would have liked to tear up the whole garden and throw it over in
the river. She glanced around furtively--what if Mere Dubray should come
suddenly in search of Pani.

Three little ones were tumbling about on the grass. The oldest girl was
grinding at the rude mill, a boy was making something out of birch
branches, interlaced with willow. A round, cheerful face glanced up from
patching a boy's garment, and smiled. Madame Gaudrion's mother had been
a white woman left at the Saguenay basin in a dying condition, it was
supposed, but she had recovered and married a half-breed. One daughter
had cast in her lot with a roving tribe. Pierre Gaudrion had seen the
other in one of the journeys up to Tadoussac and brought her home.

The Sieur did not discourage these marriages, for the children
generally affiliated with the whites, and if the colony was to prosper
there must be marriages and children.

Rose stopped suddenly, rather embarrassed, for all her bravado.

"I used to live here," as if apologizing.

"Yes. But Mere Dubray was not your mother."

"No. Nor Catherine Arlac."

The woman shook her head. "I know not many people. We live on the other
side. And the babies come so fast I have not much time. But Pierre say
now we must have bigger space and garden for the children to work in. So
we are glad when Mere Dubray go up to the fur country with her man. You
were ill, they said. But you do not look ill. Did you not want to go
with her?"

"Oh, no, no. And I live clear up there," nodding to the higher altitude.
"M'sieu Hebert is there and Madame. And a beautiful lady, Madame
Giffard. I did not love Mere Dubray."

"If I have a child that will not love me, it would break my heart. What
else are little ones for until they grow up and marry in turn?"

"But--I was not her child."

"And your mother."

"I do not know. She was dead before I could remember. Then I was brought
from France."

Suddenly she felt the loss of her mother. She belonged to no one in the
world.

"Poor _petite_." She made a sudden snatch at her own baby and hugged it
so tightly that it shrieked, at which she laughed.

"Some day a man will hug thee and thou wilt not scream," she said in
good humor.

Pani came from round the corner and then darted back. The boy left his
work and came forward.

"Who was that?" he asked. "My father said 'get an Indian boy to work in
the garden.' I am making a chair for the little one. And I can't tell
which are w