It was late in the following summer when I came back again to St. Gerome. The golden-rods and the asters were all in bloom along the village street; and as I walked down it the broad golden sunlight of the short afternoon seemed to glorify the open road and the plain square houses with a careless, homely rapture of peace. The air was softly fragrant with the odour of balm of Gilead. A yellow warbler sang from a little clump of elder-bushes, tinkling out his contented song like a chime of tiny bells, “Sweet--sweet--sweet--sweeter--sweeter--sweetest!” There was the new house, a little farther back from the road than the old one; and in the place where the heap of ashes had lain, a primitive garden, with marigolds and lupines and zinnias all abloom. And there was Patrick, sitting on the door-step, smoking his pipe in the cool of the day. Yes; and there, on a many-coloured counterpane spread beside him, an infant joy of the house of Mullarkey was sucking her thumb, while her father was humming the words of an old slumber-song: Sainte Marguerite, Veillez ma petite! Endormez ma p'tite enfant Jusqu'a l'age de quinze ans! Quand elle aura quinze ans passe Il faudra la marier Avec un p'tit bonhomme Que viendra de Rome. “Hola! Patrick,” I cried; “good luck to you! Is it a girl or a boy?” “SALUT! m'sieu',” he answered, jumping up and waving his pipe. “It is a girl AND a boy!” Sure enough, as I entered the door, I beheld Angelique rocking the other half of the reward of virtue in the new cradle. III. A BRAVE HEART “That was truly his name, m'sieu'--Raoul Vaillantcoeur--a name of the fine sound, is it not? You like that word,--a valiant heart,--it pleases you, eh! The man who calls himself by such a name as that ought to be a brave fellow, a veritable hero? Well, perhaps. But I know an Indian who is called Le Blanc; that means white. And a white man who is called Lenoir; that means black. It is very droll, this affair of the names. It is like the lottery.” Silence for a few moments, broken only by the ripple of water under the bow of the canoe, the persistent patter of the rain all around us, and the SLISH, SLISH of the paddle with which Ferdinand, my Canadian voyageur, was pushing the birch-bark down the lonely length of Lac Moise. I knew that there was one of his stories on the way. But I must keep still to get it. A single ill-advised comment, a word that would raise a question of morals or social philosophy, might switch the narrative off the track into a swamp of abstract discourse in which Ferdinand would lose himself. Presently the voice behind me began again.