Sunday Washington globe., 1902-01-19


will perhaps End no difficulty in accounting
for the following occurrences In a Gatiueau
numbering shanty. Ordinary mortals Of
conservative ideas find il not easy to ex-
plain them. The facts are vouched for by
a clergyman.
A party Of lumbermen were engaged in
piliug logs on Christmas Eve. They made
the piles unusually high The teamsters
expostulated with the logrolIers for doing
40 because Of the danger to the lumbermeu,
if their canthooks should slip while they
we're rolling the heavy logs to such an
elevation.
Joseph Gingras, q young French Cana
dian, had just made some jesting reply
when his foot slipped and the forty-inch
thirteen foot log slid down upon his shoul.
ders and rolled over him to the ground His
companions carried him to the shanty,
where he was Immediately put to bed and
made as comfortable as possible
AS night came on he fell into a kind Of
stupor From this he awakened in a high
fever talking about his father
II knew you would come was sure of
it, father mine. You had better hurry, step
calling.
AAANAA a AAAA~ AN WNMA AAt AN@NH away
from that rollway, don't rest there, get
away from the logs " Aud then, in greatest
excitement, There just what 1 told youl
Oh, he's killed, he's killed. l know it,
Mon Dieu, il est mortW
With that a quantity of blood gushed
from his mouth and he fell back in the rigor
of fast approaching death. There was just one
last sobbing cry, heard above the litany of
4 Il
the old habitant fashion, Marie, oh,
Mariel" and he had gone
Perhaps it was natural that on Christmas
Day some of-the idle men should make
their way TO the pile Of logs, the scene Of
the accident Of the preceding day. But
they we're quite unprepared for what they
found there.
During the night several of the logs had
bulged out of their places in the heap and
rolled down to the roadway. And under
meath them, crushed into the snow and, Of
course, stone dead, was an elderly man, and
nearby little valise he had apparently set
down while resting on the pile.
The body was carried to the shanty and
laid in the next bunk to that occupied by
Joseph Gingras' body. In trying to learn
the mans identity the lumberman discov-
cred in one Of his pockets this letter written
by Joseph Giugras:
MY Dear Papa; All goes well so far. and
now we are settled for the winter near Cat
FISH Lake. You must know the place just
near the Tomassine portage road, three or
four miles north of the lake. But yet
know not why say, unless it be to forget
Marie and her deviltries, For the work Z
like not, and Israel is not here after all No
matter; the good God will not let him escape
for what he has done to me with his lying
tongue
And me1 My father, you must do just
this one thing for me. Come to me here
Come for the Noel sure. Maybe you will
see me never more if you come not now. 1
did wrong to leave you, TO persuade you
not to come with me as before. Sure, sure,
come for the Noel Your affectionate one.
JOSEPH" A"
So it was father and son killed within
few hours of each other at the same spot
who we're lying in negboring berths in the
same shanty in the stiffness of death at the
Noel or Christmastide.
Just two days later the clerk of the shanty
aud one of the teamsters were in the Office
awaiting their turn to report to the local
manager of their employers firm at River
Desert, when they heard a voluble, showily
clad woman asking where Joseph Gingras
was employed.
Her sleigh was outside and she was dis
tracted until she could reach that place
Monsieur would believe her for truly, yes
truly, she had been told In a vision Of the
night aud in her own soul she felt that she
was wanted.
Two or three days before she had heard
her Joseph call to her, and go to him she
would, to leave him never more. no matter
what people said anymore. And the old
man, Gingras, he had himself sent boy to
her house on Christmas Day to tell her to
make haste and go to River Desert if she
wanted to meet Joseph once more.
And the iumbermen we're compelled to
tell her that the bodies of father and son
were even then on the sled at the door
It was at II O'Clock on Christmas Eve
when Marie was putting on her wraps in the
hallway of her room to go to midnight mass
that she distinctly heard her lover call her
name in agonizing tones she fancied from
the head Of the stairs. At which hour the
man she had parted from in anger because
Of evil reports Of his sayings respecting her,
was dying 800 miles away, with her name
upon his lips.