es, Anne was gone.

And now that she was gone, it was astonishing to see what a void was
left. No one had especially valued or praised her while she was there;
she was a matter of course. But now that she was absent, the whole life
of the village seemed changed. There was no one to lead the music on
Sundays, standing by the organ and singing clearly, and Miss Lois's
playing seemed now doubly dull and mechanical. There was no one going up
to the fort at a certain hour every morning, passing the windows where
the fort ladies sat, with books under her arm. There was no one working
in the Agency garden; no one coming with a quick step into the butcher's
little shop to see what he had, and consult him, not without hidden
anxiety, as to the possibility of a rise in prices. There was no one
sewing on the piazza, or going out to find the boys, or sailing over to
the hermitage with the four black-eyed children, who plainly enough
needed even more holy instruction than they obtained. They all knew
everything she did, and all her ways. And as it was a small community,
they missed her sadly. The old Agency, too, seemed to become suddenly
dilapidated, almost ruinous; the boys were undeniably rascals, and Tita
"a little minx." Miss Lois was without doubt a dogmatic old maid, and
the chaplain not what he used to be, poor old man--fast breaking up.
Only Pere Michaux bore the test unaltered. But then he had not leaned
upon this young girl as the others had leaned--the house and garden, the
chaplain as well as the children: the strong young nature had in one way
supported them all.

Meanwhile the girl herself was journeying down the lake. She stood at
the stern, watching the island grow distant, grow purple, grow lower and
lower on the surface of the water, until at last it disappeared; then
she covered her face and wept. After this, like one who leaves the
vanished past behind him, and resolutely faces the future, she went
forward to the bow and took her seat there. Night came on; she remained
on deck through the evening: it seemed less lonely there than among the
passengers in the cabin. She knew the captain; and she had been
especially placed in his charge, also, by Pere Michaux, as far as one of
the lower-lake ports, where she was to be met by a priest and taken to
the eastern-bound train. The captain, a weather-beaten man, past middle
age, came after a while and sat down near her.

"What is that red light over the shore-line?" sai