il he ran
up the steps facing them. Both of them greeted him heartily. He felt
it a peculiar indignity that his wife's danglers forever passed their
good-will on to him; and he left them in the common hall, with his
father and the young seignior, and the two or three Indians who
congregated there every evening to ask for presents or to smoke.

Louizon's wife met him in the middle of the broad low apartment where
he had been so proud to introduce her as a bride, and turned her
cheek to be kissed. She was not fond of having her lips touched. Her
hazel-colored hair was perfumed. She was so supple and exquisite, so
dimpled and aggravating, that the Chippewa in him longed to take her
by the scalp-lock of her light head; but the Frenchman bestowed the
salute. Louizon had married the prettiest woman in the settlement.
Life overflowed in her, so that her presence spread animation. Both
men and women paid homage to her. Her very mother-in-law was her
slave. And this was the stranger spectacle because Madame Cadotte
the senior, though born a Chippewa, did not easily make herself
subservient to anybody.

The time had been when Louizon was proud of any notice this siren
conferred on him. But so exacting and tyrannical is the nature of man
that when he got her he wanted to keep her entirely to himself. From
his Chippewa mother, who, though treated with deference, had never
dared to disobey his father, he inherited a fond and jealous nature;
and his beautiful wife chafed it. Young Repentigny saw that she was
like a Parisian. But Louizon felt that she was a spirit too fine and
tantalizing for him to grasp, and she had him in her power.

He hung his powderhorn behind the door, and stepped upon a stool to
put his gun on its rack above the fireplace. The fire showed his round
figure, short but well muscled, and the boyish petulance of his shaven
lip. The sun shone hot upon the Sault of an August noon, but morning
and night were cool, and a blaze was usually kept in the chimney.

"You found plenty of game?" said his wife; and it was one of this
woman's wickedest charms that she could be so interested in her
companion of the moment.

"Yes," he answered, scowling more, and thinking of the brace on the
gallery whom he had not shot, but wished to.

She laughed at him.

"Archange Cadotte," said Louizon, turning around on the stool before
he descended; and she spread out her skirts, taking two dancing steps
to indicate that she heard h