mishes.

And toward the end of the century began the greatest struggle for
liberty America had yet seen. After the war of the Revolution was ended
all the country south of the Lakes was ceded to the United Colonies.
But for some years England seemed disposed to hold on to Detroit,
disbelieving the colonies could ever establish a stable government. As
the French had supposed they could reconquer, so the English looked
forward to repossession. But Detroit was still largely a French town or
settlement, for thus far it had been a military post of importance.

So it might justly be called old this afternoon, as almost two centuries
had elapsed since the French had built their huts and made a point for
the fur trade, that Jeanne Angelot sat outside the palisade, leaning
against the Pani woman who for years had been a slave, from where she
did not know herself, except that she had been a child up in the fur
country. Madame De Longueil had gone back to France with her family and
left the Indian woman to shift for herself in freedom. And then had come
a new charge.

The morals of that day were not over-precise. But though the woman had
had a husband and two sons, one boy had died in childhood, the other had
been taken away by the husband who repudiated her. She was the more
ready to mother this child dropped mysteriously into her lap one day by
an Indian woman whose tongue she did not understand.

"Tell it over again," said Jeanne with an air of authority, a dainty
imperiousness.

She was leaning against one knee, the woman's heels being drawn up close
to her body, making a back to the seat of soft turf, and with her small
hand thumping the woman's brown one against the other knee.

"Mam'selle, you have heard it so many times you could tell it yourself
in the dark."

"But perhaps I could not tell it in the daylight," said the girl, with
mischievous laughter that sent musical ripples on the sunny air.

The woman looked amazed.

"Why should you be better able to do it at night?"

"O, you foolish Pani! Why, I might summon the _itabolays_--"

"Hush! hush! Do not call upon such things."

"And the _shil loups_, though they cannot talk. And the _windigoes_--"

"Mam'selle!" The Indian woman made as if she would rise in anger and
crossed herself.

"O, Pani, tell the story. Why, it was night you always say. And so I
ought to have some night-sight or knowledge. And you were feeling lonely
and miserable, and--why, how do yo