arge, but it was best for them to remain where
they were. Wenonah came in often and Margot was always ready to do a
service.

One day Jeanne went down to the wharf to see the vessel depart for the
North. It was a magnificent June morning, with the river almost like
glass and a gentle wind from the south. She watched the tall figure on
the deck, waving his hand until the proud outline mingled with others
and was indistinct--or was it the tears in her eyes?

M. St. Armand had some business in Quebec, but would remain only a short
time.

It seemed strangely solitary to Jeanne after that, although there was no
lack of friends. Everybody was ready to serve her, and the young men
bowed with the utmost respect when they met her. She took Pani out for
short walks, the favorite one to the great oak tree where Jeanne had
begun her life in Detroit. Children played about, brown Indian babies,
grave-faced even in their play, vivacious French little ones calling to
each other in shrill _patois_, laughing and tumbling and climbing. Had
she once been wild and merry like them? Then Pani would babble of the
past and stroke the soft curls and call her "little one." What a curious
dream life was!

They were busy with the governor's house and the military squares and
the old fort. The streets were cleared up a little. Houses had been
painted and whitewashed. Stores and shops spread out their attractions,
booths were flying gay colors and showing tempting eatables. All along
the river was the stir of active life. People stayed later in the
streets these warm evenings and sat on stoops chatting. Young men and
maids planned pleasures and sails on the river and went to bed gay and
light-hearted. Was there any place quite like Old Detroit?

Early one morning while the last stars were lingering in the sky and the
east was suffused with a faint pink haze, a scarlet spire shot up that
was not sunrise. No one remarked it at first. Then a broad flash that
might have been lightning but was not, and a cry on the still air
startled the sleepers. "Fire! Fire!"

Suddenly all was terror. There had been no rain in some time, and the
inflammable buildings caught like so much tinder. From the end of St.
Anne's street up and down it ran, the dense smoke sometimes hiding the
flames. Like the eruption of a great crater the smoke rose thick, black,
with here and there a tongue of flame that was frightful. The streets
were so narrow and crowded, the applian