mpenetrable shadow
the darker side of her character as a born sorceress and poisoner.

Fanchon Dodier, in obedience to the order of her mistress, started early
in the day to bear the message entrusted to her for La Corriveau. She
did not cross the river and take the king's highway, the rough though
well-travelled road on the south shore which led to St. Valier.
Angelique was crafty enough amid her impulsiveness to see that it were
better for Fanchon to go down by water and return by land: it lessened
observation, and might be important one day to baffle inquiry. La
Corriveau would serve her for money, but for money also she might
betray her. Angelique resolved to secure her silence by making her the
perpetrator of whatever scheme of wickedness she might devise against
the unsuspecting lady of Beaumanoir. As for Fanchon, she need know
nothing more than Angelique told her as to the object of her mission to
her terrible aunt.

In pursuance of this design, Angelique had already sent for a couple of
Indian canoemen to embark Fanchon at the quay of the Friponne and convey
her to St. Valier.

Half-civilized and wholly-demoralized red men were always to be found
on the beach of Stadacona, as they still called the Batture of the St.
Charles, lounging about in blankets, smoking, playing dice, or drinking
pints or quarts,--as fortune favored them, or a passenger wanted
conveyance in their bark canoes, which they managed with a dexterity
unsurpassed by any boatman that ever put oar or paddle in water, salt or
fresh.

These rough fellows were safe and trusty in their profession. Fanchon
knew them slightly, and felt no fear whatever in seating herself upon
the bear skin which carpeted the bottom of their canoe.

They pushed off at once from the shore, with scarcely a word of reply
to her voluble directions and gesticulations as they went speeding their
canoe down the stream. The turning tide bore them lightly on its bosom,
and they chanted a wild, monotonous refrain as their paddles flashed and
dipped alternately in stream and sunshine;

"Ah! ah! Tenaouich tenaga!
Tenaouich tenaga, ouich ka!"

"They are singing about me, no doubt," said Fanchon to herself. "I do
not care what people say, they cannot be Christians who speak such a
heathenish jargon as that: it is enough to sink the canoe; but I will
repeat my paternosters and my Ave Marias, seeing they will not converse
with me, and I will pray good St. Anne to