There is an excellent hostelry at Ville Marie called "Les Voyageurs," where a little lady, known as Petite Simunde, has worked wonders in making it the cosiest, snuggest, neatest little place that ever warmed the heart of a lumberjack or a mining-prospector. At night her husband leads the singing with a mighty voice that shakes the rafters; for did not the former proprietor, Pierre Generaud, say that singing encouraged thirst? At times, when Madame Des Rosiers is away for a day, Jacque Noir will regale his old friends with tales of his past life, stories that differ with every telling, and seem to indicate that the narrator himself is beginning to doubt their accuracy. At these times, too, he has been known to sing of a sailor who loved a Portuguese maid; but at the first sound of his wife's footsteps outside Monsieur Des Rosiers is the model husband, a _rôle_, to be frank, which suits him quite well. When the snow is very thick on the ground, and the wind howls mournfully over the lake, Jacque Noir talks of France and the weary years of war. He will point with pride to his artificial foot, and then to his decoration, and slowly tell how two men went out into the dark after a machine-gun post. And when the guests are gone and the fire is low, when the wind is moaning quietly, while the snow falls thick--thick--thick--they speak to each other of the officer who will never come back; of the one whose hair was brown, almost like red; whose blue eyes were stern, and yet so kind. Hand-in-hand they sit close together, and the only sounds are those of the crackling logs and the wind that is never still. THE MAN WHO SCOFFED I Dennis Montague of Toronto emerged from his bath, glowing and talkative. A luxurious deep-blue dressing-gown was wrapped about his form, its color accentuating the gray-blue of his eyes. His valet stood beside his bed, on which there reposed a set of garments suitable for a gentleman bent on spending an evening out. "Ah, Sylvester! That's right. We poor devils must look as well as the abominable fashions will permit. Did you ever wonder why the men of to-day are so commonplace? It is the clothes they wear." Mr. Sylvester took the dressing-gown and hung it in the closet. "For instance, my dear fellow, to-night I am in a devilishly brilliant mood; almost any moment now I might say something clever. If I had my way, I should dress in scarlet, like a toreador, and when I spoke, my sentences would have something of the dart about them.... Such would be the fusion of temperament and costume. Instead of which--by the way, mix me a cocktail--I am forced to put on this hideous shirt and a swallow-tailed monstrosity that gives one the appearance of a reformed chimney-sweep. A greater man than either of us, Sylvester, said that the world was all a stage. Then why the deuce don't we dress for our parts?" "'Ere's your cocktail, sir." "Good--excellent. What's the time?" "Gone past seven-thirty, sir."