Only a stalwart with his back to the winking stove says nothing. He is a grappler just in from a job at splicing, from the deck of a repair-ship, two finger-thick cables leagues down in the sea. Laws and athletics are tame talk to him.
When we go out again to the Quai de la Roncière the fog has passed and the sun is pushing through. St. Pierre's gloomy moods are not always so quickly dispelled. Often she sulks in a mist for days together, but through the late summer one may be reasonably sure of bright days.
A brusque wind makes sport of hats and petticoats as we cross the broad pavement. Café doors slam shut on drinking sailors; oxen, drawing carts which move on Roman wheels of wood, bend still lower their wool-padded heads; on the landing, an old dame in long cape and muslin bonnet waits shiveringly for the boat to Dog Island. But no one complains of the wind, for it rends the fog, bane of St. Pierre.
The Governor's Residence, a modest mansion flanked by offices of the island's bureaucracy, is on a parterre fronting the harbour. One called merely an Administrator has succeeded to the chief office, and even his powers are not infrequently confided now to a lesser official. Though the rank of the appointee from Paris has declined with St. Pierre's glory, France maintains an appearance of maternalism in suave cablegrams which deceive no one, but which explain with what care the Govern-
