The days and months and years of a life race with accelerating pace and
youth goes and age comes as the days race, but one is not older for the
white days. The clock stops, the blood runs faster, furrows in gray
matter smooth out, time forgets to put in tiny crow's-feet and the extra
gray hair a week, or to withdraw by the hundredth of an ounce the oxygen
from the veins; one grows no older for the days spent out of doors.
Allah does not count them.

It was days like these which hope held ahead as I paid earnest attention
to the good food set before me. And behold, beside the pleasant vision
of hope rose a happy-minded sister called memory. She took the word
"Huron," this kindly spirit, and played magic with it, and the walls of
the Chateau rolled into rustling trees and running water.

I was sitting, in my vision, in flannel shirt and knickerbockers, on a
log by a little river, putting together fishing tackle and casting an
eye, off and on, where rapids broke cold over rocks and whirled into
foam-flecked, shadowy pools. There should be trout in those shadows.

"Take the butt, Rafael, while I string the line."

Rafael slipped across--still in my vision of memory--and was holding my
rod as a rod should be held, not too high or too low, or too far or too
near--right. He was an old Huron, a chief of Indian Lorette, and woods
craft was to him as breathing.

"A varry light rod," commented Rafael in his low voice which held no
tones out of harmony with water in streams or wind in trees. "A varry
light, good rod," paying meanwhile strict attention to his job. "M'sieu
go haf a luck today. I t'ink M'sieu go catch a beeg fish on dat river.
Water high enough--not too high. And cold." He shivered a little. "Cold
last night--varry cold nights begin now. Good hun-ting wedder."

"Have you got a moose ready for me on the little lake, Rafael? It's the
1st of September next week and I expect you to give me a shot before the
3d."

Rafael nodded. "Oui, m'sieur. First day." The keen-eyed, aquiline old
face was as of a prophet. "We go get moose first day. I show you." With
that the laughter-loving Frenchman in him flooded over the Indian
hunter; for a second the two inheritances played like colors in shot
silk, producing an elusive fabric, Rafael's charm. "If nights get so
colder, m'sieur go need moose skin kip him warm."

I was looking over my flies now, the book open before me, its
fascinating pages of color more brilliant than a