Chapter IV: Part 4

On moccasined feet, and so deft of hand that Claire heard her neither open nor close the door, the half-breed girl came to the hearth. A brown and a white favor in woman beauty were then set in strong contrast. Both girls were slenderly shaped, virginal and immature lines still predominating. Claire was transparently clear of skin, her hair was silken white like dandelion down, and the brown color of her eyes, not deeply tinged with pigment, showed like shadow on water; while the half-breed burned in rich pomegranate dyes, set in black and fawn tints. They looked an instant at each other in different mood from their first gaze across the flagstone.

“Your father is an Indian chief, the Sister tells me,” said Claire.

“My father is Étienne Annahotaha, chief of the Hurons.”

“And what is your name?”

“Massawippa.”

“Massawippa, the Virgin sent you into the chapel to answer my prayer.”

The half-breed, standing in young dignity, threw a dark-eyed side-glance at this perfect lily of French civilization. She was not yet prepared to be used as an answer to the prayers of any French woman.

“Did you know that an expedition started yesterday to the Ottawa River?” inquired Claire.

Massawippa shook her head.

“But your father, also--he is going to fight the Iroquois?”

“I know not where they are, but I shall find out,” said Massawippa.

“I know,” said Claire. “The Iroquois are coming down the Ottawa.”

“From their winter trapping,” the girl assented with a nod.

“Your father, therefore, will follow Dollard’s expedition.”

“My father has but forty-three men,” Massawippa said gloomily.

“Child,” said Claire, “Dollard has only sixteen!”

“And, madame, the Iroquois are like leaves for number. But I did not mean our Hurons are forty-three strong. Mituvemeg,[6] the Algonquin, meets my father here.”

“Do you know this country? Have you lived much in the woods?”

“Yes, madame.”

“Have you ever been up the Ottawa River?”

“Yes, madame. The very last summer my father took me up the Ottawa beyond Two Mountains Lake.”

“Two Mountains Lake?”

“Yes, madame; a widening of the river, just as Lake St. Louis is a widening of the St. Lawrence.”

“Could we go up this river in a boat, you and I?”

Massawippa looked steadily at Claire, searching her for cowardice or treachery. The Laval-Montmorency smiled back.

“Twenty-four hours, Massawippa, I lay on the chapel pavement, praying the Virgin to send me guide or open some way for me to follow the French expedition up that Ottawa River. You threw yourself beside me and answered my prayer by your own vow. We are bound to the same destination.”

The half-breed girl looked with actual solicitude at the tender white beauty of her fellow-plotter.

“Madame, it will be very hard for you. You and I could not, in a boat, pass the rapids of Ste. Anne at the head of this island; they test the skill of our best Huron paddlers.”

“Can we then go by land?”

“We shall have to cross one arm of the Ottawa to the mainland. Montreal is on an island, madame. Two or three leagues of travel would bring us to that shore near the mouth of the Ottawa.”

Sister Macé, unobtrusive as dawn, opened the door and stole softly in from matins, breaking up the conference. She called Massawippa to learn how pallets must be aired and cells made tidy. The half-breed girl saw all this care with contempt, having for years cast out of mind her bed of leaves and blankets as soon as she arose from it.

Claire went with unpromising novice and easy teacher to breakfast in the refectory, and afterwards by herself to confession--a confession with its mental reservation as to her plans; but the rite was one which her religion imposed upon her under the circumstances. She had been even less candid towards the nuns in allowing them to receive and address her as Dollard’s sister. The prostration of grief and reaction of intense resolve benumbed her, indeed, to externals. But in that day of pious deception, when the churchmen themselves were full of evasive methods, a daughter of conventual training may have been less sensitive to false appearances than women of Claire’s high nature bred in a later age. She saw no more of Massawippa until nightfall, but lay in the cell assigned to her, resting with shut eyes, and allowing no thought to wander to the men paddling towards that lonely river.

All day the season grew; shower chased sun and sun dried shower, and in the afternoon Jouaneaux told Sister Brésoles that he had weeded the garden of a growth which would surprise her.

At dusk, however, he brought the usual small log up to the parlor, and with it news which exceeded his tale of weeding.

Sister Brésoles was folding her tired hands in meditation there, and Massawippa, sullen and lofty from her first day’s probation, curled on the floor in a corner full of shadows.

“Honored Superior,” said Jouaneaux after placing his log, “who, say’st thou, did boldly walk up to the governor to-day?”

“Perhaps yourself, Jouaneaux. You were ever bold enough.”

“I was there, honored Superior, about a little matter of garden seeds, and I stood by and hearkened, as it behooved the garrison of a convent to do; for there comes me in this chief of the Hurons, Annahotaha, swelling like--”

Jouaneaux suppressed “cockerel about to crow.” His wandering glance caught Massawippa sitting in her blanket. The Sisters of St. Joseph were at that time too poor to furnish any distinguishing garments to their novices; and so insecure were these recruits from the world that any uniform would have been thrown away upon them. With the facility of Frenchmen, Jouaneaux substituted,

--“like a mighty warrior, as he is known to be. And he asks the governor, does Annahotaha, for a letter to Dollard; and before he leaves the presence he gets his letter.”

Sister Brésoles raised a finger, being mindful of two pairs of listening ears, and two souls just sinking to the peace of resignation.

