and their
strand beheld debarking against it the boldest pirates of the
French-Canadian Hellas.

In Chrysler's walks he met signs of the excitement even where a long
stroll brought him far back into the country.

The one of such corners named Misericorde from its wretchedness, was a
hamlet of thirty or forty cabins crowded together among some scrub trees
in the midst of a stony moor. The inhabitants, of whom a good share were
broken-down beggars and nondescript fishermen, varied their discouraged
existences by drinking, wood sawing and doing odd jobs for the
surrounding farmers, while their slatternly women idled at the doors and
the children grew up wild, trooping over the surrounding waste.
Politically, the place was noted for its unreliability. It was well
known that every suffrage in it was open to corruption. In ordinary
times the Rouges troubled themselves little about this, but the strong
combination they had now to fight might make the vote of La Misericorde
of considerable importance; hence, there was some value in the trust
which had been placed, at the meeting, in Benoit and Spoon.

Here the latter, even more than at Dormilliere, was in his element.

A drinking house, misnamed "hotel," was the most prominent building in
Misericorde. It would not have ornamented a more respectable locality
but, on the whole, possessed a certain picturesqueness, among these
hovels, and arrested the Ontarian's steps. Stained a dark grey by at
least fifty years of exposure, yet slightly tinted with the traces of a
by-gone coat of green, it lifted a high peaked roof in air, which in
descent, suddenly curving, was carried far out over a high-set front
gallery reached by very steep steps. On the stuck-out sign, which was in
the same faded condition as the rest of the building, were with
difficulty to be distinguished in a suggestion of yellow color the
shapes of a large and small French loaf, and the inscription "BOULONGE,"
but the baking had apparently passed away with the paint. While he was
curiously surveying this antique bit, a loud voice sounded through the
open door, and the heavy form of the "Yankee from Longueuil"
precipitated itself proudly, though a trifle unsteadily, forward down
the steps and along the middle of the street, swearing, boasting and
heading a swarm of men and boys, and loudly drawling a line of
Connecticut notions in blasphemy.

It could be seen that Spoon was some kind of a hero in the eyes of
Miser