d weather for making maple sugar. In the mornings hoar frost
or light snows silvered the world, disappearing as soon as the sun
touched them, when the bark of every tree leaked moisture. This was
festive labor compared with planting the fields, and drew the men,
also.

The morning after La Hontan sailed, Saint-Castin went out and skirted
this wide-spread sugar industry like a spy. The year before, he had
moved heartily from fire to fire, hailed and entertained by every red
manufacturer. The unrest of spring was upon him. He had brought many
conveniences among the Abenaquis, and taught them some civilized arts.
They were his adopted people. But he felt a sudden separateness from
them, like the loneliness of his early boyhood.

Saint-Castin was a good hunter. He had more than once watched a slim
young doe stand gazing curiously at him, and had not startled it by a
breath. Therefore he was able to become a stump behind the tree which
Madockawando's daughter sought with her sap pail. Usually he wore
buckskins, in the free and easy life of Pentegoet. But he had put on
his Carignan-Salieres uniform, filling its boyish outlines with his
full man's figure. He would not on any account have had La Hontan see
him thus gathering the light of the open woods on military finery.
He felt ashamed of returning to it, and could not account for his
own impulses; and when he saw Madockawando's daughter walking
unconsciously toward him as toward a trap, he drew his bright surfaces
entirely behind the column of the tree.

She had taken no part in this festival of labor for several years. She
moved among the women still in solitude, not one of them feeling at
liberty to draw near her except as she encouraged them. The Abenaquis
were not a polygamous tribe, but they enjoyed the freedom of the
woods. Squaws who had made several experimental marriages since
this young celibate began her course naturally felt rebuked by her
standards, and preferred stirring kettles to meeting her. It was not
so long since the princess had been a hoiden among them, abounding
in the life which rushes to extravagant action. Her juvenile whoops
scared the birds. She rode astride of saplings, and played pranks
on solemn old warriors and the medicine-man. Her body grew into
suppleness and beauty. As for her spirit, the women of the tribe knew
very little about it. They saw none of her struggles. In childhood
she was ashamed of the finer nature whose wants found no an