The People of the Lake had begun to feel themselves wiser and more important than their simple forest neighbors. Often one of them would come back from the metropolis with new and smart-cut clothes, plenty of gin, and some household finery with which to decorate the shelves and tables of the board houses which they had erected on the lake shore, but above all, with glowing accounts of the great and busy city where everything could be had that a Montagnais might covet in his most prodigal dreams. To the People of the Interior, these tales sounded marvelous, yet, much as they loved to hear them told, there was a lingering suspicion in their minds that all was not as fine and grand as it was painted, judging by the strong breath, the fagged condition and the depleted pocket-books of those who had experienced these transitory contacts with the outside world.