een no great Indian leader, but many subordinate chiefs who were very
sore over the treaties. There was an Indian prophet, twin brother to the
chief Tecumseh who afterward led his people to a bloody war, who used
his rude eloquence to unite the warring tribes in one nation by wild
visions he foresaw of their greatness.

Marauding tribes still harassed parties of travelers, but about Detroit
they were peaceable; and many joined in the festivities of a day like
this. While as farm laborers they were of little worth, they were often
useful at the wharves, and as boatmen.

Two years had brought a strange, new life to Jeanne, so imperceptibly
that she was now a puzzle to herself. The child had disappeared, the
growing girl she hardly knew. The wild feats that had once been the
admiration of the children pleased her no longer. The children had grown
as well. The boys tilled the fields with their fathers, worked in shops
or on the docks, or were employed about the Fort. Some few, smitten with
military ardor, were in training for future soldiers. The field for
girls had grown wider. Beside the household employments there were
spinning and sewing. The Indian women had made a coarse kind of lace
worked with beads that the French maidens improved upon and disposed of
to the better class. Or the more hoydenish ones delighted to work in the
fields with their brothers, enjoying the outdoor life.

For a year Jeanne had kept on with her master, though at spring a wild
impulse of liberty threatened to sweep her from her moorings.

"Why do I feel so?" she inquired almost fiercely of the master.
"Something stifles me! Then I wish I had been made a bird to fly up and
up until I had left the earth. Oh, what glorious thing is in the bird's
mind when he can look into the very heavens, soaring out of sight?"

"There is nothing in the bird's mind, except to find a mate, build a
nest and rear some young; to feed them until they can care for
themselves, and, though there is much romance about the mother bird,
they are always eager to get rid of their offspring. He sings because
God has given him a song, his language. But he has no thought of
heaven."

"Oh, he must have!" she cried passionately.

The master studied her.

"Art thou ready to die, to go out of the world, to be put into the dark
ground?"

"Oh, no! no!" Jeanne shuddered. "It is because I like to live, to
breathe the sweet air, to run over the grass, to linger about the woods