“Honored Superior,” exclaimed Jouaneaux, in haste to set bulwarks around his statement, “you may ask Father Dollier de Casson if this be not so, for he had just landed from the river parishes, and was with the governor. V’là,” said Jouaneaux, spreading an explanatory hand, “if Annahotaha and his braves join Dollard without any parchment of authority, what share will Dollard allow them in the enterprise? Being a shrewd chief and a man of affairs, Annahotaha knew he must bear commission.”

“Come down to the refectory and take thy supper and discharge thy news there,” Sister Brésoles exclaimed, starting up and swiftly leaving the room.

Jouaneaux obeyed her, keeping his punctilious foot far behind the soft rush of her garments.

He dared not wink at the nun, even under cover of dusk and to add zest to his further recital; but he winked at the wall separating him from Massawippa and said slyly on the stairs:

“Afterwards, however, honored Superior, I heard the governor tell Father de Casson that he wrote it down to Dollard to accept or refuse Annahotaha, as he saw fit.”

As soon as the door was closed Claire came running out of her cell and met Massawippa at the hearth, silently clapping her hands in swift rapture as a humming-bird beats its wings.

“Now thou see’st how the Virgin answers prayer, Massawippa!”

The half-breed, sedately eager, said:

“We must cross the arm of the Ottawa and follow their course up that river. Madame, I have troubled my mind much about a boat. For if we got over the Ottawa arm and followed the right-hand shore, have you thought how possible it is that they may fix their camp on the opposite side?”

“Can we not take a boat with us from Montreal?”

“And carry it two or three leagues across the country? For I cannot paddle up the Ste. Anne[7] current. But if we could get one here it would draw suspicion on us and we might be followed. I see but one way. We must depend upon that walking woman above Carillon; and if she be dead, and they camp on the other side, we must raft across the Ottawa. But if we must first make a raft to cross at the mouth, how much time will be lost!”

“Massawippa, we have vowed to follow this expedition, and with such good hap as Heaven sends us we shall follow it. May we not start to-morrow?”

“Madame, before we start there are things to prepare. We must eat on the way.”

“What food shall we carry?”

“Bread and smoked eels would keep us alive. I can perhaps buy these with my wampum girdle,” suggested Massawippa, who held the noble young dame beside her to be as dowerless as a Huron princess, and thought it no shame so to be.

“Why need you do that?” inquired Claire. “I have two or three gold louis left of the few I brought from France.”

“Gold, madame! Gold is so scarce in this land we might attract too much attention by paying for our supplies with it.”

“I have nothing else, so we must hazard it. And what must we take beside food and raiment?”

“Madame, we cannot carry any garments.”

“But, Massawippa, I cannot go to Dollard all travel-stained and ragged!”

“If we find him, madame, he will not think of your dress. Is he wedded to you?”

Claire’s head sunk down in replying.

“He is wedded to glory. Men care more for glory than they care for us, Massawippa.”

“Madame,” said the younger, her mouth settling to wistfulness, “the more they care for glory the more we love them. My father is great. If he was a common Indian little could I honor him, whatever penance the priest laid upon me.”

“Yes, Dollard is my husband. He is my Dollard,” said Claire.

“The nuns call you mademoiselle.”

“I have not told them.”

“They might see!” asserted Massawippa, slightingly. “Do women lie in deadly anguish before the altar for brothers?” she demanded, speaking as decidedly from her inexperience as any young person of a later century, “or for detestable young men who wish to be accepted as lovers?”

“Assuredly not,” said Claire, smiling.

“But fathers, they are a different matter. And in your case, madame, husbands. We shall need other things besides bread and eels. For example, two knives.”

“To cut our bread with?” inquired Claire.

“No; to cut our enemies with!” Massawippa replied, with preoccupied eye which noted little the shudder of the European.

“O Massawippa! they may be engaged with the Iroquois even now. Dollard has been gone two days.”

“Have no fear of that, madame. There will be no fighting until Annahotaha reaches the expedition,” assumed the chief’s daughter with a high air most laughable to her superior. And after keen meditation she added: “We might start to-morrow daybreak if we but had our supplies ready.”

“Massawippa,” exclaimed Claire, “how do you barter with merchants? Can we not send for them and buy our provisions at once?”

“Madame, send for the merchants? You make me laugh! Very cautiously will I have to slip from this place to that; and perhaps I cannot then buy all we need, especially with gold louis. They may, however, think coureurs de bois have come to town. And now at dusk is a better time than in broad daylight.”

Claire went in haste to her casket, which stood in the nuns’ parlor, and selected from it things which she might not have the chance of removing later. These she put in her cell, and came back to Massawippa with her hand freighted.

“How much, madame?” the half-breed inquired as pieces were turned with a clink upon her own palm.

“All. Three louis.”

“Take one back, then. Two will be too many, though one might not be enough. Madame, that Frenchman who feeds the nuns’ pigs and tends this fire, he will let me out; and what I buy I will hide outside the Hôtel-Dieu.”

XV.

THE WOOING OF JOUANEAUX.

IN consequence of Massawippa’s plan the Frenchman who fed the nuns’ pigs guarded in dolor his palisade gate at about 10 o’clock of the evening.

The hospital had these bristling high pickets set all about its premises as a defense against sudden attacks, and its faithful retainer felt that he was courting its destruction in keeping its bolts undone so late. There was, besides, the anticipative terror of a nun’s stepping forth to demand of his hands the new novice. Cold dew of suspense stood on his face; and he could only hope that Sister Maillet, who usually had charge of the last novice, believed her to be folded safely in her cell by Sister Brésoles, and that Sister Brésoles believed her to be thus folded by Sister Maillet. When at last the cat footsteps of Massawippa passed through the palisade gate she requited his sufferings with scarce a nod of thanks, though she hesitated with some show of interest to see him fasten both gate and convent door. Indignation possessed him while he shot the bolts, and freed itself through jerks of the head.

