c of size, aloft on his pedestal on the terrace outside, lifts his
plumed hat and stares in at the narrow windows, turning his back on
river and lower city. One disregards waiters in evening clothes and
up-to-date table appointments, and one looks at Champlain and the
"fleuve," and the Isle d'Orleans lying long and low, and one thinks of
little ships, storm-beaten, creeping up to this grim bigness ignorant
of continental events trailing in their wake.

I was on my way to camp in a club a hundred miles north of the
gray-walled town when I drifted into the little dining-room for dinner
one night in early September in 1918. The head-waiter was an old friend;
he came to meet me and piloted me past a tableful of military color,
four men in service uniforms.

"Some high officers, sir," spoke the head waiter. "In conference here, I
believe. There's a French officer, and an English, and our Canadian
General Sampson, and one of your generals, sir."

I gave my order and sat back to study the group. The waiter had it
straight; there was the horizon blue of France; there was the Englishman
tall and lean and ruddy and expressionless and handsome; there was the
Canadian, more of our own cut, with a mobile, alert face. The American
had his back to me and all I could see was an erect carriage, a brown
head going to gray, and the one star of a brigadier-general on his
shoulders. The beginnings of my dinner went fast, but after soup there
was a lull before greater food, and I paid attention again to my
neighbors. They were talking in English.

"A Huron of Lorette--does that mean a full-blooded Indian of the Huron
tribe, such as one reads of in Parkman?" It was the Englishman who
asked, responding to something I had not heard.

"There's no such animal as a full-blooded Huron," stated the Canadian.
"They're all French-Indian half-breeds now. Lorette's an interesting
scrap of history, just the same. You know your Parkman? You remember how
the Iroquois followed the defeated Hurons as far as the Isle d'Orleans,
out there?" He nodded toward where the big island lay in the darkness of
the St. Lawrence. "Well, what was left after that chase took refuge
fifteen miles north of Quebec, and founded what became and has stayed
the village of Indian Lorette. There are now about five or six hundred
people, and it's a nation. Under its own laws, dealing by treaty with
Canada, not subject to draft, for instance. Queer, isn't it? They guard
their iden