"What do you do in the winter, then?"
"Shanties-shanties all the time. In the summer this; in the Fall taking the men back to the shanties. Bossing the lot; doing it from love of the life that's been given back to me. Yes, this is the life that makes you take things easy. You don't get fussed out here. The job I had took a bit of doing, but it was done, and I'm lucky to have my boss see the end of it."
He smiled benignly upon John Grier. He knew he was valuable to the Grier organization; he knew that Grier had heard of him under another name. Now Grier had seen him, and he felt he would like to tell John Grier some things about the river he ought to know. He waved a hand declining the cigar offered him by his great chief.
"Thanks, I don't smoke, and I don't drink, and I don't chew; but I eat —by gosh, I eat! Nothing's so good as good food, except good reading."
"Good reading!" exclaimed John Grier. "Good reading—on the river!"
"Well, it's worked all right, and I read a lot. I get books from
Montreal, from the old library at the University."
"At what University?" struck in the lumber-king. "Oh, Laval! I wouldn't go to McGill. I wanted to know French, so I went to Laval. There I came to know Father Labasse. He was a great man, Father Labasse. He helped me. I was there three years, and then was told I was going to die. It was Labasse who gave me this tip. He said, 'Go into the woods; put your teeth into the trees; eat the wild herbs, and don't come back till you feel well.' Well, I haven't gone back, and I'm not going back."
"What do you do with your wages?" asked the lumber-king.
"I bought land. I've got a farm of four hundred acres twenty miles from here. I've got a man on it working it."
"Does it pay?"