In not so many words as I have written, but in clear pictures which comprehended the words, Memory, that temperamental goddess of moods, had, at the prick of the word “Huron,” shaken out this soft-colored tapestry of the forest, and held it before my eyes.  And as she withdrew this one, others took its place and at length I was musing profoundly, as I put more of something on my plate and tucked it away into my anatomy.  I mused about Rafael, the guide of sixty, who had begun a life of continued labor at eight years; I considered the undying Indian in him; how with the father who was “French of Picardy”—­the white blood being a pride to Rafael—­he himself, yes, and the father also, for he had married a “sauvagess,” a Huron woman—­had belonged to the tribe and were accounted Hurons; I considered Rafael’s proud carriage, his classic head and carved features, his Indian austerity and his French mirth weaving in and out of each other; I considered the fineness and the fearlessness of his spirit, which long hardship had not blunted; I reflected on the tales he had told me of a youth forced to fight the world. “On a vu de le misere,” Rafael had said:  “One has seen trouble”—­shaking his head, with lines of old suffering emerging from the reserve of his face like writing in sympathetic ink under heat.  And I marvelled that through such fire, out of such neglect, out of lack of opportunity and bitter pressure, the steel of a character should have been tempered to gentleness and bravery and honor.

For it was a very splendid old boy who was cooking for me and greasing my boots and going off with me after moose; putting his keen ancestral instincts of three thousand years at my service for three dollars a day.  With my chances would not Rafael have been a bigger man than I?  At least never could I achieve that grand air, that austere repose of manner which he had got with no trouble at all from a line of unwashed but courageous old bucks, thinking highly of themselves for untold generations, and killing everything which thought otherwise.  I laughed all but aloud at this spot in my meditations, as a special vision of Rafael rose suddenly, when he had stated, on a day, his views of the great war.  He talked plain language about the Germans.  He specified why he considered the nation a disgrace to humanity—­most people, not German, agree on the thesis and its specifications.  Then the fire of his ancient fighting blood blazed through restraint of manner.  He drew up his tall figure, slim-waisted, deep-shouldered, every inch sliding muscle.  “I am too old to go on first call to army,” said Rafael.  “Zey will not take me.  Yes, and on second call.  Maybe zird time.  But if time come when army take me—­I go.  If I may kill four Germans I will be content,” stated Rafael concisely.  And his warrior forebears would have been proud of him as he stated it.

My reflections were disturbed here by the American general at the next table.  He was spoken to by his waiter and shot up and left the room, carrying, however, his napkin in his hand, so that I knew he was due to come back.  A half sentence suggested a telephone.  I watched the soldierly back with plenty of patriotic pride; this was the sort of warrior my country turned out now by tens of thousands.  With that he returned, and as I looked up into his face, behold it was Fitzhugh.