ee that the shutters would swing easily
and brought fresh cedar and pine boughs for pallets. Crops were being
gathered in, and there were merrymakings and church festivals, but the
poor woman sat alone in her room that fronted the street, now and then
casting her eyes up and down in mute questioning. The light of her life
had gone. If Jeanne came not back all would be gone, even faith in the
good God. For why should he, if he was so great and could manage the
whole world, let this thing happen? Why should he deliver Jeanne into
the hands of the man she hated, or perhaps let her be torn to pieces by
some wild beast of the forest, when, by raising a finger, he could have
helped it? Could he be angry because she had not sent the child to be
shut up in the Recollet house and made a nun of?

Slavery and servitude had not extinguished the love of liberty that had
been born in Pani's soul. She had succumbed to force, then to a certain
fondness for a kind mistress. But it seemed as if she alone had
understood the child's wild flights, her hatred of bondage. She had done
no harm to any living creature; she had been full of gratitude to the
great Manitou for every flower, every bird, for the golden sun that set
her pulses in a glow, for the moon and stars, and the winds that sang to
her. Oh, surely God could not be angry with her!

CHAPTER XV.

A PRISONER.

Jeanne Angelot climbed a slight ascent where great jagged stones had
probably been swept down in some fierce storm and found lodgment. Tufts
of pink flowers, the like of which she had not seen before, hung over
one ledge. They were not wild roses, yet had a spicy fragrance. Here the
little stream formed a sort of basin, and the overflow made the cascade
down the winding way strewn with pebbles and stones worn smooth by the
force of the early spring floods. How wonderfully beautiful it was! To
the north, after a space of wild land, there was a prairie stretching
out as far as one could see, golden green in the sunlight; to the east
the lake, that seemed to gather all sorts of changeful, magical tints on
its bosom.

She had never heard of the vale of Enna nor her prototype who stooped to
pluck

"The fateful flower beside the rill,
The daffodil! The daffodil!"

as she sprang down to gather the blossoms. The stir in the woods did not
alarm her. Her eyes were still over to the eastward drinking in that
fine draught of celestial wine, the true n