“But you are not torment,” says Rosalin. “Everybody speak well of you.” “Oh God, yes,” I tell her; “but a man not live on the breath of his neighbors. I am thirty years old, and I have take care of my mother and brothers and sisters since I am fifteen. I not made so I can leave them, like Paul Pepin. He marry when he please. I not able to marry at all. It is not far I can go from the island. I cannot get rich. My work must be always the same.” “But why you want to marry?” says Rosalin, as if that surprise her. And I tell her it is because I have seen Rosalin of Green Bay; and she laugh. Then I think it is time for the vild-cat to jump. I am thirty years old, and have nothing but what I can make with the boats or my traino; the children are not grown; my mother depend on me; and I have propose to a woman, and she laugh at me! But I not see, while we sing and talk, that the fire is burn lower, and old Sauvage has crept around the camp into the bushes. That end all my courtship. I not use to it, and not have any business to court, anyhow. I drop my head on my breast, and it is like when I am little and the measle go in. Paul Pepin he take a woman by the chin and smack her on the lips. The women not laugh at him, he is so rough. I am as strong as he is, but I am afraid to hurt; I am oblige to take care of what need me. And I am tie to things I love--even the island--so that I cannot get away. “I not want to marry,” says Rosalin, and I see her shake her head at me. “I not think about it at all.” “Mamselle,” I say to her, “you have not any inducement like I have, that torment you three years.” “How you know that?” she ask me. And then her face change from laughter, and she spring up from the blanket couch, and I think the camp go around and around me--all fur and eyes and claws and teeth--and I not know what I am doing, for the dogs are all over me--yell--yell--yell; and then I am stop stabbing, because the vild-cat has let go of Sauvage, and Sauvage has let go of the vild-cat, and I am looking at them and know they are both dead, and I cannot help him any more. [Illustration: The camp go round and round 086] You are confuse by such things where there is noise, and howling creatures sit up and put their noses in the air, like they call their mate back out of the dark. I am sick for my old dog. Then I am proud he has kill it, and wipe my knife on its fur, but feel ashame that I have not check him driving it into camp. And then Rosalin throw her arms around my neck and kiss me. It is many years I have tell Rosalin she did that. But a woman will deny what she know to be the trut. I have tell her the courtship had end, and she begin it again herself, and keep it up till the boats take us off Round Island. The ice not run out so quick any more now like it did then. My wife say it is a long time we waited, but when I look back it seem the shortest time I ever live--only two days.