store of wood for the house with the aid of his little sled.
Somewhat later he had learned to call Heulle! Heulle! very loudly
behind the thin-flanked cows, and Hue! Dia! Harrie! when the horses
were ploughing; to manage a hay-fork and to build a rail-fence.
These two years he had taken turn beside his father with ax and
scythe, driven the big wood-sleigh over the hard snow, sown and
reaped on his own responsibility; and thus it was that no one
disputed his right freely to express an opinion and to smoke
incessantly the strong leaf-tobacco. His face was still smooth as a
child's, with immature features and guileless eyes, and one not
knowing him would probably have been surprised to hear him speak
with all the deliberation of an older and experienced man, and to
see him everlastingly charging his wooden pipe; but in the Province
of Quebec the boys are looked upon as men when they undertake men's
work, and as to their precocity in smoking there is always the
excellent excuse that it afford some protection in summer against
the attacking swarms of black-flies, mosquitos and sand-flies.

"How nice it would be to live in a country where there is hardly any
winter, and where the earth makes provision for man and beast. Up
here man himself, by dint of work, must care for his animals and his
land. If we did not have Esdras and Da'Be earning good wages in the
woods how could we get along?"

"But the soil is rich in these parts," said Eutrope Gagnon.

"The soil is good but one must battle for it with the forest; and to
live at all you must watch every copper, labour from morning to
night, and do everything yourself because there is no one near to
lend a hand."