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Updated: June 28, 2025
"Well, M. Morrel," said Danglars, "you have heard of the misfortune that has befallen us?" "Yes yes: poor Captain Leclere! He was a brave and an honest man." "And a first-rate seaman, one who had seen long and honorable service, as became a man charged with the interests of a house so important as that of Morrel & Son," replied Danglars.
He was broad-chested, powerfully muscled, of far more than ordinary size, and his neck from head to shoulders was a mass of bristling hair to all appearances a full-blooded wolf. Leclere was lying asleep in his furs when Batard deemed the time to be ripe. He crept upon him stealthily, head low to earth and lone ear laid back, with a feline softness of tread.
Did Leclere beat Batard and fondle Babette Babette who was not half the worker he was why, Batard threw her down in the snow and broke her hind leg in his heavy jaws, so that Leclere was forced to shoot her. Likewise, in bloody battles, Batard mastered all his team-mates, set them the law of trail and forage, and made them live to the law he set.
Abbeville was only forty years old, but they already understood the glory of God quite as well there as at Quebec, without doubt. They could build their own tower, perfectly, and they would. Besides, it would cost less. Vaillantcoeur was the chief carpenter. He attended to the affair of beams and timbers. Leclere was the chief mason. He directed the affair of dressing the stones and laying them.
The surgeon called it a marvel, the missionary a miracle, that Leclere pulled through at all; and so weakened was he, that in the spring the fever got him, and he went on his back again. Batard had been in even worse plight, but his grip on life prevailed, and the bones of his hind legs knit, and his organs righted themselves, during the several weeks he lay strapped to the floor.
It happened that the surgeon of McQuestion, who was something of a gadabout, was up on a gossip, and between them they proceeded to repair Leclere, "Merci, non," said he. "Do you fix firs' de dog. To die? NON. Eet is not good. Becos' heem Ah mus' yet break. Dat fo' w'at he mus' not die."
He thrust his head on one side quizzically, and advanced with mincing, playful steps. He rubbed his body gently against the box till it shook and shook again. Leclere teetered carefully to maintain his equilibrium. "Batard," he said calmly, "look out. Ah keel you." Batard snarled at the word and shook the box with greater force.
But Leclere choked him with both his hands, till Batard's chest heaved and writhed for the air denied, and his eyes glazed and set, and his jaws slowly loosened, and his tongue protruded black and swollen. "Eh? Bon, you devil!" Leclere gurgled mouth and throat clogged with his own blood, as he shoved the dizzy dog from him. And then Leclere cursed the other dogs off as they fell upon Batard.
Before Toinette Girard made up her mind to marry Prosper Leclère, you remember the man at Abbéville who had such a brave heart that he was not willing to fight with an old friend, before Toinette perceived and understood how brave Prosper was, it seemed as if she were very much in doubt whether she did not love some one else more than she loved him, whether he and she really were made for each other, whether, in short, she cared for him enough to give herself entirely to him.
But Vaillantcoeur had broken only a nose, a collar-bone, and two ribs for one like him that was but a bagatelle. A good doctor from Chicoutimi, a few months of nursing, and he would be on his feet again, almost as good a man as he had ever been. It was Leclere who put himself in charge of this. "It is my affair," he said "my fault! It was not a fair place to fight. Why did I strike?
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