--"Sounding names as any on the page of history--Lake Winnipeg,
Hudson Bay, Ottaway, and portages innumerable; Chipeways, Gens de
Terre, Les Pilleurs, the Weepers, and the like. An immense, shaggy,
but sincere country, adorned with chains of lakes and rivers,
covered with snows, with hemlocks and fir-trees. There is a
naturalness in this traveller, and an unpretendingness, as in a
Canadian winter, where life is preserved through low temperature
and frontier dangers by furs, and within a stout heart. He has
truth and moderation worthy of the father of history, which belong
only to an intimate experience; and he does not defer much to
literature."--THOREAU.
Immediately after the early dinner the little cavalcade set out for the
hermitage of Père Michaux, which was on an island of its own at some
distance from the village island; to reach it they journeyed over the
ice. The boys' sled went first, André riding, the other two drawing:
they were to take turns. Then came old Antoine and his dogs,
wise-looking, sedate creatures with wide-spread, awkward legs, big paws,
and toes turned in. René and Lebeau were the leaders; they were dogs of
age and character, and as they guided the sledge they also kept an eye
to the younger dogs behind. The team was a local one; it was not
employed in carrying the mails, but was used by the villagers when they
crossed to the various islands, the fishing grounds, or the Indian
villages on the mainland. Old Antoine walked behind with Anne by his
side: she preferred to walk. Snugly ensconced in the sledge in a warm
nest of furs was Tita, nothing visible of her small self save her dark
eyes, which were, however, most of the time closed: here there was
nothing to watch. The bells on the dogs sounded out merrily in the
clear air: the boys had also adorned themselves with bells, and pranced
along like colts. The sunshine was intensely bright, the blue heavens
seemed full of its shafts, the ice below glittered in shining lines; on
the north and south the dark evergreens of the mainland rose above the
white, but toward the east and west the fields of ice extended unbroken
over the edge of the horizon. Here they were smooth, covered with snow;
there they were heaped in hummocks and ridges, huge blocks piled against
each other, and frozen solid in that position where the wind and the
current had met and fought. The atmosphere was cold, but so pure and
still that breathing was easier than in many localities farther toward
the south. There was no dampness, no strong raw wind; only the even
cold. A feather thrown from a house-top would have dropped softly to the
ground in a straight line, as drop one by one the broad leaves of the
sycamore on still Indian summer days. The snow itself was dry; it had
fallen at intervals during the winter, and made thicker and thicker the
soft mantle that covered the water and land. When the flakes came down,
the villagers always knew that it was warmer, for when the clouds were
steel-bound, the snow could not fall.
"I think we shall have snow again to-morrow," said old Antoine in his
voyageur dialect. "Step forward, then, genteelly, René. Hast thou no
conscience, Lebeau?"
The two dogs, whose attention had been a little distracted by the
backward vision of André conveying something to his mouth, returned to
their duty with a jerk, and the other dogs behind all rang their little
bells suddenly as they felt the swerve of the leaders back into the
track. For there was a track over the ice toward Père Michaux's island,
and another stretching off due eastward--the path of the carrier who
brought the mails from below; besides these there were no other
ice-roads; the Indians and hunters came and went as the bird flies. Père
Michaux's island was not in sight from the village; it was, as the boys
said, round the corner. When they had turned this point, and no longer
saw the mission church, the little fort, and the ice-covered piers, when
there was nothing on the shore side save wild cliffs crowned with
evergreens, then before them rose a low island with its bare summer
trees, its one weather-beaten house, a straight line of smoke coming
from its chimney. It was still a mile distant, but the boys ran along
with new vigor. No one wished to ride; André, leaving his place, took
hold with the others, and the empty sled went on toward the hermitage at
a fine pace.
"You could repose yourself there, mademoiselle," said Antoine, who never
thoroughly approved the walking upon her own two feet kept up--nay, even
enjoyed--by this vigorous girl at his side. Tita's ideas were more to
his mind.
"But I like it," said Anne, smiling. "It makes me feel warm and strong,
all awake and joyous, as though I had just heard some delightful news."
"But the delightful news in reality, mademoiselle--one hears not much of
it up here, as I say to Jacqueline."
"Look at the sky, the ice-fields; that is news every day, newly
beautiful, if we will only look at it."
"Does mademoiselle think, then, that the ice is beautiful?"
"Very beautiful," replied the girl.
