Finally we came to a camp in the woods, where my father seemed to be master of everything and everybody. There were Indians there and half-breeds, and Canadian lumber-men, for it was a lumber-camp. There was a Great Lake there, and many little lakes not far away. I reckon the Great Lake was Lake Superior, but I don’t know for certain. There were no women in the camp except squaws and half-breeds. They were pretty good people, but very dirty, so I could not live with them. My father made the men build a little log house for him and me, and he made them hew a bath-tub for me out of a big log. Then he hired a half-breed girl to heat water every day and fill the tub for me to bathe in. As for himself, he jumped into the lake every morning, even when he had to make the men cut a hole in the ice for his use. I liked the lumber-camp life because I was free there, and because there were big fires at night, like bonfires. One of them was just before my door, and my father made an Indian boy keep it blazing all night for me, so that I might see the light of it whenever I waked. I used to sit by it and read my books, even when the snow was deep on the ground; for by turning first one side and then the other to the fire I could keep warm. And the Canadians and the half-breeds and the Indians used to squat on the ground near me and beg me to read the books aloud to them. As they all spoke French, and understood no word of English, of course they didn’t understand what I read to them, but they liked to hear me read, and it was sometimes hard to drive them away to their beds, even when midnight came. They taught me French during the year I lived among them. You tell me it is very bad French, and I reckon it is; but it was all they knew: they did their best, and I reckon that is all that anybody can do. At any rate, they were kind to me, and they taught me all the ways of the birds and the animals. I tried to teach them to be kind to the birds and the animals, after I began to understand the wild creatures; but the camp people never would learn that. Their only idea of an animal or a bird was to eat its flesh and sell its skin. There was a young priest there who knew better, and he ought to have loved the birds and animals. But he used to talk about God’s having given man dominion over the beasts and the birds, and that doctrine perverted his mind, I think. He killed a pretty little chipmunk, one day, to get its skin to stuff. That chipmunk was my friend. I had taught it to climb up into my lap and eat out of my hand. He persuaded it to climb into his lap, and then he betrayed its confidence and killed it. I was very angry with him. I picked up an ox-whip and struck him with it twice. I was only a little girl, but I had grown strong in the outdoor life of the camp, and it doesn’t take much strength to make an ox-whip hurt.