When they went, it became possible to move about more freely in the big bar-room, at the end of which was a billiard-table.

It was notable, however, that the more sullen elements stayed.

Some of them were strangers to each other.
Manitou was a distributing point for all radiations of the compass, and men were thrown together in its streets who only saw one another once or twice a year-when they went to the woods in the Fall or worked the rivers in the Summer.

Some were Mennonites, Doukhobors and Finlanders, some Swedes, Norwegians and Icelanders.

Others again were birds of passage who would probably never see Manitou in the future, but they were mostly French, and mostly Catholic, and enemies of the Orange Lodges wherever they were, east or west or north or south.