The cold air had brought the blood to her cheeks, a gleaming light to
her strong, fearless eyes that looked the sun in the face without
quailing. Old Antoine caught the idea for the first time that she might,
perhaps, be beautiful some day, and that night, before his fire, he
repeated the idea to his wife.
"Bah!" said old Jacqueline; "that is one great error of yours, my
friend. Have you turned blind?"
"I did not mean beautiful in my eyes, of course; but one kind of beauty
pleases me, thank the saints, and that is, without doubt, your own,"
replied the Frenchman, bowing toward his withered, bright-eyed old
spouse with courtly gravity. "But men of another race, now, like those
who come here in the summer, might they not think her passable?"
But old Jacqueline, although mollified, would not admit even this. A
good young lady, and kind, it was to be hoped she would be content with
the graces of piety, since she had not those of the other sort. Religion
was all-merciful.
The low island met the lake without any broken ice at its edge; it rose
slightly from the beach in a gentle slope, the snow-path leading
directly up to the house door. The sound of the bells brought Père
Michaux himself to the entrance. "Enter, then, my children," he said;
"and you, Antoine, take the dogs round to the kitchen. Pierre is there."
Pierre was a French cook. Neither conscience nor congregation requiring
that Père Michaux should nourish his inner man with half-baked or
cindered dishes, he enjoyed to the full the skill and affection of this
small-sized old Frenchman, who, while learning in his youth the rules,
exceptions, and sauces of his profession, became the victim of black
melancholy on account of a certain Denise, fair but cold-hearted, who,
being employed in a conservatory, should have been warmer. Perhaps
Denise had her inner fires, but they emitted no gleam toward poor
Pierre; and at last, after spoiling two breakfasts and a dinner, and
drawing down upon himself the epithet of "imbécile," the sallow little
apprentice abandoned Paris, and in a fit of despair took passage for
America, very much as he might have taken passage for Hades _viâ_ the
charcoal route. Having arrived in New York, instead of seeking a place
where his knowledge, small as it was, would have been prized by exiled
Frenchmen in a sauceless land, the despairing, obstinate little cook
allowed himself to drift into all sorts of incongruous situations, and
at last enlisted in the United States army, where, as he could play the
flute, he was speedily placed in special service as member of the band.
Poor Pierre! his flute sang to him only "Denise! Denise!" But the
band-master thought it could sing other tunes as well, and set him to
work with the score before him. It was while miserably performing his
part in company with six placid Germans that Père Michaux first saw poor
Pierre, and recognizing a compatriot, spoke to him. Struck by the
pathetic misery of his face, he asked a few questions of the little
flute-player, listened to his story, and gave him the comfort and help
of sympathy and shillings, together with the sound of the old home
accents, sweetest of all to the dulled ears. When the time of enlistment
expired, Pierre came westward after his priest: Père Michaux had written
to him once or twice, and the ex-cook had preserved the letters as a
guide-book. He showed the heading and the postmark whenever he was at a
loss, and travelled blindly on, handed from one railway conductor to
another like a piece of animated luggage, until at last he was put on
board of a steamer, and, with some difficulty, carried westward; for the
sight of the water had convinced him that he was to be taken on some
unknown and terrible voyage.
The good priest was surprised and touched to see the tears of the little
man, stained, weazened, and worn with travel and grief; he took him over
to the hermitage in his sharp-pointed boat, which skimmed the crests of
the waves, the two sails wing-and-wing, and Pierre sat in the bottom,
and held on with a death-grasp. As soon as his foot touched the shore,
he declared, with regained fluency, that he would never again enter a
boat, large or small, as long as he lived. He never did. In vain Père
Michaux represented to him that he could earn more money in a city, in
vain he offered to send him Eastward and place him with kind persons
speaking his own tongue, who would procure a good situation for him;
Pierre was obstinate. He listened, assented to all, but when the time
came refused to go.
"Are you or are you not going to send us that cook of yours?" wrote
Father George at the end of two years. "This is the fifth time I have
made ready for him."
"He will not go," replied Père Michaux at last; "it seems that I must
resign myself."
"If your Père Michaux is handsomer than I am," said Dr. Gaston one day
to Anne, "it is because he has had something palatable to eat all this
time. In a long course of years saleratus tells."
