mail from St. Ignace with my
traino--you know the train-au-galise--the birch sledge with dogs. It
is flat, and turn up at the front like a toboggan. And I have take the
traino because it is not safe for a horse; the wind is in the west, and
the strait bends and looks too sleek. Ice a couple of inches thick will
bear up a man and dogs. But this old ice a foot thick, it is turning
rotten. I have come from St. Ignace early in the afternoon, and the
people crowd about to get their letters, and there is Mamselle Rosalin
crying to go to Cheboygan, because her lady has arrive there sick, and
has sent the letter a week ago. Her friends say:

"It is too late to go to-day, and the strait is dangerous."

She say: "I make a bundle and walk. I must go when my lady is sick and
her husband the lieutenant is away, and she has need of me."

Mamselle's friends talk and she cry. She runs and makes a little bundle
in the house and comes out ready to walk to Cheboygan. There is nobody
can prevent her. Some island people are descend from noblesse of France.
But none of them have travel like Mamselle Rosalin with the officer's
wife to Indiana, to Chicago, to Detroit. She is like me, French.* The
girls use to turn their heads to see me walk in to mass; but I never
look grand as Mamselle Rosalin when she step out to that ice.

* The old fellow would not own the Chippewa.

I have not a bit of sense; I forget maman and my brothers and sisters
that depend on me. I run to Mamselle Rosalin, take off my cap, and bow
from my head to my heel, like you do in the dance. I will take her to
Cheboygan with my traino--Oh God, yes! And I laugh at the wet track the
sledge make, and pat my dogs and tell them they are not tired. I wrap
her up in the fur, and she thank me and tremble, and look me through
with her big black eyes so that I am ready to go down in the strait.

The people on the shore hurrah, though some of them cry out to warn us.

"The ice is cracked from Mission Point to the hook of Round Island,
Ignace Pelott!"

"I know that," I say. "Good-day, messieurs!"

The crack from Mission Point--under what you call Robinson's Folly--to
the hook of Round Island always comes first in a breaking up; and I hold
my breath in my teeth as I skurry the dogs across it. The ice grinds,
the water follows the sledge. But the sun is so far down in the
southwest, I think "The wind will grow colder. The real thaw will not
come before to-morrow."

[Illust