"Such meetings are rare in the desert. And now allow me to ask you a question."
"Ten if you like—nay, fifty."
"Well, then, how was it that the moment you saw me you addressed me in French?" he asked.
"For a very simple reason. In the first place, all the runners of the woods, trappers, and prairie hunters, are French, or at all events, ninety-five out of every hundred," he answered.
"Then of course you are French?"
"And Norman as well. My grandfather was born at Domfront. You know the proverb, Domfront, city of evil. You enter it at twelve, and are hung before one."
"I am also French," said Oliver.
"So I perceive. But to continue. My grandfather was, as I have said, from Domfront, but my father was born in Canada, as I was, so that I am a Frenchman born in America. Still we have the old country on the other side of the water, and all who come from it are received with open arms by us poor exiles. There are brave and noble hearts in Canada; if they only knew it in France they would not be so ungrateful and disdainful towards us, who never did anything to justify their cruel desertion."
"True," said Oliver, "France was very much in the wrong after you had shed so much blood for her."
"Which we would do again tomorrow," replied the Canadian. "Is not France our mother, and do we not always forgive our mother? The English were awfully taken in when the country was handed over to them; three-fourths of the population emigrated, those who remained in the towns persisted in speaking French, which no Englishman can speak without dislocating his jaws, and all would insist upon being governed by their old French laws.[1] You see, therefore, that the insulars are merely nominally our masters, but that in reality we are still free, and French."