Montbazon your mother?
Mazarin loves her not overwell. Ah, but that paper! What the devil
did we sign it for? I would give a year of my life could I but put my
hands upon it."

"Or the man who stole it."

"Or the man who stole it," repeated he.

"When I return to France, I shall have a deal to revenge," her hands
clenching.

"Let me be the sword of wrath, Madame. You have but to say the word.
You love no one, you say. You are young; I will devote my life to
teaching you."

Madame's gesture was of protest and of resignation. "Monsieur, if you
address me again, I shall appeal to Father Le Mercier or Father
Chaumonot. I will not be persecuted longer."

"Ah, well!" He moved aside for her and leaned against a tree, watching
her till she disappeared within the palisade. "Now, that is a woman!
She lacks not one attribute of perfection, save it be a husband, and
that shall be found. I wonder what that fool of a D'Herouville was
doing this morning with those dissatisfied colonists and that man
Pauquet? I will watch. Something is going on, and it will not harm to
know what." He laughed silently.

Before the women entered the wilderness to create currents and eddies
in the sluggish stream which flowed over the colonists, Victor began to
compile a book on Indian lore. He took up the work the very first
night of his arrival; took it up as eagerly as if it were a gift from
the gods, as indeed it was, promising as it did to while away many a
long night. He depended wholly upon Father Chaumonot's knowledge of
the tongue and the legends; and daring the first three nights he and
Chaumonot divided a table between them, the one to scribble his lore
and the other to add a page to those remarkable memoirs, the Jesuit
Relations. The Chevalier watched them both from a corner where he sat
and gravely smoked a wooden pipe.

And then the manuscript of the poet was put aside.

"Why?" asked Chaumonot one night. He had been greatly interested in
the poet's work.

Victor flushed guiltily. "Perhaps it may be of no value. There are
but half a dozen thoughts worth remembering."

"And who may say that immortality does not dwell in these thoughts?"
said the priest. "All things are born to die save thought; and if in
passing we leave but a single thought which will alleviate the
sufferings of man or add beauty to his existence, one does not live and
die in vain." Chaumonot's afterthought was: "This good lad is in love