stored!" thought I. And M. Picot must have seen my surprise, for he
drew back to his shell like a pricked snail. Observing that the wind
was chill, he bade me an icy good-night.

I had no desire to pry into M. Picot's secrets, but I could not help
knowing that he had unbended to me because he was interested in the fur
trade. From that 'twas but a step to the guess that he had come to New
England to amass wealth to restore Mistress Hortense. Restore her to
what? There I pulled up sharp. 'Twas none of my affair; and yet, in
spite of resolves, it daily became more of my affair. Do what I would,
spending part of every day with Rebecca, that image of lustrous eyes
under the white beaver, the plume nodding above the curls, the slender
figure outlined against the gold-shot mantilla, became a haunting
memory. Countless times I blotted out that mental picture with a sweep
of common sense. "She was a pert miss, with her head full of French
nonsense and a nose held too high in air." Then a memory of the eyes
under the beaver, and fancy was at it again spinning cobwebs in
moonshine.

M. Picot kept more aloof than formerly, and was as heartily hated for
it as the little minds of a little place ever hate those apart.

Occasionally, in the forest far back from the settlement, I caught a
flying glimpse of Lincoln green; and Hortense went through the woods,
hard as her Irish hunter could gallop, followed by the blackamoor,
churning up and down on a blowing nag. Once I had the good luck to
restore a dropped gauntlet before the blackamoor could come. With eyes
alight she threw me a flashing thanks and was off, a sunbeam through
the forest shades; and something was thumping under a velvet waistcoat
faster than the greyhound's pace. A moment later, back came the hound
in springy stretches, with the riders at full gallop.

Her whip fell, but this time she did not turn.

But when I carried the whip to the doctor's house that night, M. Picot
received it with scant grace!

Whispers--gall-midges among evil tongues--were raising a buzz that
boded ill for the doctor. France had paid spies among the English,
some said. Deliverance Dobbins, a frumpish, fizgig of a maid, ever
complaining of bodily ills though her chuffy cheeks were red as
pippins, reported that one day when she had gone for simples she had
seen strange, dead things in the jars of M. Picot's dispensary. At
this I laughed as Rebecca told it me, and old Tibbie wink