dame de Ferrier say?"

"Nothing. She made a child of him, as if he were her son. He was in his
second childhood, no doubt. And Madame Jordan said she appeared to hold
herself accountable for the losses and crosses that made him so fretful.
The children of the emigration were brought up to hardship, and accepted
everything as their elders could not do."

"I thought the Marquis de Ferrier a courteous gentleman."

"Did you ever see him?"

"Twice only."

"He used to tell his wife he intended to live a hundred years. And I
suppose he would have done it, if he had not been tomahawked and
scalped. 'You'll never get De Chaumont,' he used to say to her. 'I'll
see that he never gets you!' I remember the name very well, because it
was the name of that pretty creature who danced for us in the cabin on
Lake George."

"De Chaumont was her father," I said. "He would have married Madame de
Ferrier, and restored her estate, if she had accepted him, and the
marquis had not come back."

"Saints have pity!" said Madame Ursule. "And the poor old man must make
everybody and himself so uncomfortable!"

"But how could he help living?"

"True enough. God's times are not ours. But see what he has made of
her!"

I thought of my Cloud-Mother walking enclosed from the world upon a
height of changeless youth. She could not feel another shock. She was
past both ambition and poverty. If she had ever felt the sweet anguish
of love--Oh! she must have understood when she kissed me and said: "I
will come to you sometime!"--the anguish--the hoping, waiting,
expecting, receiving nothing, all were gone by. Even mother cares no
longer touched her. Paul was grown. She could not be made anything that
was base. Unseen forces had worked with her and would work with her
still.

"You told me," I said to Madame Ursule, "the Indians were afraid of her
when they burned the settlement. Was the change so sudden?"

"Madame Jordan's story was like this: It happened in broad daylight. Two
men went into the woods hunting bee trees. The Indians caught and killed
them within two miles of the clearing--some of those very Winnebagoes
you treated with for your land. It was a sunshiny day in September. You
could hear the poultry crowing, and the children playing in the
dooryards. Madeleine's little Paul was never far away from her. The
Indians rushed in with yells and finished the settlement in a few
minutes. Madame Jordan and her family were protected, but she sa