to the other. Their faces
were stolid. Questioning would be useless.

"I will be quiet," she made answer.

They spread the blanket about and seated her in the middle. One man took
his place behind her, one in front, and each had two ends of the
blanket to frustrate any desperate move. Then another stood up to the
paddle and steered the canoe swiftly along the stream, which was an arm
of a greater river emptying into the lake.

What could they want of her? Jeanne mused. Perhaps a ransom, she had
heard such tales, though it was oftener after a battle that a prisoner
was released by a ransom. She did not know in what direction they were
taking her, everything was strange though she had been on many of the
small streams about Detroit. Now the way was narrow, overhung with
gloomy trees, here and there a white beech shining out in a ghostly
fashion. The sun dropped down and darkness gathered, broken by the
shrill cry of a wild cat or the prolonged howl of a wolf. Here they
started a nest of waterfowl that made a great clatter, but they glided
swiftly by. It grew darker and darker but they went silently with only a
low grunt from one of the Indians now and then.

Presently they reached the main stream. This was much larger, with the
shores farther off and clearer, though weird enough in the darkness.
Stars were coming out. Jeanne watched them in the deep magnificent blue,
golden, white, greenish and with crimson tints. Was the world beyond the
stars as beautiful as this? But she knew no one there. She wondered a
little about her mother--was she in that bright sphere? There was
another Mother--

"O Mother of God," she cried in her soul, "have pity upon me! I put
myself in thy care. Guard me from evil! Restore me to my home!"

For it seemed, amid these rough savages, she sorely needed a mother's
tender care. And she thought now there had been no loving woman in her
life save Pani. Madame Bellestre had petted her, but she had lost her
out of her life so soon. There had been the schoolmaster, that she could
still think of with affection for all his queer fatherly interest and
kindness; there was M. Loisel; and oh, Monsieur St. Armand, who was
coming back in the early summer, and had some plans to lay before her.
Even M. De Ber had been kindly and friendly, but Madame had never
approved her. Poor Madame Campeau had come to love her, but often in her
wandering moments she called her Berthe.

The quiet, the lapping of the wa