under the stars, are much more poetic in the telling than in life; that voyageurs don’t pass all their lives clothed in picturesque costumes chanting ditties to the rhythmic dip of paddle blades; that, in fact, when your voyageur sets out in spring he passes half his time in ice water to mid-waist tracking canoes up rapids, and that where the portage is rocky glassed with ice, you can follow the sorry fellow’s path by blood from the cuts in his feet. What did the curé know about it? There was proof to the contrary in the gay blade before their eyes, and the green country bucks expressed timid wish that they, too, might lead such a life. Presto! No sooner said than done! My hero from the North jerks a written contract all ready for the signature of names and slaps down half the wages in advance before the dazzled greenhorns have time to retract. From now till the brigades depart our green recruit busies himself playing the hero before he has won his spurs. He dons the gay vesture and he dons the grand air and he passes the interval in a glorious oblivion of all regrets drowned in potions at the parish inn; but it is our drummer’s business to round up the recruits at Montreal, which he does as swiftly as they sober up. And they usually sober up to find that all the advance wages have melted in the public house. No drawing back now, though the rosy hopes have faded drab! A hint at such a thought brings down on the poltroon’s head threats of instant imprisonment--a fine ending, indeed, to all the brag and the boast and the brass-band flourish with which our runaway has left his native parish.