o the raw November
weather. She went down the hill to the edge of the broad, dark Ottawa,
where thin slices of ice were swashing together. There sat a
hopeless-looking little man at the clumsy oars of a flat-bottomed
boat.

"The little one's feet are out," said the man.

"So much the better! For what was another sent us?" cried Mini's
mother.

"But the little one must be baptized," said the father, with mild
expostulation.

"Give him to me, then," and the man took off his own ragged coat.
Beneath it he had nothing except an equally ragged guernsey, and the
wind was keen. The woman surrendered the child carelessly, and drawing
her shawl closer, sat frowning moodily in the stern. Mini's father
wrapped him in the wretched garment, carefully laid the infant on the
pea-straw at his feet, and rowed wearily away.

They took him to the gray church on the farther shore, whose tall
cross glittered coldly in the wintry sun. There Madame Lajeunesse, the
skilful washerwoman, angry to be taken so long from her tubs, and
Bonhomme Hamel, who never did anything but fish for _barbotes_, met
them. These highly respectable connections of Mini's mother had a
disdain for her inferior social status, and easily made it understood
that nothing but a Christian duty would have brought them out. Where
else, indeed, could the friendless infant have found sponsors? It was
disgraceful, they remarked, that the custom of baptism at three days
old should have been violated. While they answered for Mini's
spiritual development he was quiet, neither crying nor smiling till
the old priest crossed his brow. Then he smiled, and that, Bonhomme
Hamel remarked, was a blessed sign.

"Now he's sure of heaven when he does die!" cried Mini's mother,
getting home again, and tossed him down on the straw, for a conclusion
to her sentence.

But the child lived, as if by miracle. Hunger, cold, dirt, abuse,
still left him a feeble vitality. At six years old his big dark eyes
wore so sad a look that mothers of merry children often stopped to
sigh over him, frightening the child, for he did not understand
sympathy. So unresponsive and dumb was he that they called him
half-witted. Three babies younger than he had died by then, and the
fourth was little Angelique. They said she would be very like Mini,
and there was reason why in her wretched infancy. Mini's was the only
love she ever knew. When she saw the sunny sky his weak arms carried
her, and many a night he