Longueil, Madame Bellestre, and
then Monsieur, though he never came from the shadowy grave, but a garden
that bore strange fruit, and where it was summer all the year round. She
had the gift of obedient faith, so she was a good Catholic, as far as
her own soul was concerned, but her duty toward the child often troubled
her.

Jeanne watched the blaze in a strange mood, her heart hot and angry at
one moment, proud and indifferent at the next. She said a dozen times a
day to herself that she didn't care a dead leaf for Marie, who had grown
so consequential and haughty, and Rose, who was full of her own
pleasure. It seemed as if other children had dropped out as well, but
then in this cold weather she could not run out to the farms or lead a
group of eager young people to see her do amazing feats. For she could
walk out on the limb of a tree and laugh while it swung up and down with
her weight, and then catch the limb of the next tree and fling herself
over, amid their shouts. No boy dared climb higher. She had caught
little owls who blinked at her with yellow eyes, but she always put them
back in the trees again.

"You wouldn't like to be carried away by fierce Indians," she said when
the children begged they might keep them. "They like their homes and
their mothers."

"As if an owl could tell who its mother was!" laughed a boy
disdainfully.

She had hardly known the feeling of loneliness. What did she do last
winter, she wondered? O yes, she played with the De Ber children, and
there were the Pallents, whom she seldom went to visit now, they seemed
so very ignorant. Ah--if it would come summer again!

"For the trees and the flowers and the birds are better than most
people," she ruminated. It must be because everybody had gone out of her
life that it appeared wide and strange. After all she did not care for
the De Bers and yet it seemed as if she had been stabbed to the heart.
Pierre and Marie had pretended to care so much for her. Then, in spite
of her sadness, she laughed.

"What is it amuses thee so, little one?" asked the Indian woman.

"I am not old enough to have a lover, Pani, am I?" and she looked out of
her furry wrap.

"No, child, no. What folly! Marie's wedding has set thee astray."

"And Pierre is a slow, stupid fellow."

"Pierre would be no match for thee, and I doubt if the De Bers would
countenance such a thing if he were older. That is nonsense."

"Pierre asked me to be his wife. He said twi