n softening of cursed.]

PONTIAC'S LOOKOUT.

Jenieve Lalotte came out of the back door of her little house on
Mackinac beach. The front door did not open upon either street of the
village; and other domiciles were scattered with it along the strand,
each little homestead having a front inclosure palisaded with oaken
posts. Wooded heights sent a growth of bushes and young trees down to
the pebble rim of the lake.

It had been raining, and the island was fresh as if new made. Boats
and bateaux, drawn up in a great semicircle about the crescent bay,
had also been washed; but they kept the marks of their long voyages
to the Illinois Territory, or the Lake Superior region, or Canada. The
very last of the winterers were in with their bales of furs, and some
of these men were now roaring along the upper street in new clothes,
exhilarated by spending on good cheer in one month the money it
took them eleven months to earn. While in "hyvernements," or winter
quarters, and on the long forest marches, the allowance of food per
day, for a winterer, was one quart of corn and two ounces of tallow.
On this fare the hardiest voyageurs ever known threaded a pathless
continent and made a great traffic possible. But when they returned to
the front of the world,--that distributing point in the straits,--they
were fiercely importunate for what they considered the best the world
afforded.

A segment of rainbow showed over one end of Round Island. The sky was
dull rose, and a ship on the eastern horizon turned to a ship of fire,
clean-cut and poised, a glistening object on a black bar of water. The
lake was still, with blackness in its depths. The American flag on the
fort rippled, a thing of living light, the stripes transparent. High
pink clouds were riding down from the north, their flush dying as they
piled aloft. There were shadings of peacock colors in the shoal water.
Jenieve enjoyed this sunset beauty of the island, as she ran over the
rolling pebbles, carrying some leather shoes by their leather strings.
Her face was eager. She lifted the shoes to show them to three little
boys playing on the edge of the lake.

"Come here. See what I have for you."

"What is it?" inquired the eldest, gazing betwixt the hairs scattered
on his face; he stood with his back to the wind. His bare shins
reddened in the wash of the lake, standing beyond its rim of shining
gravel.

"Shoes," answered Jenieve, in a note triumphant over fate.