se and dainty slippers, and gowns slipping off the shoulders,
and my lady will soon find that out. I wondered at M. Destournier. The
saints forbid that we should import these kind of cattle to New
France."

"She is very sweet"--protestingly.

"Oh, yes. So is the flower sweet, and it drops off into withered leaves.
And her eyes looked askance at M'sieu Ralph, yet she hath a husband.
Come, eat of thy bird and bread, and to-morrow maybe thou wilt run about
lest thy limbs stiffen up to a palsy."

"Mistress, mistress," called Pani--"here is a man to see thee."

She went through both rooms. The man stood without, rather rough,
unkempt, with buckskin breeches, fringed leggings, an Indian blanket, a
grizzled beard hanging down on his breast, and his tousled hair well
sprinkled with white; his face wrinkled with the hardships he had passed
through, but the gray-blue eyes twinkled.

"Ha! ha!" A coarse, but not unfriendly laugh finished the greeting as he
caught both hands in an impetuous embrace. "Lalotte, old girl, has thy
memory failed in two years? Or hast thou gotten another husband?"

The woman gave a shriek of mingled surprise and delight. "The saints be
praised, it is Antoine. And how if thou hast taken some Indian woman to
wife? Braves do not consort with white women who cannot be made into
slaves," she answered, with spirit.

"Lalotte, thou wert hard to win in those early days. But now a dozen
good kisses with more flavor in them than Burgundy wine, and I will
prove to you I am the same old Antoine. And then--but thy supper smell
is good to a hungry man. And a dish of shallots. It takes a man back to
old Barbizon."

Stout and strong as was Madame Dubray, her husband almost kissed the
breath out of her body in his rapturous embrace.

"But I had no word of your coming----"

"How could you, pardieu! But you knew the traders were coming in. And a
man can't send messengers hundreds of miles."

"I looked last year----"

"Pouf! There are men who stay five or ten years, and have left a wife in
France. You can't blame them for taking a new one when you are invited
to. It is a wild, hard life, but not worse than a soldier's. And when
you are your own master the hardships are light. But some of this good
supper."

"Out with you," she said to the Indian boys, who had snatched a piece of
the broiled fish. Then she put down a plate, took up two birds that
dripped delicious gravy, and a squirrel browned to a turn. From