invitation which was irresistible.

Long before one o'clock all of the Settlement had arrived, each one had
had his bit of the heady punch, small glasses for the women, great
pewter mugs many times refilled for the men. The big bowl was
proverbially like the purse of Fortunatus in its scorn of emptiness.
Mere Jeanne ceremoniously replenished it time and again, carried
brimming cups to the fiddlers, and the merry music, having ceased just
long enough for the musicians to gulp down "Your health," went on more
inspiringly than before. Heavy booted feet, moving rythmically, made
the dance a thing to hear as well as see, deep throated laughter boomed
out incessantly, the lighter, fewer voices of women weaving in and out
of the clamour.

All afternoon men came in, now and then a woman with them. They drank
and ate, they smoked Pere Marquette's tobacco from the jars set about
everywhere, they traded old news for new and new for old, they
speculated upon the coming thaws and trapping to be found down on the
Little MacLeod and up towards the Silver Lake country, they told of the
latest gold strike in the Black Bear hills and predicted fresh strikes
to be made before the thaw was ten days old. Many types of men and
women, some no doubt good, some bad no doubt, all mingling freely.

At five o'clock Pere Marquette cleared his voice, scrambled with rare
agility upon one of his own counters and made the expected announcement:

"Ah, my frien's, you make us ver' happy, me an' Mamma Jeanne. We wish
our leetle house she was more big to-day, big like our heart, that she
can hold the whole worl'." He hugged his thin old arms to his breast
and smiled upon them. "Tonight, all night long, _mes amis_, you are
welcome. The doors of Pere Marquette have forgot how to close up
to-night! But listen, one instant! Jus' across the road my warehouse
she is open. The violins have gone there. There you may dance, dance
as Mam'selle Jeanne an' I dance it is fifty year to-night. Dance all
night long. And while the yo'ng folk whose hearts are in their heels
walse yonder, here we older ones . . . Ah!" as sudden voices,
cheering, cut into his running words. "You have not forgot, eh?"

It was the signal for division. The few women who had children took
them home with them; the other women, young and old, following like a
holiday flotilla in the wake of Mere Jeanne, tacked through the muck of
the road to the warehouse; many of the younger a