But instead of going to her cell, Massawippa entered the chapel; and Jouaneaux, feeling himself still responsible for her, followed and closed the door behind him.

A solitary light burned on the altar. The girl knelt a long time in her devotions.

Jouaneaux knelt also, near the door, and after a pater and an ave it may be supposed that he begged St. Joseph to intercede for a poor sinner who felt beset and impelled to meddle with novices.

Having finished her prayers, Massawippa began to ascend the stairway to the rood-loft.

“Where are you going?” whispered Jouaneaux, following her in wrath.

She turned around and held to the rail of the stair, while he stood at the foot, she guarding her voice also in reply.

“I am going up here to sleep, lest I wake the Sisters. The floor is no harder than their pallets, and the night is not cold.”

“And in the morning my honored Superior calls me to account for you.”

“No one has missed me. I shall be up early.”

“How do you know you are not missed? Some one may this moment open that chapel door.”

“Go away and quit hissing at me then,” suggested Massawippa, contracting her brows.

Jouaneaux, drawn by a power irresistible, fell into the error of vain natures, and set himself to lecture the creator of his infatuation.

“I want to talk to you. I want to give you some good advice. Sit down on that step,” he demanded.

Massawippa settled down, and rested her chin on her dark soft knuckles. Sparks of amusement burned in the deeps of her eyes. Accustomed to having men of inferior rank around her, she was satisfied that he kept his distance and sat three steps below her, literally beneath her feet. Her beaver gown cased her in rich creases.

Seeing her thus plastic, Jouaneaux’s severity ran off his cheeks in a smile. He forgot her abuse of the privilege he had stolen for her. His genial nose tilted up, and as overture to his good advice, showing all his gums, he whispered:

“What a pretty little Sister of St. Joseph you will make!”

Massawippa stirred, and with her dull-red blanket arranged a rest for her head against the balustrade.

“What do you think of me?” he inquired.

After reticent pause of a length to embarrass a modest questioner, Massawippa admitted:

“You are not so black and oily as La Mouche.”

“Who is La Mouche?”

“He is my father’s adopted nephew.”

“Does he want to wed you?”

“He dare not name such a thing to me!”

“That is excellent,” commended Jouaneaux. “You have the true spirit of a novice. You must never think of marriage with any man.” He gloated upon her, his entire chest sighing.

The scandal of the situation, should any nun open the chapel door, was a danger which made this interview the most delightful sin of his life. But the two Sisters most given to vigils had watched all the previous night, and he counted upon nature’s revenge to leave him unmolested.

The taper burned upon the altar, and there were the sacred images keeping guard, chastening both speakers always to a reverent murmur of the voice which rose no louder, and which to a devout ear at the door might have suggested, in that period of miracles, some gentle colloquy between the waxen St. Joseph and his waxen spouse. Massawippa, childishly innocent, and Jouaneaux, nearly as innocent himself, would scarcely be such objects of veneration, though their converse might prove equally harmless.

“Is this the good advice you wished to give me?” inquired Massawippa.

“It is the beginning of it,” replied Jouaneaux.

“I do not intend to wed. There is no man fit to wed me,” said the half-breed girl in high sincerity, leveling her gaze above his bright poll.

“Look you here, now!” exclaimed the Frenchman. “I am good enough for you, if I would marry you. For while your fathers were ranging the woods, mine were decent tillers of the soil, keeping their skins white and minding the priest. Where could you get a finer husband than I would make you? But I shall never marry. The Queen of France would be no temptation to me. There you sit, enough to turn the head of our blessed St. Joseph, for you turned my head the moment I looked upon you; but I don’t want you.”

“I will bid you good-night,” said Massawippa, drawing her blanket.

“At the proper time, little Sister; when I speak my mind freer of its load. I must live a bachelor, it is true; but if I were a free man I would have you to-morrow, though you scratched me with your wild hands.”

“I am not for your bolts and bars,” returned Massawippa, scornfully.

“If we were settled in the house I made upon my land,” said Jouaneaux, tempting himself with the impossible while he leaned back smiling, “little need you complain of bolts and bars. My case is this: I had a grant of land on the western shore of this island of Montreal.”

“Not where the Ottawa comes in?” questioned Massawippa, impaling him with interest.

“That was the exact spot.” Jouaneaux widened his mouth pinkly as he became retrospective. “And never wouldst thou guess what turned me from that freeholding to a holy life. I may say that I lead a holy life, for are not vows laid upon me as strait as on the Sulpitian fathers? And straiter; I am under writings to the nuns to serve them to the day of my death, and they be under writings to me to maintain my sickness and old age. It is likely my skeleton barn still stands where I set it up to hold my produce. Down I falls from the ridge of it headlong to the ground, and here in the Hôtel-Dieu I lay for many a month like a rag, the Sisters tending me. It was then I said to myself, ‘Jouaneaux, these be angels of pity and patience, yet they soil their hands feeding pigs and bearing up such as thou.’ Though I am equal to most of my betters, little Sister, I always held it well to be humble-minded. The result is, I give up my land, I bind myself to serve the saints in this Hôtel-Dieu, and therefore I cannot marry.”

Jouaneaux collapsed upon himself with a groaning sigh.

“Then your house and your barn were left to ruin?” questioned Massawippa, passing without sympathy his nuptial restrictions.

