At God’s green caravanserai.”
Our permanent camp was another day’s voyage down the lake, on a beach opposite the Point Ausable. There the water was contracted to a narrow strait, and in the swift current, close to the point, the great trout had fixed their spawning-bed from time immemorial. It was the first week in September, and the magnates of the lake were already assembling—the Common Councilmen and the Mayor and the whole Committee of Seventy. There were giants in that place, rolling lazily about, and chasing each other on the surface of the water. “Look, M’sieu’!” cried François, in excitement, as we lay at anchor in the gray morning twilight; “one like a horse has just leaped behind us; I assure you, big like a horse!”
But the fish were shy and dour. Old Castonnier, the guardian of the lake, lived in his hut on the shore, and flogged the water, early and late, every day with his home-made flies. He was anchored in his dugout close beside us, and grinned with delight as he saw his over-educated trout refuse my best casts. “They are here, M’sieu’, for you can see them,” he said, by way of discouragement, “but it is difficult to take them. Do you not find it so?”
In the back of my fly-book I discovered a tiny phantom minnow—a dainty affair of varnished silk, as light as a feather—and quietly attached it to the leader in place of the tail-fly. Then the fun began.
One after another the big fish dashed at that deception, and we played and netted them, until our score was thirteen, weighing altogether thirty-five pounds, and the largest five pounds and a half. The guardian was mystified and disgusted. He looked on for a while in silence, and then pulled up anchor and clattered ashore. He must have made some inquiries and reflections during the day, for that night he paid a visit to our camp. After telling bear stories and fish stories for an hour or two by the fire, he rose to depart, and tapping his fore-finger solemnly upon my shoulder, delivered himself as follows:—
“You can say a proud thing when you go home, M’sieu’—that you have beaten the old Castonnier. There are not many fishermen who can say that. But,” he added, with confidential emphasis, “c’était votre sacré p’tit poisson qui a fait cela.”
That was a touch of human nature, my rusty old guardian, more welcome to me than all the morning’s catch. Is there not always a “confounded little minnow” responsible for our failures? Did you ever see a school-boy tumble on the ice without stooping immediately to re-buckle the strap of his skates? And would not Ignotus have painted a masterpiece if he could have found good brushes and a proper canvas? Life’s shortcomings would be bitter indeed if we could not find excuses for them outside of ourselves. And as for life’s successes—well, it is certainly wholesome to remember how many of them are due to a fortunate position and the proper tools.
Our tent was on the border of a coppice of young trees. It was pleasant to be awakened by a convocation of birds at sunrise, and to watch the shadows of the leaves dance out upon our translucent roof of canvas.
All the birds in the bush are early, but there are so many of them that it is difficult to believe that every one can be rewarded with a worm. Here in Canada those little people of the air who appear as transient guests of spring and autumn in the Middle States, are in their summer home and breeding-place. Warblers, named for the magnolia and the myrtle, chestnut-sided, bay-breasted, blue-backed, and black-throated, flutter and creep along the branches with simple lisping music. Kinglets, ruby-crowned and golden-crowned, tiny, brilliant sparks of life, twitter among the trees, breaking occasionally into clearer, sweeter songs. Companies of redpolls and crossbills pass chirping through the thickets, busily seeking their food. The fearless, familiar chickadee repeats his name merrily, while he leads his family to explore every nook and cranny of the wood. Cedar wax-wings, sociable wanderers, arrive in numerous flocks. The Canadians call them “récollets,” because they wear a brown crest of the same colour as the hoods of the monks who came with the first 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