howed beneath the food she had
refused.

"If she had milk!" said the boy.

"My God, if I could get some," groaned the man, and stopped as a
shuffling and tumbling was heard at the door.

"She is very drunk," said the man, without amazement. He helped her
in, and, too far gone to abuse them, she soon lay heavily breathing
near the child she had murdered.

Mini woke in the pale morning thinking Angelique very cold in his
arms, and, behold, she was free from all the suffering forever. So he
_could_ not cry, though the mother wept when she awoke, and shrieked
at his tearlessness as hardhearted.

Little Angelique had been rowed across the great river for the last
time; night was come again, and Mini thought he _must_ die; it could
not be that he should be made to live without Angelique! Then a
wondrous thing seemed to happen. Little Angelique had come back. He
could not doubt it next morning, for, with the slowly lessening glow
from the last brands of fire had not her face appeared?--then her
form?--and lo! she was closely held in the arms of the mild Mother
whom Mini knew from her image in the church, only she smiled more
sweetly now in the hut. Little Angelique had learned to smile, too,
which was most wonderful of all to Mini. In their heavenly looks was a
meaning of which he felt almost aware; a mysterious happiness was
coming close and closer; with the sense of ineffable touches near his
brow, the boy dreamed. Nothing more did Mini know till his mother's
voice woke him in the morning. He sprang up with a cry of "Angelique,"
and gazed round upon the familiar squalor.

II.

From the summit of Rigaud Mountain a mighty cross flashes sunlight all
over the great plain of Vaudreuil. The devout _habitant_, ascending
from vale to hill-top in the county of Deux Montagnes, bends to the
sign he sees across the forest leagues away. Far off on the brown
Ottawa, beyond the Cascades of Carillon and the Chute a Blondeau, the
keen-eyed _voyageur_ catches its gleam, and, for gladness to be
nearing the familiar mountain, more cheerily raises the _chanson_ he
loves. Near St. Placide the early ploughman--while yet mist wreathes
the fields and before the native Rossignol has fairly begun his
plaintive flourishes--watches the high cross of Rigaud for the first
glint that shall tell him of the yet unrisen sun. The wayfarer marks
his progress by the bearing of that great cross, the hunter looks to
it for an unfailing landmark, the we