Raoul was not afraid of anything but death; and whatever he wanted, he thought he had a right to have. But he did not know very well how to get it. He would start to chop a log just at the spot where there was a big knot. He was the kind of a man that sets hare-snares on a caribou-trail, and then curses his luck because he catches nothing. [Illustration] Besides, what ever he did, he was always thinking most about beating somebody else. But Prosper cared most for doing the thing as well as he could. If anyone else could beat him—well, what difference did it make? He would do better the next time. He looked the log over for a clear place before he began to chop. What he wanted was, not to make the chips fly, but to get the fire started. You are not to suppose that the one man was a saint and a hero, and the other a fool and a ruffian. No; that sort of thing happens only in books. People in Abbéville were not made on that plan. They were both plain men. But there was a difference between them; and out of that difference grew all the trouble. It was hard on Vaillantcœur, of course, to see Leclère going ahead, getting rich, clearing off the mortgage on his farm, laying up money with the _notaire_ Bergeron, who acted as banker for the parish—it was hard to look on at this, while he himself stood still, or even slipped back a little, got into debt, had to sell a bit of the land that his father left him. There must be some _chicane_ about it. But this was not the hardest morsel to swallow. The great thing that stuck in his crop was the idea that the little Prosper, whom he could have whipped so easily, and whom he had protected so loftily, when they were boys, now stood just as high as he did as a capable man—perhaps even higher. Why was it that when the Pearce Brothers, down at Chicoutimi, had a good "_jobbe-de-chantier_" up in the woods on _la Belle Rivière_, they made Leclère the boss, instead of Vaillantcœur? Why did the _curé_ Villeneuve choose Prosper, and not Raoul, to steady the strain of the biggest pole when they were setting up the derrick for the building of the new church? It was rough, rough! The more Raoul thought of it, the rougher it seemed. The fact that it was a man who had once been his _protégé_, and still insisted on being his best friend, did not make it any smoother. Would you have liked it any better on that account? I am not telling you how it ought to have been, I am telling you how it was. This isn't Vaillantcœur's account-book; it's his story. You must strike your balances as you go along. [Illustration: "Why so many ifs in this fine speech?"—Page 160.] And all the time, you understand, he felt sure in his heart that he was stronger and braver than Prosper. He was hungry to prove it. He only knew of one way. He grew more and more keen to try it. Two or three things happened to set an edge on his hunger.