of man is artificial and devised.

When Ninon saw the frost-reddened face of this gallant of the plains,
she gave a little cry of delight, and the color rushed back into her
face. The trapper saw her, and gave a rude shout of welcome. The next
moment, he had swung her clear of the chapel steps; and then the two
went down the street together, Pierre pausing only long enough to doff
his hat to the priest.

"The Virgin will wear no fresh laces," said the priest, with some
bitterness; but he was mistaken. An hour later, Ninon was back, not only
with a box of laces, but also with a collection of cosmetics, with which
she proceeded to make startling the scratched and faded face of the
wooden Virgin, who wore, after the completion of Ninon's labors, a
decidedly piquant and saucy expression. The very manner in which the
laces were draped had a suggestion of Ninon's still unforgotten art as
a maker of millinery, and was really a very good presentment of Paris
fashions four years past. Pierre, meantime, amused himself by filling up
the chinks in the logs with fresh mud,--a commodity of which there was
no lack,--and others of the neighbors, incited by these extraordinary
efforts, washed the dirt from seats, floor, and windows, and brought
furs with which to make presentable the floor about the pulpit.

Father de Smet worked harder than any of them. In his happy enthusiasm
he chose to think this energy on the part of the others was prompted by
piety, though well he knew it was only a refuge from the insufferable
ennui that pervaded the place. Ninon suddenly came up to him with a
white face.

"I am not well," she said. Her teeth were chattering, and her eyes had
a little blue glaze over them. "I am going home. In the morning I will
send the lilies."

The priest caught her by the hand.

"Ninon," he whispered, "it is on my soul not to let you go to-night.
Something tells me that the hour of your salvation is come. Women worse
than you, Ninon, have come to lead holy lives. Pray, Ninon, pray to the
Mother of Sorrows, who knows the sufferings and sins of the heart."
He pointed to the befrilled and highly fashionable Virgin with her
rouge-stained cheeks.

Ninon shrank from him, and the same convulsive rigidity he had noticed
before, held her immovable. A moment later, she was on the street again,
and the priest, watching her down the street, saw her enter her cabin
with Pierre.

.......

It was past midnight when the priest