“My house!” said Jouaneaux, looking up with reviving spirit. “Little Sister, you would walk over the roof of my house and not perceive it.”

“In midwinter?”

“No, now, when young grass springs. I could endure to risk my store of crops where the Iroquois might set torch to them, but this pretty fellow, this outer man of me, I took no risks with him. I chooses me a stump, a nice hollow stump.”

“And squeezed into it like a bear?”

“Jouaneaux is a fox, little Sister. Call your clumsy La Mouche the bear. No: I burrows me out a house beneath the stump; a good house, a sizable hole. Over there is my fire-place, and the stump furnishes me a chimney. Any Iroquois seeing my stump smoking would merely say to himself, ‘It is afire.’ Let a canoe spring out on the river or a cry ring in the forest--down went Jouaneaux into his house, and, as you may say, pulled the earth over his head. I also kept my canoe dragged within there, for there was no telling what might happen to it elsewhere.”

Massawippa regarded him with animation. “You had also a boat?”

“Indeed, yes!” the nuns’ man affirmed, kindled higher by such interest. “A good birch craft it was, and large enough for two people.” Another groaning sigh paid tribute to this lost instrument of happiness.

“But your house may be all crumbled in now.”

“Not that house, little Sister. Look you! it had ceiling and walls of timbers well fastened together and covered with cement. Was not that a snug house? It will endure like rock, and some day I must go and see it once more.”

“Perhaps you could not find it now.”

Jouaneaux laughed.

“My house! I could walk straight to it, little Sister, and lay my hand on the chimney. That chimney stump, it standeth near the river, the central one in a row of five. Many other rows of five there be in the field, but none, to my eye, exactly like this.”

Massawippa rose suddenly and dived like a swallow up the stairway. So much keener was her ear than Jouaneaux’s that she was out of sight before he realized the probability of an interruption.

A hand was on the chapel latch, and he turned himself on the step as Sister Judith Brésoles entered, her night taper in her hand. When she discovered him, instead of screaming, she stood and fixed a stern gaze on him, her mouth compressed and her brows holding an upright wrinkle betwixt them. Her servitor stood up in his most pious and depressed attitude.

“Jouaneaux, what are you doing here?”

“Honored Superior, I have been sitting half an hour or so meditating before the sacred images.”

“Where is the novice Massawippa?”

“That is what troubles my conscience, honored Superior.” Beneath his childlike distress Jouaneaux was silently blessing St. Joseph that it was not Sister Macé with her tendency to resort to the rood-loft. “Here is the case I stand in: the little Sister you call Massawippa, she came begging me for a breath of air by the river before I fastened the bolts to-night.”

“You turned that child upon the street!” exclaimed Sister Brésoles. “I cannot find her in any cell or anywhere about the Hôtel-Dieu. You have exceeded your authority, Jouaneaux. It is a frightful thing you have done!”

“Honored Superior, she will be back in the morning. Those half-Indians are not like French girls; they have the bird in them. This one will hop over all evil hap.”

“I would ring the tocsin,” said Sister Brésoles, “if alarming the town would recall her. Without doubt, though,” she sighed, “the girl has returned to her father.”

“Honored Superior, if she comes not back to matins as clean and fresh as a brier-rose, turn me out of the Hôtel-Dieu.”

“Get you to bed, Jouaneaux, and, let me tell you, you must meddle no more with novices. These young creatures are ever a weight on one’s heart.”

“Especially this one,” lamented Jouaneaux, as, leaving the chapel behind Sister Brésoles, he rolled his eyes in one last gaze at the rood-loft.

XVI.

FIRST USE OF A KNIFE.

THE capeline, or small black velvet cap, which Claire had worn on her journeys about New France sheltered her head from the highest and softest of April morning skies. Though so early and humid that mists were still curling and changing form around the mountain and in all the distances, it promised to be a fine day.

Massawippa led the way across the clearing, leaning a little to one side as a sail-boat does when it flies on the wind, her moccasined feet just touching the little billows of ploughed ground; and Claire followed eagerly, though she carried her draperies clutched in her hands. The rising sun would shine on their backs, but before the sun rose they were where he must grope for them among great trees.

One short pause had been made at the outset while Massawippa brought, from some recess known to herself among rocks or stumps in the direction of the mountain, a hempen sack filled with her supplies. She carried this, and a package of what Claire had made up as necessaries from her box in the Hôtel-Dieu, as if two such loads were wings placed under the arms of a half-Huron maid to help her feet skim ploughed ground.

When they had left the clearing and were well behind a massed shelter of forest trunks, Claire was moist and pink with haste and exertion, and here Massawippa paused.

They were, after all, but young girls starting on an excursion with the morning sky for a companion, and they laughed together as they sat down upon a low rock.

“When I closed the door of the parlor,” said Claire with very pink lips, “I thought I heard some one stirring in the cells. But we have not been followed, and I trust not seen.”

“They were rousing for matins,” said the half-Huron. “No, they think I ran away last night; and you, madame, they do not expect to matins. We are taking one risk which I dread, but it must be taken.”

“You mean leaving the palisade and entrance doors unfastened? My heart smote me for those good nuns. Is the risk very great? We have seen no danger abroad.”

“Not that. No, madame. Their man, that stupid, who ranks himself with Sulpitian fathers, he is always astir early among his bolts and his pigs. It is his suspicion I dread. For he knows I slept in the chapel last night, and he told me of his house, and in that house we must sleep to-night. Perhaps he dare not tell the Sisters, and in that case he dare not follow to search his house for us. We have also his stupidity to count on. Young men are not wise.”

