nition in their hands in exchange for their country. As for the
tribes, they enjoyed it. Jenieve could see their night fires begin to
twinkle on Round Island and Bois Blanc, and the rising hubbub of their
carnival came to her like echoes across the strait. There was one
growing star on the long hooked reef which reached out from Round
Island, and figures of Indians were silhouetted against the lake,
running back and forth along that high stone ridge. Evening coolness
stole up to Jenieve, for the whole water world was purpling; and sweet
pine and cedar breaths, humid and invisible, were all around her. Her
trouble grew small, laid against the granite breast of the island, and
the woods darkened and sighed behind her. Jenieve could hear the shout
of some Indian boy at the distant village. She was not afraid, but her
shoulders contracted with a shiver. The place began to smell rankly
of sweetbrier. There was no sweetbrier on the cliff or in the woods,
though many bushes grew on alluvial slopes around the bay. Jenieve
loved the plant, and often stuck a piece of it in her bosom. But this
was a cold smell, striking chill to the bones. Her flesh and hair
and clothes absorbed the scent, and it cooled her nostrils with its
strange ether, the breath of sweetbrier, which always before seemed
tinctured by the sun. She had a sensation of moving sidewise out of
her own person; and then she saw the chief Pontiac standing on the
edge of the cliff. Jenieve knew his back, and the feathers in his hair
which the wind did not move. His head turned on a pivot, sweeping the
horizon from St. Ignace, where the white man first set foot, to Round
Island, where the shameful fires burned. His hard, set features were
silver color rather than copper, as she saw his profile against the
sky. His arms were folded in his blanket. Jenieve was as sure that she
saw Pontiac as she was sure of the rock on which she sat. She poked
one finger through the sward to the hardness underneath. The rock was
below her, and Pontiac stood before her. He turned his head back from
Round Island to St. Ignace. The wind blew against him, and the brier
odor, sickening sweet, poured over Jenieve.

She heard the dogs bark in Mackinac village, and leaves moving behind
her, and the wash of water at the base of the island which always
sounded like a small rain. Instead of feeling afraid, she was in a
nightmare of sorrow. Pontiac had loved the French almost as well as
he loved his o