taking out. She had forgiven Dr. Douglas the existence of the boys, but
she never could forgive the existence of Tita.

Once Anne had asked about Angelique. "I was but a child when she died,
Miss Lois," said she, "so my recollection of her may not be accurate;
but I know that I thought her very beautiful. Does Tita look like her?"

"Angelique Lafontaine was beautiful--in her way," replied Miss Lois. "I
do not say that I admire that way, mind you."

"And Tita?"

"Tita is hideous."

"Oh, Miss Lois!"

"She is, child. She is dwarfish, black, and sly."

"I do not think she is sly," replied Anne, with heat. "And although she
is dark and small, still, sometimes--"

"That, for your beauty of 'sometimes!'" said Miss Lois, snapping her
fingers. "Give me a girl who is pretty in the morning as well as by
candle-light, one who has a nice, white, well-born, down-East face, and
none of your Western-border mongrelosities!"

But this last phrase she uttered under her breath. She was ever mindful
of Anne's tender love for her father, and the severity with which she
herself, as a contemporary, had judged him was never revealed to the
child.

At half past ten the Douglas family were all in their places in the
little fort chapel. It was a bright but bitterly cold day, and the
members of the small congregation came enveloped in shaggy furs like
bears, shedding their skins at the door, where they lay in a pile near
the stove, ready for the return homeward. The military trappings of the
officers brightened the upper benches, the uniforms of the common
soldiers filled the space behind; on the side benches sat the few
Protestants of the village, denominational prejudices unknown or
forgotten in this far-away spot in the wilderness. The chaplain, the
Reverend James Gaston--a man who lived in peace with all the world, with
Pere Michaux, the Catholic priest, and William Douglas, the deist--gazed
round upon his flock with a benignant air, which brightened into
affection as Anne's voice took up the song of the angels, singing, amid
the ice and snow of a new world, the strain the shepherds heard on the
plains of Palestine.

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men,"
sang Anne, with all her young heart. And Miss Lois, sitting with folded
hands, and head held stiffly erect, saw her wreath in the place of honor
over the altar, and was touched first with pride and then with a slight
feeling of awe. She did not