give me a safe passage to
St. Valier." In which pious occupation, as the boatmen continued
their savage song without paying her any attention, Fanchon, with many
interruptions of worldly thoughts, spent the rest of the time she was in
the Indian canoe.

Down past the green hills of the south shore the boatmen steadily plied
their paddles, and kept singing their wild Indian chant. The wooded
slopes of Orleans basked in sunshine as they overlooked the broad
channel through which the canoe sped, and long before meridian the
little bark was turned in to shore and pulled up on the beach of St.
Valier.

Fanchon leaped out without assistance, wetting a foot in so doing, which
somewhat discomposed the good humor she had shown during the voyage. Her
Indian boatmen offered her no help, considering that women were made to
serve men and help themselves, and not to be waited upon by them.

"Not that I wanted to touch one of their savage hands," muttered
Fanchon, "but they might have offered one assistance! Look there,"
continued she, pulling aside her skirt and showing a very trim foot wet
up to the ankle; "they ought to know the difference between their
red squaws and the white girls of the city. If they are not worth
politeness, WE are. But Indians are only fit to kill Christians or be
killed by them; and you might as well courtesy to a bear in the briers
as to an Indian anywhere."

The boatmen looked at her foot with supreme indifference, and taking out
their pipes, seated themselves on the edge of their canoe, and began to
smoke.

"You may return to the city," said she, addressing them sharply; "I pray
to the bon Dieu to strike you white;--it is vain to look for manners
from an Indian! I shall remain in St. Valier, and not return with you."

"Marry me, be my squaw, Ania?" replied one of the boatmen, with a grim
smile; "the bon Dieu will strike out papooses white, and teach them
manners like palefaces."

"Ugh! not for all the King's money. What! marry a red Indian, and carry
his pack like Fifine Perotte? I would die first! You are bold indeed,
Paul La Crosse, to mention such a thing to me. Go back to the city! I
would not trust myself again in your canoe. It required courage to do
so at all, but Mademoiselle selected you for my boatmen, not I. I wonder
she did so, when the brothers Ballou, and the prettiest fellows in town,
were idle on the Batture."

"Ania is niece to the old medicine-woman in the stone wigwam at St.