The poor Tin Lizzie turned red and then white, and his weak mouth fell open and his eyebrows lifted till the whites of his eyes showed above the gray irises. And one saw again, through the crystal of his unexercised brain, the operation of a painful and new thought. M'sieur John--a day alone in the woods--love, versus fear--which would win. John and I watched the struggle a bit mercilessly. A grown man gets small sympathy for being a coward. And yet few forms of suffering are keener. We watched; and the Tin Lizzie stood and gasped in the play of his emotions. Nobody had ever given this son of the soil ideals to hold to through sudden danger; no sense of inherited honor to be guarded came to help the Lizzie; he had been taught to work hard and save his skin--little else. The great adoration for John which had swept him off his commonplace feet--was it going to make good against life-long selfish caution? We wondered. It was curious to watch the new big feeling fight the long-established petty one. And it was with a glow of triumph quite out of drawing that we saw the generous instinct win the battle. "Oui, M'sieur," spoke Aristophe, unconscious of subtleties or watching. "I go tomorrow--alone. _C'est bien, M'sieur_." It was about the only remark I ever heard him make, that gracious: "_C'est bien, M'sieur_!" But he made it remarkably well. Almost he persuaded me to respect him with that hearty response to the call of duty, that humble and high gift of graciousness. One remembers him as his dolly face lighted at John's order to go and clean trout or carry in logs, and one does not forget the absurd, queer little fast trot at which his powerful young legs would instantaneously swing off to obey the behest. Such was the Tin Lizzie, the guide who paddled bow in my canvas canoe on the day of the celebrated frog hunt. That the frog hunt was celebrated was owing to the Lizzie. He should have been in John's boat, as one of John's guides, but at the last moment, there was a confusion of tongues and Lizzie was shipped aboard my canoe. In the excitement of the chase Josef, stern man, had faced about to manipulate his landing-net; Aristophe also slewed around and, sitting on the gunwale, became stern paddler. I was in the middle screwed anyhow, watching the frog fishing and enjoying the enjoyment of the men. Poor chaps, it was the only bit of personal play they got out of our month of play. Aristophe, the Tin Lizzie, was quite mad with the excitement even from his very second fiddle standpoint of paddler to Josef's frogging. His enormous gray eyes snapped, his teeth showed white and gold around his pipe--which he nearly bit off--and he even used language. "_Tiens! Encore un!_" hissed the Lizzie in a blood-curdling whisper as a new pair of pop eyes lifted from the edge of a rotten log.