and laughed with my Cloud-Mother.

Separated from me by an impassable barrier, she touched me more deeply
than when I sued her most. The undulating ripple which was her peculiar
expression of joy was more than I could bear. I left the room and was
flinging myself from the house to walk in the chill wind; but she caught
me.

"I will be good!" pleaded my Cloud-Mother, her face in my breast.

Her son who had grown up big, while she grew down little, went back to
the family room with her.

My Cloud-Mother sat beside me at table, and insisted on cutting up my
food for me. While I tried to eat, she asked Marie and Katarina and
Pierre Grignon and Madame Ursule to notice how well I behaved. The
tender hearted host wiped his eyes.

I understood why she had kept such hold upon me through years of
separateness. A nameless personal charm, which must be a gift of the
spirit, survived all wreck and change. It drew me, and must draw me
forever, whether she knew me again or not. One meets and wakes you to
vivid life in an immortal hour. Thousands could not do it through
eternity.

The river piled hillocks of water in a strong north wind, and no officer
crossed from the stockade. Neither did any neighbor leave his own fire.
It seldom happened that the Grignons were left with inmates alone. Eagle
sat by me and watched the blaze streaming up the chimney.

If she was not a unit in the family group and had no part there, they
were most kind to her.

"Take care!" the grandmother cried with swift forethought when Marie and
Katarina marshaled in a hopping object from the kitchen. "It might
frighten Madeleine."

Pierre Grignon stopped in the middle of a bear hunt. Eagle was not
frightened. She clapped her hands.

"This is a pouched turkey!" Marie announced, leaning against the wall,
while Katarina chased the fowl. It was the little negro, his arms and
feet thrust into the legs of a pair of Pierre Grignon's trousers, and
the capacious open top fastened upon his back. Doubled over, he waddled
and hopped as well as he could. A feather duster was stuck in for a
tail, and his woolly head gave him the uncanny look of a black harpy. To
see him was to shed tears of laughter. The pouched turkey enjoyed being
a pouched turkey. He strutted and gobbled, and ran at the girls; tried
to pick up corn from the floor with his thick lips, tumbling down and
rolling over in the effort; for a pouched turkey has no wings with which
to balance himself. So