Jack rummaged in his suitcase again. He found a long-sleeved, khaki shirt of military cut, which came from Latulippe Surplus de Guerre, and in fact it had two pockets in the front. The girl tried it on and it fit very well. Then she rolled her braid into a chignon. Without waiting for her to ask, he gave her a hat and tennis shoes. He expected that the “running shoes,” as she called them, would be too wide for her long narrow feet, but they fit well, like the other clothes. She looked exactly like a boy.

“Shall we go for a walk?” she suggested, pushing her sleeves up to the elbow.

In the corridor she began to whistle. She stopped an old gentleman to ask him the time and he replied, “Four o’clock, sir.”

AT A SIGNAL FROM THÉO the group split into two sections: whites and Indians.

While the whites were turning the garden into a fortress, the Indians withdrew to the back of the vacant lot, where they prepared for battle by covering their faces with “war paint” they’d taken from various tins of shoe polish; they filled their quivers with rubber-tipped arrows and performed a dance accompanied by war whoops. After that, the Indians crawled off behind the trees, along the fences, and under the honeysuckle hedge, then they stormed the fort, whooping hysterically. When the stock of arrows was exhausted and whites and Indians were reduced to hand-to-hand combat, Etienne Brûlé himself made his appearance and brought the confrontation to an end with a fantastic shot with the harquebus Champlain had lent him. And if Etienne Brûlé didn’t intervene in the battle, it was Daniel Boone in his buckskin jacket, or Davy Crockett with his bizarre hat, or Sheriff Wild Bill Hickok, or even Buffalo Bill with his old Winchester.

ON LEAVING THE YMCA they turned left, because Yonge Street lay in that direction and also because the Toronto Reference Library was only a few blocks away and La Grande Sauterelle wanted to “borrow” a book.

“Are you thinking about your brother?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“That’s not hard to see.”

“Why?”

The girl did not reply.

“I don’t know how you do it,” said the man. “You always seem to be thinking just about yourself . . . For instance, you’re walking beside me, quite obviously enjoying the fact that people are taking you for a boy — but you still know what’s going on in my mind.”

They arrived at the library. The building had a forbidding look, but inside it was peaceful and friendly. There were galleries all around an enormous skylight, and everywhere there were rugs and plants and even a little fountain murmuring discreetly in the middle of a rock garden.

A security guard was standing at the front door, near the desk, and the girl asked him what floor the history books were on.

“Au quatrième,” he told her in French.

They took the elevator to the fourth floor. They consulted the card catalogue and considered a number of books, until La Grande Sauterelle finally chose one entitled Toronto During the French Regime. A half hour later, when they decided to leave, the girl hid the book inside her shirt, holding it in place with her belt, but she couldn’t resist the urge to test the vigilance of the security guard.