eeds. Yesterday I pulled up some onions and father was angry,
but he could set them out again."

Rose laughed at that, and thought it remarkable that his father did not
beat him.

"Pani might show you a little. He belongs to me now. We both used to
work in the garden. Mere Dubray was always knitting and cooking."

Pani emerged again. "Yes, let us go," and Rose led the way, but she
would have liked to throw herself down among the babies, who seemed all
arms and legs.

"Can you read?" the boy said suddenly. "We have a book and I can read
quite well. My father knows how. And I want to be a great man like the
Sieur, and some of the soldiers. I want to know how to keep accounts,
and to go to France some time in the big ships."

Rose colored. "I am going to learn to read this winter, when we have to
stay in. But it is very difficult--tiresome. I'd rather climb the rocks
and watch the birds. I had some once that would come for grains and bits
of corn cake. And the geese were so tame down there by the end of the
garden."

The rows of corn stood up finely, shaking out their silken heads,
turning to a bronze red. Then there were potatoes. These were of the
Dubrays' planting, as well as some of the smaller beds.

"M'sieu Hebert gave father some of these plants. He knows a great deal,
and he can make all kinds of medicine. It is very fine to know a great
deal, isn't it?"

"But it must be hard to study so much," returned Rose, with a sigh.

"I don't think so. I wish I had ever so many books like the Sieur and M.
Hebert. And you can find out places--there are so many of them in the
world. And do you know there are English people working with all their
might down in Virginia, and Spanish and Dutch! But some day we shall
drive them all out and it will be New France as far as you can go. And
the Indians----"

"You can't drive the Indians out," exclaimed Pani decisively. "The whole
country is theirs. And there are so many of them. There are tribes and
tribes all over the land. And they know how to fight."

"They are fighting each other continually. M. Hebert says they will
sweep each other off after a while. And they are very cruel. You will
see the French do not fight the French."

Alas, young Pierre Gaudrion, already Catholic and Huguenot were at war:
one fighting for the right to live in a certain liberty of belief, the
other thinking they did God a service by undertaking their
extermination.

The argument rather floo