Present discomfort, which puts coming risks farther into the future in most minds, made Claire thrust out her pointed satin feet and look at them dubiously.

“What would Dollard think of these, Massawippa? I have one other pair of heeled shoes in that packet, but they will scarcely hold out for such journeying.”

“Madame, that is why I stopped here,” said Massawippa, opening her sack. “It was necessary for us to kneel in the chapel and ask the Holy Family’s aid before we set out; but we have no time to spend here. Let me get you ready.”

“Am I not ready?” inquired Claire, giving her companion a rosy laugh.

“No, madame; your feet must be moccasined and your dress cut off.”

The younger girl took from the sack a pair of new moccasins and knelt on one knee before Claire--not as a menial would kneel, but as a commanding junior who has undertaken maternal duty. She flung aside the civilized foot-beautifiers of Louis’ reign and substituted Indian shoes, lacing them securely with fine thongs.

“These are the best I had, madame, and I carried them out of the Hôtel-Dieu under my blanket and hid them with our provisions last night.”

“What a sensible, kind child you are, Massawippa! But while you were doing this for me I took no thought of any special comfort for you.”

“They will bear the journey.”

Massawippa rose and took from her store two sheathed knives with cross-hilts--not of the finest workmanship, but of good temper: their pointed blades glittered as she displayed them. She showed her pupil how to place one, sheathed, at a ready angle within her bodice, and then took up the other like a naked sword.

“Now stand on the rock, madame, and let me cut your dress short.”

“Oh, no!” pleaded Claire for her draperies. “You do not understand, Massawippa. This is simply the dress which women of my rank wear in France, and because I am going into the woods must I be shorn to my knees like a man?”

Retreating a step she stretched before her the skirt of dark glacé satin with its Grecian border of embroidery at the foot, and in doing so let fall from her arm the overskirt, which trailed its similar border upon the ground behind her.

“Madame,” argued Massawippa, suspending the knife, “we have a road of danger before us. That shining stuff hanging behind you will catch on bushes, and weary you, and will soon be ragged though you nurse it on your arm all the way.”

“Cut that off, therefore,” said Claire, turning. “I am not so childish as to love the pall we hang over our gowns and elbows. But the skirt is not too long if it be lifted by a girdle below the waist. Cut me out a rope of satin, Massawippa.”

The hiss of a thick and rich fabric yielding to the knife could be heard behind her back. Massawippa presently lifted the plenteous fleece thus shorn, and pared away the border while the elder girl held it. Together they tied the border about Claire’s middle for a support, and over this pulled the top of her skirt in a pouting ruff.

It was now sunrise. Having thus finished equipping themselves they took up each a load, Claire bearing her packet on the arm her surplus drapery had burdened, and when Massawippa had thrust both cast-off shoes and satin under a side of the rock they hurried on.

XVII.

JOUANEAUX’S HOUSE.

THE sun had almost described his arc before Claire and Massawippa reached the extremity of the island. Massawippa could have walked two leagues in half the day, but wisely did she forecast that the young Frenchwoman would be like a liberated canary, obliged to grow into uncaged use of herself by little flights and pauses. Besides, Jouaneaux’s house would give them safe asylum until they crossed the river.

“That must be his barn,” said Massawippa, pointing to a pile of hewed timbers, too far up the bank and too recently handled by man to be drift. They lay in angular positions, scarce an upright log marking the site of the little structure Jouaneaux had tried to erect for his granary.

Two slim figures casting long shadows eastward on the clearing, the girls stood trying to discern in those tumultuous waters where the Ottawa came in or where the St. Lawrence’s own current wrestled around islands. The north shore looked far off, thick clothed with forests. Massawippa held her blanket out to canopy her eyes, anxiously examining the trackless way by which they must cross.

“But the first thing is to find Jouaneaux’s house,” she said, turning to Claire.

“I was thinking of that,” Claire answered, “and counting the stumps in rows of five. All this land is covered with stumps, Massawippa.”

“He said the row of five nearest the water.”

“Did he tell you how to enter?”

“That I had no time to learn. But, madame, if a man went in and out of this underground house, surely you and I can do the same. Here be five stumps--the row nearest the river.”

They went to the central stump. It had a nest of decayed yellow wood within, crumbled down by the tooth of the air, but probing could not make it hollow.

“Perhaps he deceived you about his house,” said Claire.

Massawippa met her apprehension with dark seriousness.

“It would be the worst about the boat,” she replied. “I counted on that boat all day, so that I have not thought what to do without it.”

They moved along the bank, passing irregular groups of stumps, until one standing by itself, much smoke-stained, as if it had leaked through all its fibers, drew their notice. It was deeply charred and hollow. Claire took up a pebble and dropped it into the stump. It rattled down some unseen hopper and clinked smartly on a surface below. This was Jouaneaux’s chimney.

“He himself forgot where it was!” sneered Massawippa.

“Or some one has occupied the house since,” suggested Claire, “and taken the other stumps away.”

This was matter for apprehension.

“But stumps are not easily moved, madame. They crumble away or are burned into their roots. Let us find the door.”

Massawippa dropped on her knees, and it happened that the first spot of turf she struck with a stone reverberated. Claire stooped also, and like two large children playing at mud pies they scraped the loam with sticks and found a rusty iron handle. The door rose by the tugging of four determined arms and left a square dark hole in the ground.[8]

“Wait,” said Claire, as Massawippa thrust her head within it. “Poison vapors sometimes lie in such vaults. And let us see if anything is down there.”

