"Why," he asked Pierre LeDou's wife, "did your husband bring me here?"

"You were hurt and needed help," she said simply.

In sudden haste Ramsay felt his pocket, and discovered that the two silver dollars were gone. He remembered that he had lost them while he fought with Devil Chad, and a flood of embarrassment almost overwhelmed him.

"I--I have no money to pay you," he said awkwardly.

For the first time she looked reprovingly at him. "We did not ask for money, M'sieu. One does not."

Ramsay knew another awkward moment and a little shame. "It is very good of you," he said.

She said, "One does not neglect a fellow human."

Ramsay finished eating and pushed his dishes back. Pierre LeDou's wife, who had already finished washing the rest of the dishes, put Ramsay's in the dish water and left them there. She smiled at him. "It would be well if you rested."

"I'm not tired. Really I'm not."

"You should rest. Badly were you hurt."

"Let me sit here a while."

"As long as you sit."

She went to a cupboard and took from it a big ball of strong linen thread. From the table she caught up a small board. Wrapping the thread twice around the board, she knotted it. Slipping the thread from the board, she hung the loop she had made on a wooden peg and made a new loop. Her hands flew so swiftly that in a few moments she had seventeen of the meshes, all joined together.

"What are you doing?" Ramsay inquired interestedly.

"Making a gill net," she explained. "It was ordered by Baptiste LeClair, a fisherman, and is to have a four and a half-inch mesh. So we use a mesh board that is exactly two and a quarter inches wide and wrap the thread twice around. Now I have seventeen. See?"

"I see."

She strung the seventeen meshes on a wooden rod, placed two chairs far enough apart so that the meshes stretched, tied the rod to them and began knitting on the net she had started. "The net is to be seventeen meshes, or seventy-six and one-half inches, wide. Now I lengthen it."

Under the boy's interested eyes the gill net grew swiftly, and as it lengthened she wrapped it around the rod. Ramsay watched every move.

"How long will it be?" he queried.

"One net," she told him, "is about two hundred and fifty feet long. But usually several are tied together to form a box of nets. A box is about fourteen hundred feet."

"Isn't that a lot?"

She smiled. "A crew of three good men, like Hans Van Doorst or Baptiste LeClair, with a good Mackinaw boat can handle two boxes."

"Could you make this net longer if you wished to?"

"Oh, yes. It could be many miles long. Two hundred and fifty feet is a good length for one net because, if it is torn by strong water or heavy fish, it may be untied and repaired while the rest may still be used."

"What else must you do?"

"After the net is two hundred and fifty feet long, I will use fifteen- or sixteen-thread twine through from three to six meshes on the outer edge. This, in turn, will be tied to ninety-thread twine which extends the full length."

Ramsay was amazed at the way this quiet little woman reeled off these figures, as though she were reciting a well-learned lesson. But he wanted to know even more. "How do they set such a net?"

"The fishermen gather small, flat stones, about three to the pound, and cut a groove around them so that they can be suspended from a rope.

These are called sinkers, and are tied to the net about nine feet apart.

For floats they use cedar blocks, about two feet long by one-quarter of an inch thick and an inch and a quarter wide. They bore a small hole one inch from the end, then split the block to the bored hole. The floats--and the number they use depends on the depth to which they sink the net--are pushed over the ninety-thread twine."

"Let me try!" Ramsay was beginning to feel the effects of idleness and wanted action.

"But of course, M'sieu."

Ramsay took the mesh board in his hand and, as he had seen her do, wrapped the thread twice around it. But, though it had looked simple when she did it, there was a distinct knack to doing it right. The mesh board slipped from his fingers and the twine unwound. Madame LeDou laughed. "Let me show you."

Patiently, carefully, she guided his fingers through the knitting of a mesh, then another and a third and fourth. Ramsay felt a rising elation.

He had liked the _Spray_ when he saw her and now he liked this. Fishing, from the making of the nets to setting them, seemed more than ever a craft that was almost an art. He knitted a row of meshes across the gill net, and happily surveyed his work.

At the same time he remained aware of the fact that she could knit three times as fast as he. Ramsay thrust his tongue into his cheek and grimly continued at his work.

After an hour Madame LeDou said soberly, "You do right well, M'sieu. But should you not rest now?"

Ramsay said, "This is fun."

"It is well that you enjoy yourself. Would you consider it uncivil if I left you for a while?"

"Please do what you must."

She left, and Ramsay continued to work on the net. As he did, his skill improved. Though he was still unable to knit as swiftly as Madame LeDou, he could make a good net. And there was a feel, a tension, to the thread. Within itself the thread had life and being. It was supple, strong and would not fail a fisherman who depended upon it.

Madame LeDou returned, smiled at him and went unobtrusively about the task of preparing a lunch. So absorbed was he in his net-making that he scarcely tasted the food. All afternoon he worked on the net.

Madame LeDou said approvingly, "You make a good net, M'sieu. You have knitted almost four pounds of thread into this one. The most skilled net-makers, those who have had years of experience, cannot knit more than six or seven pounds in one day."

Twilight shadows were lengthening when Pierre LeDou returned. The little man, as always, was courteous. But behind his inherited Gallic grace and manners lay a troubled under-current. Pierre spoke in rapid French to his wife, and she turned worried eyes on their guest. Ramsay stopped knitting the net.

All afternoon there had been growing upon him an awareness that he could not continue indefinitely to accept the LeDou's hospitality, and now he knew that he must go. The pattern had definite shape, and the reason behind Pierre's uneasiness was not hard to fathom. Devil Chad was the ruler, and Devil Chad must rule. Who harbored his enemy must be his enemy, and Pierre LeDou needed the job in the tannery. Should he lose it, the LeDous could not live.

With an air of spontaneity, anxious not to cause his host and hostess any embarrassment, Ramsay rose and smiled. "It has been a most enjoyable stay at your home," he said. "But of course it cannot continue. I have work to find. If you will be kind enough to shelter me again tonight, I will go tomorrow, and I shall never forget the LeDous."

CHAPTER FOUR

_TROUBLE FOR THE_ SPRAY

Early the next morning, when Pierre departed for work, Ramsay bade farewell to Madame LeDou and left their house with his kind host. He did so with a little reluctance, now that all his money was gone and the future loomed more uncertainly than ever. At the same time there was about him a rising eagerness and an unfulfilled expectation.

It seemed to him that, since swimming ashore from the sinking _Holter_, he had ceased to be a boy and had become a man. And a man must know that all desirable things had their undesirable aspects. This country was wonderful. If, to stay in it, he must come to grips with other men--men as strong and as cruel as Devil Chad--and with nature too, Ramsay felt himself willing to do that.