dding."

"Yet one would rather do that than never have a wedding at all."

"I kiss your hand on that, mademoiselle."

"What are those little rings around the base of the trees, monsieur the
colonel?"

"They are marks which show that the water is already falling. It must be
two inches lower than last night on the Church of the Immaculate
Conception. I am one sixth of a foot on my way toward matrimony."

A tent like a white blossom showed through the woods; then many more.
The bluffs all about Pierre Menard's house were dotted with them. Boats
could be seen coming back from the town, full of people. Two or three
sails were tacking northward on that smooth and glistening fresh-water
sea. Music came across it, meeting the rising sun; the nuns sang their
matin service as they were rowed.

Angelique closed her eyes over tears. It seemed to her like floating
into the next world,--in music, in soft shadow, in keen rapture,--seeing
the light on the hills beyond while her beloved held her by the hand.

All day boats passed back and forth between the tented bluffs and the
roofs of Kaskaskia, carrying the goods of a temporarily houseless
people. At dusk, some jaded men came back--among them Captain Saucier
and Colonel Menard--from searching overflow and uplands for Dr. Dunlap.

At dusk, also, the fireflies again scattered over the lake, without
waiting for a belated moon. Jean Lozier stood at the top of the bluff,
on his old mount of vision, and watched these boats finishing the work
of the day. They carried the only lights now to be seen in Kaskaskia.

He was not excited by the swarming life just below him. His idea of
Kaskaskia was not a buzzing encampment around a glittering seigniory
house, with the governor's presence giving it grandeur, and Rice Jones
and his sister, waiting their temporary burial on the uplands, giving it
awe. Old Kaskaskia had been over yonder, the place of his desires, his
love. The glamour and beauty and story were on the smothered valley, and
for him they could never be anywhere else.

Father Olivier came out on the bluff, and Jean at once pulled his cap
off, and looked at the ground instead of at the pale green and
wild-rose tints at the farther side of the world. They heard the soft
wash of the flood. The priest bared his head to the evening air.

"My son, I am sorry your grandfather died last night, while I was unable
to reach him."

"Yes, father."

"You have been a good son. Your consc