e, with one of his
lightning-changes, he was austere.

"M'sieur go need beeg trout tonight; not go need moose skin till nex'
wik. Ze rod is ready take feesh, I see feesh jump by ole log. Not much
room to cast, but m'sieur can do it. Shall I carry rod down to river for
m'sieur?"

In not so many words as I have written, but in clear pictures which
comprehended the words, Memory, that temperamental goddess of moods,
had, at the prick of the word "Huron," shaken out this soft-colored
tapestry of the forest, and held it before my eyes. And as she withdrew
this one, others took its place and at length I was musing profoundly,
as I put more of something on my plate and tucked it away into my
anatomy. I mused about Rafael, the guide of sixty, who had begun a life
of continued labor at eight years; I considered the undying Indian in
him; how with the father who was "French of Picardy"--the white blood
being a pride to Rafael--he himself, yes, and the father also, for he
had married a "_sauvagess_," a Huron woman--had belonged to the tribe
and were accounted Hurons; I considered Rafael's proud carriage, his
classic head and carved features, his Indian austerity and his French
mirth weaving in and out of each other; I considered the fineness and
the fearlessness of his spirit, which long hardship had not blunted; I
reflected on the tales he had told me of a youth forced to fight the
world. "_On a vu de le misere_," Rafael had said: "One has seen
trouble"--shaking his head, with lines of old suffering emerging from
the reserve of his face like writing in sympathetic ink under heat. And
I marvelled that through such fire, out of such neglect, out of lack of
opportunity and bitter pressure, the steel of a character should have
been tempered to gentleness and bravery and honor.

For it was a very splendid old boy who was cooking for me and greasing
my boots and going off with me after moose; putting his keen ancestral
instincts of three thousand years at my service for three dollars a
day. With my chances would not Rafael have been a bigger man than I? At
least never could I achieve that grand air, that austere repose of
manner which he had got with no trouble at all from a line of unwashed
but courageous old bucks, thinking highly of themselves for untold
generations, and killing everything which thought otherwise. I laughed
all but aloud at this spot in my meditations, as a special vision of
Rafael rose suddenly, when he had stat