The story is not told merely for wild event: it hangs upon character and upon noble purpose. It emphasizes courage, ability, self-sacrifice and faith.
The setting of the story is so used that it contributes in a marked degree to the entire effect. As one reads he feels himself in the icy north, in the grip of cold and darkness where wild events are altogether probable.
PART I
THE PILLAR OF CLOUD BY DAY
It was after supper one November evening, at Wilderness House, with the sleet dancing on the eaves and the great forest of Wildyrie closing us about with its dark presence, when Essex Lad and I stumbled by chance on the fact that we didn't have to read books for adventure, but merely touch Prunier in some-story-telling place, and then—listen.
Prunier, you remember, is the blue-shirted, black-hatted French-Canadian who lives with us and thinks he works. He is a broad-shouldered, husky, simple-faced man of forty, who never opens his mouth unless it be to point out a partridge we are overlooking or to put in his black pipe. He spent his youth in the great Northland, where adventures are as common as black flies in a swamp, and yet he had never even explained the scar across his cheek, or the white patch on his scalp where some other excitement had been registered, until that evening when I had closed the Bible.
“Tink dat true?” he had suddenly asked.
I had been reading them how the Lord God had led Moses and the children of Israel across that other wilderness by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. It had roused him strangely.
“I know it true,” he said, “for le bon Dieu show me way by pillars of cloud and fire aussi. If you want story, I tole you dat wan, moi-même.”
It was our turn to be excited. Here was luck—a vacant evening, a hearth fire, and Prunier promising une longue histoire, as he called it. We formed a semi-circle before the blazing birch, and, with the dull beat of the sleet above us for accompaniment, listened for the first word that would launch the black-eyed man upon his tale. It was long coming. He relit the pipe, recrossed his legs, muttered once “Pore ole Pierre,” and stopped. We ceased to breathe; for though I could command him to cut wood and wash dishes, I could not force from him a syllable about “Pore ole Pierre” until he was good and ready.