Massawippa took flint and steel from her sack, and Claire gingerly held the bit of scorched linen which these were to ignite. The tinder being set on fire, Massawippa lighted a candle and carefully put out her bit of linen. They fastened a rope to the candle and let it down into the cell.

The flame burned up steadily, revealing pavement and walls of gray cement, a tiny hearth and flue of river stones, a flight of slab steps descending from the door, and a small birch canoe, in which Jouaneaux had probably slept.

Massawippa went down and set the candle securely on the hearth. Claire waited until Massawippa had returned and filled both cups at the river. Then they descended into Jouaneaux’s house and carefully shut the door.

“Oh!” Claire exclaimed as this lid cut off the sunlit world above her head, “do you suppose we can easily open it again from within?”

“Yes, madame; as easily as the Iroquois could raise it from without. Jouaneaux was skillful for a Frenchman. But he relied on secrecy, for there are no fastenings to his door. A fox he called himself.”

“It would be charming,” said Claire, “if we could carry this pit with us on our way.”

Drift-bark and small sticks, half charred, were piled against the chimney-back. To these Massawippa set a light, blowing and cheering it until it rose to cheer her and helped the candle illuminate their retreat.

“Sit on the bottom of this boat, madame,” said Massawippa, folding her blanket and placing it there. “Let us eat now, instead of nibbling bits of bread.”

Claire took up one of the cups and drank reluctantly of river water, saying, “I am so thirsty! While you are taking out the loaves and the meat, show me all you have in the sack, Massawippa.”

Massawippa therefore sat on the floor with the sack’s mouth spread in her lap, and Claire leaned forward from her seat on the boat.

“There were the cups and the candle and one rope and the tinder that we have taken out,” said Massawippa. She did not explain that she despised the promiscuous use of pewter cups, and would not use one in common with the Queen of France.

Out of the bag, jostled by every step of the day’s journey, came unsorted a loaf of bread, some cured eels, a second rope,--“I brought ropes for rafts,” observed Massawippa,--a lump of salt, a piece of loaf sugar,--“For you, madame,”--more bread, more eels, another length of rope,--“I dared not buy all we needed at one place or at two places,” explained Massawippa,--the tinder-box, a hatchet, and, last, half a louis in coin, which Massawippa now returned to Claire.

“Be my purse-bearer still,” said Claire, pushing it back. “If there be things we need to buy in the wilderness, you will know how to select them.”

“We will keep it for the walking woman above Carillon,” said the half-breed girl, sagely; and she put it in the careful bank of her tinder-box, bestowing this in the safest part of her dress.

They ate a hearty supper of eels and bread, and breaking the sugar in bits nibbled it afterwards, talking and looking at the coals on Jouaneaux’s hearth.

Massawippa put their candle out. Their low voices echoed from the sides of the underground house and made a booming in their heads, but all sound of the river’s wash so near them, or of the organ murmur of the forest trees, was shut away.

They cast stealthy occasional looks up at the trapdoor, but neither said to the other that she dreaded to see a painted face peering there, or even apprehended the nuns’ man.

While night and day were yet blended they turned the canoe over, and propped it in a secure position with the help of the paddle. Claire brought her cloak out of her packet, and this they made their cushion in the canoe.

The half-breed took the European’s head upon her childish shoulder, wrapping the older dependent well with her own blanket. Of all her experiences Claire thought this the strangest--that she should be resting like a sister on the breast of a little Indian maid in an underground chamber of the wilderness.

“If it were not for you, madame,” spoke Massawippa, “I would put this canoe to soak in the water to-night. We must lose time to do it to-morrow. It has lain so long out of water it will scarcely be safe for us to venture across in.”

“Massawippa, I thought we could take this boat and go directly up the Ottawa in it.”

“Madame, you know nothing about the current. And at Carillon, above Two Mountains Lake, there is a place so swift that I could not paddle against it. We should have to carry around hard places. And there is the danger of meeting the Iroquois or being overtaken by some.”

“For Dollard said there were hundreds coming up from the south,” whispered Claire. “We must, indeed, hide ourselves from all canoes passing on the river. I took no thought of that.”

“It will be best to go direct to the walking woman and get a boat of her. We have only to keep the river in sight to find the expedition. If they camp on the other shore, either below or above Carillon, we will have to go to Carillon for a boat. The Chaudière rapids will be hard for them to pass, madame.”

“Who is this walking woman you speak of, Massawippa?”

“I do not know, madame. The Hurons say she is an Indian woman, and some French have claimed her for a saint of the Holy Church. She makes good birch canoes, which are prized by those who can get them. She is under a vow never to sit or lie down, and they say she goes constantly from Mount Calvary to Carillon, for at Carillon she lives or walks about working at her boats. On Mount Calvary are seven holy chapels built of stone, and the walking woman tends these chapels, but she is too humble to live near them. And even the Iroquois dare not touch her.”

“Did you ever see her?”

“I saw her walking along the side of the mountain, bent over upon a stick like a very old woman. How tired she must be! for last summer it was told along the Ottawa that she had been years upon her feet.”

“Were you afraid of her?”

“No, madame. I am not afraid of any holy person who lives in the woods.”

“But did you ever see her face, Massawippa? What did she cover herself with?” inquired Claire, uncomfortably thinking of the recluse on St. Bernard.

