perty.

There were sad days in the fort. The weather came off comparatively
pleasant, and the half-ruined huts were repaired, the wounded healed,
the losses made good, as far as possible. The dead Iroquois were put in
a trench, but better sepulture was provided for the colonists, and the
services over the body of M. Giffard were in a degree military. The two
Recollet priests were kindness and devotion personified, and they said
prayers every hour in their rude little chapel, where a candle was kept
burning before the altar.

They frowned severely on what they termed the mummeries of Madawando.
Even the Indian converts, and they were few enough, lapsed into charms
and incantations in times of trouble. They willingly had their children
baptized, as if this was one of the charms to ward off danger. But the
priests labored with unabated courage.

Miladi seemed to hover a long while between the two worlds, it was
thought, but the real spring was coming on, and all nature was reviving.
She had never quite wanted to die, so at the lowest ebb she seemed to
will herself back to life by some occult power.

Rose meanwhile had run quite wild, but she had been Destournier's
companion in his walks, in his canoe journeys; sometimes with Marie
Gaudrion, she was in and out of the settlement, and as she understood a
little of the several Indian languages, she was quite a favorite; but
Destournier felt troubled about her at times. She was very fearless,
very upright, and detected the subterfuges of the children of the
wilderness, condemning them most severely. But they never seemed angry
with her.

Sometimes he thought he would send her to France and begin her education
in a convent. But could the wild little thing who skipped and danced and
sung, climbed rocks and trees, managed a canoe, tamed birds that came
and sang on her shoulder, endure the dull routine of convent life? She
could read French quite fluently. She had taken an immense fancy to
Latin, and caught the lines so easily when Destournier read them from
musical Horace, or the stirring scenes of the Odyssey, the only two
Latin books he owned. And her head was stuffed full of wild Indian
tales.

"I wonder," she said one day, as she sat on the rocks, leaning against
Destournier's knee, the soft wind playing through the silken tendrils of
her hair--"I wonder if you should die whether I could be like miladi,
and want the room dark and have every one go in the softest moccasi