touched one's heart.

"What nonsense!" Mere Dubray would exclaim. "It is well enough for men,
and priests must know Latin prayers, but this is beyond anything a woman
needs. And to be repeating it to sticks----"

"But I get so lonely when they are all away," and the child sighed. "The
real Indian girls were a pleasure, but I'm afraid you could not teach
them to read any more than these make-believes."

"Yes, winter is a dreary time. I'm not sure but I would rather be up in
the fur country with my man. It seems they find plenty of game."

There was not so much game here, for the Indians were ever on the alert
and the roving bands always on the verge of starvation. But once in a
while there was a feast of fresh meat and Mere Dubray made tasty messes
for the hungry men.

Rose, bundled up in furs sometimes, ran around the gallery where they
had cleared the snow. Then there were the forge and the workshop, where
the men were hewing immense walnut trees into slabs and posts for spring
building. Some days the doves were let out of the cote in the sunshine
and it was fascinating to see them circle around. They knew the little
girl and would alight on her shoulder and eat grains out of her hand,
coo to her and kiss her. Destournier loved to watch her, a real child of
nature, innocent as the doves themselves. Mere Dubray had scarcely more
idea of the seriousness of life or the demands of another existence
beyond. She told her beads, prayed to her patron saint with small idea
of what heaven might be like, unless it was the beautiful little hamlet
where she was born. And as she was not sure the child had been
christened, she thought it best to wait for the advent of a priest to
direct her in the right way.

She was not a little horrified by Destournier's curious familiarity with
God and heaven, as it seemed to her. Rose understood almost intuitively
that it terrified her, that it seemed a sacrilege, though she would not
have known what the word meant. So she said very little about it--it was
a beautiful land beyond the sky where people went when they died.
Sometimes, when the wonderful beauty of sunset moved her to a strange
ecstasy, she longed to be transported thither. And in the moving white
drifts she saw angel forms with out-stretched arms and called to them.

The beginning of the new year was bitter indeed. Snow piled mountain
high, it seemed a whole world of snow. For windows they had cloth
soaked in oil, but now the