After supper, when the loggers had withdrawn to the other end of the long hut, she called out to Kinney, “Oh, _do_ tell them to smoke: we shall not mind it at all, I assure you. Can't some of them do something? Sing or dance?” Kinney unbent a little at this. “There's a first-class clog-dancer among them; but he's a little stuck up, and I don't know as you could get him to dance,” he said in a low tone. “What a bloated aristocrat!” cried the lady. “Then the only thing is for us to dance first. Can they play?” “One of 'em can whistle like a bird,--he can whistle like a whole band,” answered Kinney, warming. “And of course the Kanucks can fiddle.” “And what are Kanucks? Is _that_ what you call us Canadians?” “Well, ma'am, it aint quite the thing to do,” said Kinney, penitently. “It isn't at _all_ the thing to do! Which are the Kanucks?” She rose, and went forward with Kinney, in her spoiled way, and addressed a swarthy, gleaming-eyed young logger in French. He answered with a smile that showed all his white teeth, and turned to one of his comrades; then the two rose, and got violins out of the bunks, and came forward. Others of their race joined them, but the Yankees hung gloomily back; they clearly did not like these liberties, this patronage. “I shall have your clog-dancer on his feet yet, Mr. Kinney,” said Mrs. Macallister, as she came back to her place. The Canadians began to play and sing those gay, gay airs of old France which they have kept unsaddened through all the dark events that have changed the popular mood of the mother country; they have matched words to them in celebration of their life on the great rivers and in the vast forests of the North, and in these blithe barcaroles and hunting-songs breathes the joyous spirit of a France that knows neither doubt nor care,--France untouched by Revolution or Napoleonic wars; some of the airs still keep the very words that came over seas with them two hundred years ago. The transition to the dance was quick and inevitable; a dozen slim young fellows were gliding about behind the players, pounding the hard earthen floor, and singing in time. “Oh, come, come!” cried the beauty, rising and stamping impatiently with her little foot, “suppose we dance, too.” She pulled Bartley forward by the hand; her husband followed with the taller Miss Willett; two of the Canadians, at the instance of Mrs. Macallister, came forward and politely asked the honor of the other young ladies' hands in the dance; their temper was infectious, and the cotillon was in full life before their partners had time to wonder at their consent. Mrs. Macallister could sing some of the Canadian songs; her voice, clear and fresh, rang through those of the men, while in at the window, thrown open for air, came the wild cries of the forest,--the wail of a catamount, and the solemn hooting of a distant owl.