and mild reserve in the village society, the sole heiress of
what seemed a goodly property to the simple needs of the day,
appealed to his reason as well as his heart. He remained until near
midnight, while the old black woman crouched with the patience of a
watching animal outside the door, and he wooed Dorothy Fair with
ardor and delight, although her softly affectionate kisses were to
Madelon Hautville's as the fall of snow-flakes to drops of warm
honey. And although after he had gone home and fallen asleep his
dreams were mixed, still when he waked with the image of Madelon
between himself and Dorothy, because sleep had set his heart free, it
was still with that sense of approbation.

Madelon Hautville was not considered a fair match for a young man who
had claims to ambition. The Hautville family held a peculiar place in
public estimation. They belonged not to any defined stratum of the
village society, but formed rather a side ledge, a cropping, of quite
another kind, at which people looked askance. One reason undoubtedly
was the mixture of foreign blood which their name denoted. Anything
of alien race was looked upon with a mixture of fear and aversion in
this village of people whose blood had flowed in one course for
generations. The Hautvilles were said to have French and Indian blood
yet, in strong measure, in their veins; it was certain that they had
both, although it was fairly back in history since the first
Hautville, who, report said, was of a noble French family, had
espoused an Iroquois Indian girl. The sturdy males of the family had
handed down the name and the characteristics of the races through
years of intermarriage with the English settlers. All the
Hautvilles--the father, the four sons, and the daughter--were tall
and dark, and straight as arrows, and they all had wondrous grace of
manner, which abashed and half offended, while it charmed, the stiff
village people. Not a young man in the village, no matter how finely
attired in city-made clothing, had the courtly air of these Hautville
sons, in their rude, half-woodland garb; not a girl, not even Dorothy
Fair, could wear a gown of brocade with the grace, inherited from a
far-away French grandmother, with which Madelon Hautville wore indigo
cotton.

Moreover, the whole family was as musical as a band of troubadours,
and while that brought them into constant requisition and gave them
an importance in the town, it yet caused them to be held with