"For another, I hear Madame Giroux scream, she who used to give me _croquignoles_ years ago, when I was a boy, and I go to the rescue. I save the life of Jean Baptiste because of a _croquignole_. Also, it is a pity to let a strong man be choked in that black smoke, without a struggle, without a chance. I prefer to see him die fighting, so I pull him out of the fire that I may prolong the game. You understand, my gentle aunt, the ways of the tiger, which are those of his first cousin, the domestic cat?" "Yes, I understand perfectly. The same family--a difference in size, that is all. We will play with him for a while, and then we will make an end. But first, my nephew, we have our little plan." "Damn your little plan, you she-devil! We will speak of it to-morrow. Good-night, my blessed aunt. Pleasant dreams." *CHAPTER XVIII* *MICHEL* In St. Placide, as elsewhere, the habitants usually build their houses quite near to the main road, with a background of green fields, but scarcely a tree by the house to give shade in summer or to break the force of the wind in winter. It is an ancestral custom, perhaps, coming down from the time when there was danger from wild beasts, Indians and forest fires; or it may be that the good habitants do not value trees because they find them superfluous. City people love to surround their homes with lawns and trees, a sort of make-believe country, but in the true country they are in the way, occupying space that could be used for other purposes, and giving shade injurious to potatoes, turnips, onions, cabbages, and all the other useful products of the vegetable garden. In the mountain valleys, above all, good land is scarce, and it is wasteful to give it over to the growing of trees, which do well enough in the hills above and the swamps below. For firewood, trees are necessary, but for shade, what need? The warm, sunny days are all too few, in any case. As for beauty, what could be finer than a broad expanse of cultivated fields, sunny open spaces of green and yellow, with the dark forest all about, a lovely picture in a handsome frame?