, and both of us changed
like the face of nature, when the snow went and warm winds came.

This looking at her without really approaching was going on innocently
when one day Count de Chaumont rode up to the manor, his horse and his
attendant servants and horses covered with mud, filling the place with a
rush of life.

He always carried himself as if he felt extremely welcome in this world.
And though a man ought to be welcome in his own house, especially when
he has made it a comfortable refuge for outsiders, I met him with the
secret resentment we bear an interloper.

He looked me over from head to foot with more interest than he had ever
before shown.

"We are getting on, we are getting on! Is it Doctor Chantry, or the
little madame, or the winter housing? Our white blood is very much in
evidence. When Chief Williams comes back to the summer hunting he will
not know his boy."

"The savage is inside yet, monsieur," I told him. "Scratch me and see."

"Not I," he laughed.

"It is late for thanks, but I will now thank you for taking me into your
house."

"He has learned gratitude for little favors! That is Madame de Ferrier's
work."

"I hope I may be able to do something that will square our accounts."

"That's Doctor Chantry's work. He is full of benevolent intentions--and
never empties himself. When you have learned all your master knows, what
are you going to do with it?"

"I am going to teach our Indians."

"Good. You have a full day's work before you. Founding an estate in the
wilderness is nothing compared to that. You have more courage than De
Chaumont."

Whether the spring or the return of De Chaumont drove me out, I could no
longer stay indoors, but rowed all day long on the lake or trod the
quickening woods. Before old Pierre could get audience with his house
accounts, De Chaumont was in Madame de Ferrier's rooms, inspecting the
wafer blotched letter. He did not appear as depressed as he should have
been by the death of his old friend.

"These French have no hearts," I told Doctor Chantry.

He took off his horn spectacles and wiped his eyes, responding:

"But they find the way to ours!"

Slipping between islands in water paths that wound as a meadow stream
winds through land, I tried to lose myself from the uneasy pain which
followed me everywhere.

There may be people who look over the scheme of their lives with entire
complacence. Mine has been the outcome of such strange misfortunes a