And now, behold them both, in Tadoussac! old André and his dog, Pierre, le brave, or was it Pierre's son?—lean-ribbed, thin-haunched and tragic-eyed, with fell of wolf, Pierre! How well they all remembered him, le brave! The frosts were in his bones, oh, long ere this; so Pierre's offspring, then?—as large as life! And André, too, old guide and voyageur!
Of notches six times ten had André cut within the shaft of one great pine that sings above that wonderful caprice of pool, and quiet river reach, and torrent wild, men long have called the Upper Saguenay. That very day when his boy's heart beat wild to suffocation, as upon the bank he landed his first salmon—nom de Dieu, no sunset glow e'er equalled in his eyes that palpitant and silver-scalèd mass of vibrant rose!—the sap from that first notch had oozed; and now they said in Tadoussac that André never knew his age!
Oh, fools! What matter of a few years more or less? He counted all his years by his heart's youth, as here he was in Tadoussac to prove.
"And whither away?"—"To see Mère Guillardeau?"—"To visit once again in Richelieu-en-Bas?"—"Or else Trois Rivières where long ago the maskinonge leaped for him?" "To see the Seigniory of Lamoral where lived his grandpère's seignior, lived and died?"—"A pilgrimage? Sainte Anne de Beaupré, then?"—"Or Indian Lorette just by Quebec?" The questions multiplied. "Come, tell us all." And André told them all.
"'Tis true," he said, "that there upon the Upper Saguenay strange tales are rife. From o'er the distant sea the English came to camp within the wilds, and I was guide. I listened to their tales whene'er the camp-fire crackled and the snow, the feather-snow that melted from the pines, fell hissing on the glowing arch of logs."
How André loved that sound! How dear to him was that one time in all the year's full round, when freeze the nights, the sap grows chill and numb; when warms the rising sun at early dawn and that sweet ichor runs! It kept him young; within him stirred his youthful forest hopes and joys with that first mounting life. And loud he laughed, nor gave the secret of his youth, his woodsman's lasting joys.
He told them how with mien impassive he had listened well, reflected long on what the English said, till May clouds, mirrored in the darkling pools, foreshadowed substance for those haunting dreams of glories human eyes had never seen; for far away upon the Lake there stood a city marvellous, the English said,—and they to André never yet had lied,—and who beheld it saw with naked eye the glories of the New Jerusalem.
And André, marking how the little runs were earlier loosened from their icy chains, how soft beneath the black and sodden leaves the water trickled free with here and there a bubble rising, proving spring had come—old André, listening so, the echo caught of that far song of storm-tossed Michigan as its wild waters, mingling with the rest, pursued their steady seaward course and swept with undertones enticing past the gorge of Saguenay and sang in André's ear:
"Viens, viens, tu trouveras
Là bas, là bas,
Le royaume cher et merveilleux
Du bon Dieu."
What wonder that his simple woodsman's heart was moved to quick response! That ere one moon had waxed and waned his dugout was prepared for its long journey inland, west by south, along the waterway of two great Lands! He showed it now in Tadoussac with pride: this fruit of two Canadian winters' toil. Its ample hull was shiny black with age. Its prow sharp-nosed and long to cleave, pike-like, the rapids' wave, capricious, treacherous. Its stern was truncated like tail of duck, the waters never closed but on it pressed, and sped it on the river's lower course.