat to see their muscles, like machines in the pink of order,
adjust to the heavy _pacquetons_, send a canoe whipping through the
water. There was one exception to the general physical perfection; one
of Dick's men, a youngster of perhaps twenty-two, limped. He covered
ground as well as the others, for all of that; he picked the heaviest
load and portaged it at an uneven trot, faster than his comrades; he was
what the _habitants_ call "ambitionne." Dick's canoe was loaded first,
owing to the fellow's efficiency, and I waited while it got away and
watched the lame boy. He had an interesting face, aquiline and dark, set
with vivid light-blue eyes, shooting restless fire. I registered an
intention to get at this lad's personality. The chance came two days
later. My men were off chopping on a day, and I suddenly needed to go
fishing.

"Take Philippe," offered Dick. "He handles a boat better than any of
them."

Philippe and I shortly slipped into the Guardian's Pool, at the lower
end of the long lake of the Passes. "It is here, M'sieur," Philippe
announced, "that it is the custom to take large ones."

By which statement the responsibility of landing record trout was on my
shoulders. I thought I would have a return whack. My hands in the snarly
flies and my back to Philippe I spoke around my pipe, yet spoke
distinctly.

"Why aren't you in France fighting?"

The canoe shivered down its length as if the man at its stern had
jumped. There was a silence. Then Philippe's deep, boyish voice
answered.

"As M'sieur