and cool, a tiny stream dimpling
through it. The plump Capuchin Fathers, in their coarse brown robes,
knotted about the waist with a cord, their bare feet thrust into
sandals, would come out and sun themselves on the stone bench at the
side of the monastery on the hill, or would potter about the garden.
And suddenly Fanny would stop quite still in the midst of her tag game,
struck with the beauty of the picture it called from the past.

Little Oriental that she was, she was able to combine the dry text of
her history book with the green of the trees, the gray of the church,
and the brown of the monk's robes, and evolve a thrilling mental picture
therefrom. The tag game and her noisy little companions vanished. She
was peopling the place with stealthy Indians. Stealthy, cunning, yet
savagely brave. They bore no relation to the abject, contemptible, and
rather smelly Oneidas who came to the back door on summer mornings, in
calico, and ragged overalls, with baskets of huckleberries on their
arm, their pride gone, a broken and conquered people. She saw them wild,
free, sovereign, and there were no greasy, berry-peddling Oneidas among
them. They were Sioux, and Pottawatomies (that last had the real Indian
sound), and Winnebagos, and Menomonees, and Outagamis. She made
them taciturn, and beady-eyed, and lithe, and fleet, and every other
adjectival thing her imagination and history book could supply. The
fat and placid Capuchin Fathers on the hill became Jesuits, sinister,
silent, powerful, with France and the Church of Rome behind them. From
the shelter of that big oak would step Nicolet, the brave, first among
Wisconsin explorers, and last to receive the credit for his hardihood.
Jean Nicolet! She loved the sound of it. And with him was La Salle,
straight, and slim, and elegant, and surely wearing ruffles and plumes
and sword even in a canoe. And Tonty, his Italian friend and fellow
adventurer--Tonty of the satins and velvets, graceful, tactful, poised,
a shadowy figure; his menacing iron hand, so feared by the ignorant
savages, encased always in a glove. Surely a perfumed g---- Slap! A rude
shove that jerked her head back sharply and sent her forward, stumbling,
and jarred her like a fall.

"Ya-a-a! Tag! You're it! Fanny's it!"

Indians, priests, cavaliers, coureurs de bois, all vanished. Fanny would
stand a moment, blinking stupidly. The next moment she was running
as fleetly as the best of the boys in savage pursuit of