apelessly fat, and he never had
stirred himself during his month of freedom to do any courting. But
Frenchmen of his class considered fifty the limit of an active life.
It behooved him now to begin looking around; to prepare a fireside for
himself. Michel was a good clerk to his employers. Cumbrous though his
body might be, when he was in the woods he never shirked any hardship
to secure a specially fine bale of furs.

Mama Lalotte, propelled against her will, sat down, trembling, in the
house. Jenieve, trembling also, took the wooden bowls and spoons from
a shelf and ladled out soup for the evening meal. Mama Lalotte was
always willing to have the work done without trouble to herself, and
she sat on a three-legged stool, like a guest. The supper pot boiled
in the centre of the house, hanging on the crane which was fastened to
a beam overhead. Smoke from the clear fire passed that richly darkened
transverse of timber as it ascended, and escaped through a hole in
the bark roof. The Fur Company had a great building with chimneys;
but poor folks were glad to have a cedar hut of one room, covered with
bark all around and on top. A fire-pit, or earthen hearth, was left
in the centre, and the nearer the floor could be brought to this hole,
without danger, the better the house was. On winter nights, fat French
and half-breed children sat with heels to this sunken altar, and heard
tales of massacre or privation which made the family bunks along the
wall seem couches of luxury. It was the aboriginal hut patterned after
his Indian brother's by the Frenchman; and the succession of British
and American powers had not yet improved it. To Jenieve herself, the
crisis before her, so insignificant against the background of that
historic island, was more important than massacre or conquest.

"Mama,"--she spoke tremulously,--"I was obliged to bring you in. It is
not proper to be seen on the street with an engage". The town is now
full of these bush-lopers."

"Bush-lopers, mademoiselle!" The little flaxen-haired woman had a
shrill voice. "What was your own father?"

"He was a clerk, madame," maintained the girl's softer treble, "and
always kept good credit for his family at the Company's store."

"I see no difference. They are all the same."

"Francois Iroquois was not the same." As the girl said this she felt a
powder-like flash from her own eyes.

Mama Lalotte was herself a little ashamed of the Francois Iroquois
alliance, but sh