settlers to New France. They are a songless tribe,
although their quick, reiterated call as they take to flight has
given them the name of chatterers. The beautiful tree-sparrows and the
pine-siskins are more melodious, and the slate-coloured juncos, flitting
about the camp, are as garrulous as chippy-birds. All these varied notes
come and go through the tangle of morning dreams. And now the noisy
blue-jay is calling "Thief--thief--thief!" in the distance, and a pair
of great pileated woodpeckers with crimson crests are laughing loudly in
the swamp over some family joke. But listen! what is that harsh creaking
note? It is the cry of the Northern shrike, of whom tradition says that
he catches little birds and impales them on sharp thorns. At the sound
of his voice the concert closes suddenly and the singers vanish into
thin air. The hour of music is over; the commonplace of day has begun.
And there is my lady Greygown, already up and dressed, standing by the
breakfast-table and laughing at my belated appearance.

But the birds were not our only musicians at Kenogami. French Canada is
one of the ancestral homes of song. Here you can still listen to those
quaint ballads which were sung centuries ago in Normandie and Provence.
"A la Claire Fontaine," "Dans Paris y a-t-une Brune plus Belle que le
Jour," "Sur le Pont d'Avignon," "En Roulant ma Boule," "La Poulette
Grise," and a hundred other folk-songs linger among the peasants and
voyageurs of these northern woods. You may hear

"Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre--
Mironton, mironton, mirontaine,"

and

"Isabeau s'y promene
Le long de son jardin,"

chanted in the farmhouse or the lumber shanty, to the tunes which have
come down from an unknown source, and never lost their echo in the
hearts of the people.

Our Ferdinand was a perfect fountain of music. He had a clear tenor
voice, and solaced every task and shortened every voyage with melody. "A
song, Ferdinand, a jolly song," the other men would say, as the canoes
went sweeping down the quiet lake. And then the leader would strike up a
well-known air, and his companions would come in on the refrain, keeping
time with the stroke of their paddles. Sometimes it would be a merry
ditty:

"My father had no girl but me,
And yet he sent me off to sea;
Leap, my little Cecilia."

Or perhaps it was:

"I've danced so much the livelong day,--
Dance, my sweetheart, let's be gay,--