“Far up the mountain I saw her face like a dot. She was covered, head and all, in a blanket the color of gray rock. And that is all I know about her, madame.”

“Yet you count on getting a boat from her?”

“If she be a holy woman, madame, and sees us in trouble, will she not help us?”

The rosiness of glowing embers tinted the walls of Jouaneaux’s house, and perfectly the smoke sought its flue.

Lying quite still in weariness, and holding each other for warmth and comfort, the two young creatures felt such thoughts rise and rush to speech as semi-darkness fosters when we are on the edge of great perils.

“Madame,” said Massawippa, “do you understand how it will seem to be dead?”

“I was just thinking of it, Massawippa, and that we shall soon know. There is no imagining such a change; yet it may be no stranger than stripping off a glove of kid-skin and leaving the naked hand, which is, after all, the natural hand. Do you think it possible that anything has happened to the expedition yet? They are three days out from Montreal.”

“They cannot be far up the Ottawa, madame. No, I think they have not met the Iroquois.”

After such sleep as makes the whole night but a pause between two sentences, they opened their eyes to behold a hint of daylight glimmering down their stump chimney, and Claire exclaimed:

“Child, did you bear the weight of my head all night?”

“I don’t know, madame,” replied Massawippa, laughing. “This canoe floated us wondrously in sleep. If it but carry us on the Ottawa as well, we shall pass over without trouble.”

They drew it up the steps of Jouaneaux’s house before eating their breakfast, and carried it between them to the river. Massawippa fastened one of her ropes to it and knotted the other end around a tree. She crept down to the water’s edge pushing the canoe, filled it with small rocks, and sunk it. They left their craft thus until late afternoon, while they staid cautiously underground, feeding the little fire with slab chips from Jouaneaux’s barn, and exchanging low-voiced chat.

Such close contact in a common peril and endeavor was not without its effect on both of them. Claire from superior had changed to pupil, and seemed developing hardihood without losing her soft refinements. Massawippa, mature for her years, and exactly nice, as became a princess, in all her personal habits, had from the moment of meeting this European dropped her taciturn Indian speech. She unconsciously imitated while she protected a creature so much finer than herself.

Venturing forth when shadows were stretching from the west across that angry mass of waters, they emptied their canoe from its wetting and wiped it out with the hempen sack. But Massawippa still shook her head at it.

“Madame, I am afraid this canoe will not carry us well. Can you swim?”

“No, Massawippa; I never learned to do anything useful,” replied Claire.

“We might make a raft of those barn timbers. But, madame, the canoe would take us swiftly, and the raft is clumsy in such swirls and cross-waters as these. You must take one of the cups in your hand and dip out the water while I paddle. Shall we wait until to-morrow?”

“Oh, no!” urged Claire. “We have lost one day for it. If the canoe will carry us at all, Massawippa, I believe it will carry us now.”

They accordingly put their supplies back into the bag, but Massawippa cautiously wound all the ropes around her waist and secured them like a girdle. She brought the paddle from Jouaneaux’s house, and perhaps with regret closed for the last time its trapdoor above it.

Woods, rocks, islands, and water were steeped in a wonderful amber light. The two girls sat down close by the river edge and ate a supper before embarking. Then Massawippa launched the canoe and carefully placed herself and Claire over the keel.

“Unfasten your cloak and let it fall from your shoulders, madame. You see my blanket lies on the sack. We must have nothing to drag us under in case of mischance.”

So, dipping with skillful rapidity, she ventured out across the current.

They fared well until far on in their undertaking. Immediately the little craft oozed as if its entire skin had grown leaky; but Claire bailed with desperate swiftness; the paddle dipped from side to side, flashing in the sun, which now lay level with the rivers.

Massawippa felt the canoe settling, turned it towards the nearest island, and tore the water with her speed.

“Madame!” she cried, her cry merging into one with Claire’s “O Massawippa, we are going down!”

They were close to the island’s ribbed side when a bubbling and roaring confusion overtook Claire’s ears, and she was drenched, strangled, and still gulping in her death until all sensation passed away.

Life returned through hearing; her head was filled with humming noises, she was giving back the water which had been forced upon her, and lying across a rock supported by Massawippa. In the midst of her chill misery she noted that shadow was settling on the river, and all the cheerful ruddiness of western light was gone.

“Madame, are you able to get up the rocks now?” anxiously spoke Massawippa. “We must hide on this island to-night.”

“How did we reach it?” Claire gasped.

“I swam, and dragged you.”

“Then here had been the end of my expedition but for you, Massawippa.”

“There was the end of our supplies. All gone, madame, except the ropes I put around my waist, and they would have drowned me with their weight if the island had not been almost under our feet. It is well we ate and filled ourselves, for the saints alone know where we shall get breakfast.”

Claire turned her face on the rock.

“My packet of linen and clean comforts, Massawippa!” she regretted.

“The cloak and the blanket were of more account, madame. The Frenchman’s boat played us a fine trick. But we are here. And we have still our knives and tinder.”

Before the long northern twilight had double-dyed itself into night, they crept up the island’s rocky side, explored its small circumference, and found near the western edge a dry hollow, the socket of an uprooted tree. Into this Massawippa piled all the loose leaves she could find, and cut some branches full of tender foliage from the trees to shelter them. Had her tinder been dry, she dared not make a light to be seen from the river.

