The next day she awaited his coming somewhat anxiously. She felt that she must know how he was before––before taking that last step. After all he had tried to be considerate, except in the matter of those amazing lies. During the afternoon Mrs. Papineau, growing anxious, sent little Baptiste over to enquire after him. The small boy returned, saying that he had seen two squirrels and a rabbit on the tote-road, and the track of a fox, and that he had found Hugo sitting by the fire. And Hugo had declared that he was all right and––and perhaps he wasn’t pleased, because he spoke very shortly and had told him to hurry home. So Baptiste had left, and on his way he had seen partridges sitting on a fir sapling, and if he’d had a gun, or even some rocks....
But this circumstantial narrative was interrupted by the barking of the dogs. The sun was about setting. Madge looked out of the window, while Mrs. Papineau rushed to the door. It was a man arriving with a toboggan and two big dogs.
“Dat my man Philippe coming,” announced the woman, happily.
She held the door open, letting in a blast of cold air, and the man entered, tired with 184 long tramping. From the toboggan he removed a load of pelts, dead hares that would serve chiefly for bait, his blankets and the indispensable axe. Mrs. Papineau volubly explained the guest’s presence and he greeted her kindly.
“You frien’ of Hugo Ennis,” he said. “Den you is velcome an’ me glad for see you, mademoiselle.”
He was a pleasant-faced, stocky and broad-limbed man of rather short stature, and his manner was altogether kindly and pleasant. The simplicity and cordiality of his manner was entirely in keeping with the ways of his family. It was curious that all the people she had met so far seemed to have come to an agreement in speaking well of Ennis.
The man sat down, after the smallest of the children had swarmed all over him, and took off his Dutch stockings, waiting for the plenteous meal and the hot tea his wife was preparing. Meanwhile, to lose no time, he began to skin a pine marten.
“Plent’ much good luck dis time,” he said, turning to Madge. “Five vison, vat you call mink, and a pair martens. Also one fox, jus’ leetle young fox but pelt ver’ nice. You want for see?”
She inspected the pelts and looked at the 185 animals that were yet unskinned, realizing for the first time how men went off in the wilds for days and weeks and months at a time, in bitterest weather, to provide furs for fine ladies.
The darkness had come and the big oil lamp was lighted. The children played about her for a time and gradually sought their couches in bunks and truckle-beds. The man was relating incidents of the trapping to his wife, who nodded understandingly. Beaver were getting plentiful along the upper reaches of the Roaring; it was a pity that the law prevented their killing for such a long time. He had seen tracks of caribou, that are scarce in that region; but they were very old tracks, not worth following, since these animals are such great travelers.