ange specimen.

"Thou art overbold, Jeanne, smiling up in a young man's face and
puckering thy brows like some maid coquetting for a lover."

"A young man!" Jeanne laughed heartily. "Why he had a snowy beard like a
white bear in winter. Where were your eyes, Pani? And he told me such
curious things. Is the world round, Pani? And there are lands and lands
and strange people--"

"It is a brave show," exclaimed Louis Marsac joining them. "I wonder how
long it will last. There are to be some new treaties I hear about the
fur trade. That man from the town called New York, a German or some such
thing, gets more power every month. A messenger came this morning and I
am to return to my father at once. Jeanne, I wish thou and Pani wert
going to the upper lakes with me. If thou wert older--"

She turned away suddenly. Marie De Ber had a group of older girls about
her and she plunged into them, as if she might be spirited away.

Monsieur St. Armand had looked after his little friend but missed her in
the crowd, and a shade of disappointment deepened his blue eyes.

"_Mon pere_," began the young man beside him, "evidently thou wert born
for a missionary to the young. I dare say you discovered untold
possibilities in that saucy child who knows well how to flirt her curls
and arch her eyebrows. She amused me. Was that half-breed her brother, I
wonder!"

"She was not a half-breed, Laurent. There are curious things in this
world, and something about her suggested--or puzzled. She has no Indian
eyes, but the rarest dark blue I ever saw. And did Indian blood ever
break out in curly hair?"

"I only noticed her swarthy skin. And there is such a mixed-up crew in
this town! Come, the grand show is about over and now we are all reborn
Americans up to the shores of Lake Superior. But we will presently be
due at the Montdesert House. Are we to have no more titles and French
nobility be on a level with the plainest, just Sieur and Madame?" with a
little curl of the lips. The elder smiled good naturedly, nay, even
indulgently.

"The demoiselles are more to thee than that splendid flag waving over a
free country. Thou canst return--"

"But the dinner?"

"Ah, yes, then we will go together," he assented.

"If we can pick our way through this crowd. What beggarly narrow
streets. Faugh! One can hardly get his breath. Our wilds are to be
preferred."

By much turning in and out they reached the upper end of St. Louis
street, which at th