wn people. She breathed the sweetbrier scent, her neck
stretched forward and her dark eyes fixed on him; and as his head
turned back from St. Ignace his whole body moved with it, and he
looked at Jenieve.

His eyes were like a cat's in the purple darkness, or like that
heatless fire which shines on rotting bark. The hoar-frosted
countenance was noble even in its most brutal lines. Jenieve, without
knowing she was saying a word, spoke out:--

"Monsieur the chief Pontiac, what ails the French and Indians?"

"Malatat," answered Pontiac. The word came at her with force.

"Monsieur the chief Pontiac," repeated Jenieve, struggling to
understand, "I say, what ails the French and Indians?"

"Malatat!" His guttural cry rang through the bushes. Jenieve was so
startled that she sprung back, catching herself on her hands. But
without the least motion of walking he was far westward, showing like
a phosphorescent bar through the trees, and still moving on, until the
pallor was lost from sight.

Jenieve at once began to cross herself. She had forgotten to do it
before. The rankness of sweetbrier followed her some distance down the
path, and she said prayers all the way home.

You cannot talk with great spirits and continue to chafe about little
things. The boys' shoes and Mama Lalotte's lightness were the same
as forgotten. Jenieve entered her house with dew in her hair, and
an unterrified freshness of body for whatever might happen. She was
certain she had seen Pontiac, but she would never tell anybody to have
it laughed at. There was no candle burning, and the fire had almost
died under the supper pot. She put a couple of sticks on the coals,
more for their blaze than to heat her food. But the Mackinac night
was chill, and it was pleasant to see the interior of her little home
flickering to view. Candles were lighted in many houses along the
beach, and amongst them Mama Lalotte was probably roaming,--for she
had left the door open towards the lake,--and the boys' voices could
be heard with others in the direction of the log wharf.

Jenieve took her supper bowl and sat down on the doorstep. The light
cloud of smoke, drawn up to the roof-hole, ascended behind her,
forming an azure gray curtain against which her figure showed,
round-wristed and full-throated. The starlike camp fires on Round
Island were before her, and the incessant wash of the water on its
pebbles was company to her. Somebody knocked on the front door.

"It