So we say good-by—“bonne chance!”
Since that day the good physician who guided me through the hospital has borne without a murmur the greatest of all sacrifices—the loss of his only son, a brave and lovely boy, killed in action against the thievish, brutal German hordes.
III
SAINTE MARGUERITE August, 1917
The wild little river Sainte Marguerite runs joyously among the mountains and the green woods, back of the Saguenay, singing the same old song of liberty and obedience to law, as if the world had never been vexed and tortured by the madness of war-lords.
A tired man who has a brief furlough from active service is lucky if he can spend it among the big trees and beside a flowing stream. The trees are ministers of peace. The stream is full of courage and adventure as it rushes toward the big sea.
We are coming back to camp from the morning's fishing, with a brace of good salmon in the canoe.
“Tell me, Iside,” I ask of the wiry little bowman, the best hunter and fisher on the river, “why is it that you are not at the war?”
“But, M'sieu', I am too old. A father of family—almost a grandfather—the war is not for men of that age. Besides, it does not concern us here in Quebec.”
“Why not? It concerns the whole world. Who told you that it does not concern you?”