eeping
her company. Father Petit hoped to see this rough shrine become a
religious seminary, and strings of women led there every day to take,
like contagion, from an abbess the instruction they took so slowly
from a priest.

She and the Etchemin found it a dismal place, on their first visit
after the winter retreat. She reproached herself for coming so late;
but day and night an influence now encompassed Madockawando's daughter
which she felt as a restraint on her freedom. A voice singing softly
the love-songs of southern France often waked her from her sleep. The
words she could not interpret, but the tone the whole village could,
and she blushed, crowding paters on aves, until her voice sometimes
became as distinct as Saint-Castin's in resolute opposition. It was so
grotesque that it made her laugh. Yet to a woman the most formidable
quality in a suitor is determination.

When the three girls who had constituted Saint-Castin's household
at the fort passed complacently back to their own homes laden with
riches, Madockawando's daughter was unreasonably angry, and felt their
loss as they were incapable of feeling it for themselves. She was
alien to the customs of her people. The fact pressed upon her that her
people were completely bound to the white sagamore and all his deeds.
Saint-Castin's sins had been open to the tribe, and his repentance was
just as open. Father Petit praised him.

"My son Jean Vincent de l'Abadie, Baron de Saint-Castin, has need of
spiritual aid to sustain him in the paths of virtue," said the priest
impressively, "and he is seeking it."

At every church service the lax sinner was now on his knees in plain
sight of the devotee; but she never looked at him. All the tribe soon
knew what he had at heart, and it was told from camp-fire to camp-fire
how he sat silent every night in the hall at Pentegoet, with his hair
ruffled on his forehead, growing more haggard from day to day.

The Abenaqui girl did not talk with other women about what happened in
the community. Dead saints crowded her mind to the exclusion of living
sinners. All that she heard came by way of her companion, the stolid
Etchemin, and when it was unprofitable talk it was silenced. They
labored together all the chill April afternoon, bringing the chapel
out of its winter desolation. The Etchemin made brooms of hemlock, and
brushed down cobwebs and dust, and laboriously swept the rocky earthen
floor, while the princess, standing u