th the altar decked
in white and gold and the two fathers in their beautiful robes of
rejoicing, the candlesticks that had been sent from France a century
before, burnished to their brightest and the candles lighted. Behind the
screen the sisters and the children sang hymns, and some in the
congregation joined, though the men were much more at home in the music
of the violins and in the jollity.

Jeanne felt strangely serious, and half wished she was among the
children. It was the fear of having to become a nun that deterred her.
She could not understand how Berthe Campeau could leave her ailing
mother and go to Montreal for religion's sake. Madame Campeau was not
able to stand the journey even if she had wanted to go, but she and her
sister had had some differences, and, since Berthe would go, her son's
wife had kindly offered to care for her.

"And what there is left thou shalt have, Catherine," she said to her
daughter-in-law. "None of my money shall go to Montreal. It would be
only such a little while for Berthe to wait. I cannot last long."

So she had said for three years and Berthe had grown tired of waiting.
Her imagination fed on the life of devotion and exaltation that her aunt
wrote about.

At noon Marie De Ber was married. She shivered a little in her white
gown, for the church was cold. Her veil fell all over her and no one
could see whether her face was joyful or not. Truth to tell, she was
sadly frightened, but everybody was merry, and her husband wrapped her
in a fur cloak and packed her in his sledge. A procession followed, most
of them on foot, for there was to be a great dinner at Tony Beeson's.

Then, although the morning had been so lovely, the sky clouded over with
leaden gray and the wind came in great sullen gusts from Lake Huron. You
could hear it miles away, a fierce roar such as the droves of bisons
made, as if they were breaking in at your very door. Pani hung the
bearskin against the door and let down the fur curtains over the
windows. There was a bright log fire and Jeanne curled up on one side in
a wolfskin, resting her head on a cushion of cedar twigs that gave out a
pleasant fragrance. Pani sat quietly on the other side. There was no
light but the blaze. Neither was the Indian woman used to the small
industries some of the French took up when they had passed girlhood. In
a slow, phlegmatic fashion she used to go over her past life, raising up
from their graves, as it were, Madame de