reads of a brook ravelling themselves from density.
For the forest was a mask. But Marianson knew well the tricks of that
brook--its pellucid shining on pebbles, its cascades, its hidings
underground of all but a voice and a crystal pool. Wet to her knees, she
had more than once followed it to its source amid such greenery of moss
and logs as seemed a conflagration of verdure.

The many points and bays of the island sped behind her, and cliffs
crowded her to the water's edge or left her a dim moving object on a
lonesome beach. Sometimes she heard sounds in the woods and listened; on
the other hand, she had the companionship of stars and moving water. On
that glorified journey Marianson's natural fearlessness carried her past
the Devil's Kitchen and quite near the post before she began to consider
how it was best to approach a place which might be in the hands of an
enemy. Her boat was tied at the dock. She had the half-ruined distillery
yet to pass. It had stood under the cliff her lifetime. As she drew
nearer, cracks of light and a hum like the droning of a beehive
magically turned the old distillery into a caravansary of spirits.

Nothing in her long tramp had startled her like this. It was a relief to
hear the click of metal and a strange-spoken word, and to find herself
face to face with an English soldier. He made no parley, but marched
her before him; and the grateful noise of squalling babies and maternal
protests and Maman Pelott's night lullaby also met her as they proceeded
towards the distillery.

The long dark shed had a chimney-stack and its many-coiled still in one
end. Beside that great bottle-shaped thing, at the base of the chimney,
was an open fireplace piled with flaming sticks, and this had made the
luminous crevices. All Mackinac village was gathered within the walls,
and Marian-son beheld a camp supping, putting children to bed on
blankets in corners, sitting and shaking fingers at one another in
wrathful council, or running about in search of lost articles. The cure
was there, keeping a restraint on his people. Clothes hung on spikes
like rows of suicides in the weird light. Even fiddlers and jollity
were not lacking. A heavier race would have come to blows in that strait
enclosure, but these French and half-breeds, in danger of scalping if
the Indians proved turbulent, dried their eyes after losses, and shook
their legs ready for a dance at the scraping of a violin.

Little Ignace Pelott was d