iking
for Felix Lapierre. She had looked from her window and had seen bateaus
come sweeping down, loaded with shouting men, the oars flashing in the
light of torches set in the bows of the big boats. She felt more
confident in regard to the morrow; those bateaus would be going back to
the north and she had determined to make her plea for passage. In her
anxiety the halt for the night was irksome. But she concealed her
feelings and took her place in the procession, a post of honor that was
deferentially assigned to her by the chief.

The flares of moving torches lighted all and the smoke from them wavered
above the plumes of the festal costumes and spread the illumination
among the swaying boughs of the spruces and the pines.

An Indian brass band of pretensions rather more than modest led the way
toward the church. The rear guard was made of rivermen who marched in
ragged formation, scuffling, elbowing one another, shouting jokes,
making merry after their manner. Their boots, spurred with drivers'
spikes, crunched into the hard earth and occasionally struck fire from
an outcropping of ledge. They pulled off those boots at the door of the
church and went into the place, tiptoeing in their stocking feet.

So Alice and Felix were joined in marriage.

Lida sat beside the girl's mother during the ceremony.

The tears that are shed by womankind at weddings form a baptism for
sentiments which cannot be easily translated into exact understanding.
It had begun to seem very far away in time and space, that tragedy of
the morning in Adonia, that wreck of a man's love, and the blasting of
what Lida had admitted to herself was her own fond hope. Now, in this
scene, hearing the words which gave lovers the sacred right to face the
world hand in hand, her own grievous case came back to her in poignant
clearness. She wept frankly; there had been honest tears in the mother's
eyes. The two looked at each other and then the mother's hand slid into
the girl's and mutely expressed for the stranger what could not be put
into words. There were no questions and no replies--the situation
required none.

For the more casual guests, the rivermen and others, the supper was
spread out of doors near the water. It was a simple feast which had been
cooked over coals in the open.

The sachem's party ate in a large room; by day it served the women of
the tribe as a workshop. The walls were gay with the handicraft which
had been hung up to clear a