for the use of language?" and he quoted from Hamlet's soliloquy in a way that set me packing my pedant lore in the unused lumber-room of brain lobes. And so, I say, Mr. Jack MacKenzie continued to pour instructions into my ear for the venturesome life on which I had entered. "The lad's a fool, only a fool," he said, still harping on Louis, "and mind you answer the fool according to his folly!" [Pg 71] "Most men are fools first, and then knaves, knaves because they have been fools," I returned to my uncle, "and I fancy Laplante has graduated from the fool stage by this time, and is a full diploma knave!" "That's all true," he retorted, "but don't you forget there's always fool enough left in the knave to give you your opportunity, if you're not a fool. Joint in the armor, lad! Use your cutlass there." Apart from the peppery discourses of my kinsman, I remember very little of the trip up the St. Lawrence from Ste. Anne to Lachine with Eric sitting dazed and silent opposite me. We, of course, followed the river channel between the Island of Orleans and the north shore; and whenever our boats drew near the mainland, came whiffs of crisp, frosty air from the dank ravines, where snow patches yet lay in the shadow. Then the fleet would sidle towards the island and there[Pg 72] would be the fresh, spring odor of damp, uncovered mold, with a vague suggestiveness of violets and May-flowers and ferns bursting with a rush through the black clods. The purple folds of the mountains, with their wavy outlines fading in the haze of distance, lay on the north as they lie to-day; and everywhere on the hills were the white cots of habitant hamlets with chapel spires pointing above tree-tops. At the western end of the island, where boats sheer out into mid-current, came the dull, heavy roar of the cataract and above the north shore rose great, billowy clouds of foam. With a sweep of our paddles, we were opposite a cleft in the vertical rock and saw the shimmering, fleecy waters of Montmorency leap over the dizzy precipice churning up from their own whirling depths and bound out to the river like a panther after prey. [Pg 72] Now the Isle of Orleans was vanishing on our rear and the bold heights of Point Levis had loomed up to the fore; and now we had poked our prows to the right and the sluggish, muddy tide of the St. Charles lapped our canoes, while a forest of masts and yard-arms and flapping sails arose from the harbor of Quebec City. The great walls of modern Quebec did not then exist;
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