is the channel through to the big lake, was always the selling market for the Indians; there were the great summer hotels and square after square of cottages filling each spring with the rich, reckless strangers from distant cities who could be counted upon to buy, at good prices, the bark canoes, the sweet-grass baskets and the porcupine quill boxes which Azen and his squaw and Barney manufactured in the long winter evenings. In Charlevoix, too, the boarding houses paid the best prices for the huckleberries, the wild raspberries and blackberries which Barney found in the woods. It was a ten-mile walk for Barney, carrying his berries; but you got a quarter for two quarts, and Azen seldom asked for any accounting of the money when Barney picked of his own accord and toted to town; occasionally, it is true, Azen made demands; for Charlevoix was wet in those days, and Azen liked to get dead drunk about six times a year; but in between he was entirely sober and very religious and kind. He could read and write both Chippewa and English, whenever he had occasion to; and he possessed Bibles printed in both languages. He spoke, in addition to Chippewa, careful, accurate, school-taught English and was able to help Barney with sixth-grade arithmetic. His wife spoke hardly any English at all, and she had no faith in the white, starch-collared doctor whom Azen summoned, in trembling panic, when his own little boy and baby girl both got so sick; she went out into the woods and gathered herbs of her own which she administered; wherefore the boy died, but the little girl pulled through.
Barney never remembered himself being sick; he could always do his work in Azen's five-acre clearing of beans and corn; when he was twelve, he was worth
