, of the winds, and the
Indians are much like them. I've never found any of their gods, have
you?"

"No"--rather reluctantly. "But Wanamee has. And sometimes they bring
back dead people."

"Then they don't always eat them," and the boy laughed.

She had meant to tell miladi of her tryst and beg her to come out and
see the star, but when she found her not only indifferent, but fretful,
she refrained and was glad presently that she had this delicious secret
to herself. But there was a great mystery. Sometimes the star was
different. Instead of being golden, it was a pale blue, and then almost
red. Was it that way in France, she wondered.

She came to have a strange fondness for the stars, and to note their
changes. Was it true that the old people M'sieu Ralph had read about,
the Greeks, had seen their gods and goddesses taken up to the sky and
set in the blue? There were thrones mounted with gems, there were
figures that chased each other; to-night they were here, to-morrow night
somewhere else. But the star that came out first was hers, and she sent
a message across the ocean with it. And the star said in return, "I am
thinking of you."

He did think of her, and tried to trace out some parentage. Catherine
Defroy had gone from St. Malo, a single woman. Then by all the accounts
he could find she must have spent two years in Paris. Clearly she was
not mother of the child.

After all, what did it matter? Rose would probably spend her life in New
France. If it was never proven that she came of gentlefolks, Laurent
Giffard would hardly consent to his wife's mothering her. He had a good
deal of pride of birth.

The winter passed away and this year spring came early, unchaining the
streams and sending them headlong to the rivers; filling the air with
the fragrant new growth of the pines, hemlocks, and cedars, the young
grasses, and presently all blossoming things. The beauty touched Rose
deeply. No one understood, so she only talked of these strange things to
the trees and the stars at night. Often she was a merry romp, climbing
rocks, out in a canoe, which she had learned to manage perfectly, though
sometimes Pani accompanied her, sometimes Pierre Gaudrion, who was
growing fast and making himself very useful to Du Parc.

As for the Sieur, he found much to engross his attention. There was a
new trading company that had the privilege of eleven years. There was
another volume of voyages and discoveries, the maps and ill