Drenched and heavy through all their garments, they nestled closely down together and shivered in the chill breath of night. An emaciated moon lent them enough cadaverous light to make them apprehensive of noises on the rushing water. Sometimes they dozed, sometimes they whispered to each other, sometimes they startled each other by involuntary shivers. But measured by patient breath, by moments of endurance succeeding one another in what then seemed endless duration, this second night of their journey passed away, and nothing upon the island or upon the two rivers terrified them.

Just at the pearl-blue time of dawn canoes grew on the southward sweep of the St. Lawrence.

Claire touched Massawippa, and Massawippa nodded. They dared scarcely breathe, but watched along the level of the sward, careful not to rear a feature above the dull leaves.

Nearer and nearer came the canoes. A splash of unskillful paddling grew distinct; familiar outlines projected familiar faces.

“Oh, it is Dollard!” Claire’s whisper was a strangled scream. “There are the men of the French expedition! There is my--”

“Hush!” whispered Massawippa. “Madame, do you want them to see us, and turn and send us back to Montreal?”

“O my Dollard!” Claire clasped her own hand over her mouth while she sobbed. “Drowned and wretched and homesick for you, must I see you pass me by, never turning a glance this way?”

“Hush, madame,” begged Massawippa, adding her hand to Claire’s. “Sound goes like a bird over water.”

“This is our one chance to reach him,” struggled Claire. “Oh, the woods, and the rivers, and the Iroquois--they are all coming between us again!”

“It is no chance at all, madame. I know what my father would do.”

“O my Dollard!” groaned Claire in the dead leaves. “Oh, do not let him go by! Must he flit and flit from me--must I follow him so through space forever when we are dead?”

Almost like dream-men, wreathed slowly about by mists, their alternating paddles making no sound which could be caught by the woman on the island living so keenly in her ears, the expedition passed into the mouth of the Ottawa. When they could be seen no more, Claire lay in dejection like death.

XVIII.

THE WALKING HERMIT.

“THEY have been these five[9] days getting past Ste. Anne,” remarked Massawippa. “I could not have paddled against that current with the best of canoes. My father will soon follow; we dare scarcely stir until my father passes. He would see us if we did more than breathe; the Huron knows all things around him. And if he finds us, he will put us back into safety, after all our trouble.”

Claire was weeping on her damp arms, and lay quite as still as the younger woman could wish, while daylight, sunlight, and winged life grew around them.

Hour after hour passed. Annahotaha’s canoes did not appear. Still the half-Huron stoic watched southward, lying with her cheek on the leaves, clasping her eyelids almost shut to protect her patient sight from the glare on the water.

“Madame, are you hungry?”

“In my heart I am,” said Claire.

“That is because we were so drenched. My father will soon pass; and when we have food and dry skins our courage will come up again. There is only one way to reach the north shore. If my father would go by, I could cut limbs for the raft.”

Claire gave listless attention.

“We must cut branches as large as we can with our knives, the hatchet being gone, and we shall be drenched again; but the river’s arm shall not hold us back.”

When the sun stood overhead without having brought Annahotaha, Claire could endure her stiff discomfort no longer.

“Lie still, madame,” begged Massawippa.

“My child,” returned Claire, fretfully, “I do not care if the Iroquois see me and scalp me.”

“And me also?”

“No, not you.”

“Have a little more patience, madame, for I do see specks like wild ducks riding yonder. They may be the Huron canoes.”

The little more patience, wrung like a last tax from exhaustion, was measured out, and not vainly.

The specks like wild ducks rode nearer, shaping themselves into Huron canoes.

In rigid calm the half-breed girl watched them approach, fly past with regular and beautiful motion of the paddles, and make their entrance into the Ottawa. Her eyes shone across the leaves, but Annahotaha, sweeping all the horizon with a sight formed and trained to keenest use, caught no sign of ambush or human life on the islands.

When the fleet was far off, his young daughter rose up and unsheathed her knife to cut raftwood.

“My father is a great man,” was the only weakness she allowed herself, and in this her gratified pride was restricted to a mere statement of fact.

The raft, made of many large branches bound securely together, occupied them some time. On this frail and uneasy flooring the half-breed placed her companion. Claire was instructed to hold to it though the water should rise around her waist.

The space betwixt island and north shore was a very dangerous passage for them. Massawippa swam and propelled the raft with the current, fighting for it midway, while Claire clung in desperation and begged the brown face turned up to her from the water to let her go and to swim out alone.

When they finally stood on the north bank, streams of water running down their persons, Massawippa’s black hair shining as it clung to her cheeks, and their raft escaping from their reach, they felt that a great gulf of experience divided them from the island and Jouaneaux’s house.

“This time we lose our ropes,” said the half-breed girl. “My hands were too numb. And now we have nothing left but our knives and tinder.”

To Claire the rest of the day was a heavy dream. Giddy from fasting and exposure, with swimming eyes she saw the landscape. Sometimes Massawippa walked with an arm around her waist, sometimes held low boughs out of her way, introducing her to the deeper depths of Canadian forest. They did not talk, but reserved their strength for plodding; and thus they edged along the curves and windings of the Ottawa. Claire took no thought of Massawippa’s destination for the night; they were making progress if they followed beside the track of the expedition.

Before dark she noticed that the land ascended, and afterwards they left the river below, for a glooming pile of mountain was to be climbed. Perhaps no wearier feet ever toiled up that steep during all the following years, though the mountain was piously named Calvary and its top held sacred as a shrine, to be visited by many a pilgrim.[10]

Sometimes the two girls hugged this rugged ascent, lying against it, and paused for breath. The rush and purr of the river went on below, and all the wilderness night sounds were magnified by their negations--the night silences.