Père Michaux was indeed a man of noble bearing; his face, although
benign, wore an expression of authority, which came from the submissive
obedience of his flock, who loved him as a father and revered him as a
pope. His parish, a diocese in size, extended over the long point of the
southern mainland; over the many islands of the Straits, large and
small, some of them unnoted on the map, yet inhabited perhaps by a few
half-breeds, others dotted with Indian farms; over the village itself,
where stood the small weather-beaten old Church of St. Jean; and over
the dim blue line of northern coast, as far as eye could reach or priest
could go. His roadways were over the water, his carriage a boat; in the
winter, a sledge. He was priest, bishop, governor, judge, and physician;
his word was absolute. His party-colored flock referred all their
disputes to him, and abided by his decisions--questions of fishing-nets
as well as questions of conscience, cases of jealousy together with
cases of fever. He stood alone. He was not propped. He had the rare
leader's mind. Thrown away on that wild Northern border? Not any more
than Bishop Chase in Ohio, Captain John Smith in Virginia, or other
versatile and autocratic pioneers. Many a man can lead in cities and in
camps, among precedents and rules, but only a born leader can lead in a
wilderness where he must make his own rules and be his own precedent
every hour.
The dogs trotted cheerfully, with all their bells ringing, round to the
back door. Old Pierre detested dogs, yet always fed them with a strange
sort of conscientiousness, partly from compassion, partly from fear. He
could never accustom himself to the trains. To draw, he said, was an
undoglike thing. To see the creatures rush by the island on a moonlight
night over the white ice, like dogs of a dream, was enough to make the
hair elevate itself.
"Whose hair?" Rast had demanded. "Yours, or the dogs'?" For young
Pronando was a frequent visitor at the hermitage, not as pupil or member
of the flock, but as a candid young friend, admiring impartially both
the priest and his cook.
"Hast thou brought me again all those wide-mouthed dogs, brigands of
unheard-of and never-to-be-satisfied emptiness, robbers of all things?"
demanded Pierre, appearing at the kitchen door, ladle in hand. Antoine's
leathery cheeks wrinkled themselves into a grin as he unharnessed his
team, all the dogs pawing and howling, and striving to be first at the
entrance of this domain of plenty.
"Hold thyself quiet, René. Wilt thou take the very sledge in, Lebeau?"
he said, apostrophizing the leaders. But no sooner was the last strap
loosened than all the dogs by common consent rushed at and over the
little cook and into the kitchen in a manner which would have insured
them severe chastisement in any other kitchen in the diocese. Pierre
darted about among their gaunt yellow bodies, railing at them for
knocking down his pans, and calling upon all the saints to witness their
rapacity; but in the mean time he was gathering together quickly
fragments of whose choice and savory qualities René and Lebeau had
distinct remembrance, and the other dogs anticipation. They leaped and
danced round him on their awkward legs and shambling feet, bit and
barked at each other, and rolled on the floor in a heap. Anywhere else
the long whip would have curled round their lank ribs, but in old
Pierre's kitchen they knew they were safe. With a fiercely delivered and
eloquent selection from the strong expressions current in the Paris of
his youth, the little cook made his way through the snarling throng of
yellow backs and legs, and emptied his pan of fragments on the snow
outside. Forth rushed the dogs, and cast themselves in a solid mass upon
the little heap.
"Hounds of Satan?" said Pierre.
"They are, indeed," replied Antoine. "But leave them now, my friend, and
close the door, since warmth is a blessed gift."
But Pierre still stood on the threshold, every now and then darting out
to administer a rap to the gluttons, or to pull forward the younger and
weaker ones. He presided with exactest justice over the whole repast,
and ended by bringing into the kitchen a forlorn and drearily ugly
young animal that had not obtained his share on account of the
preternaturally quick side snatchings of Lebeau. To this dog he now
presented an especial banquet in an earthen dish behind the door.
"If there is anything I abhor, it is the animal called dog," he said,
seating himself at last, and wiping his forehead.
"That is plainly evident," replied old Antoine, gravely.
In the mean time, Anne, Tita, and the boys had thrown off their fur
cloaks, and entered the sitting-room. Père Michaux took his seat in his
large arm-chair near the hearth, Tita curled herself on a cushion at his
feet, and the boys sat together on a wooden bench, fidgeting uneasily,
and trying to recall a faint outline of their last lesson, while Anne
talked to the priest, warming first one of her shapely feet, then the
other, as she leaned against the mantel, inquiring after the health of
the birds, the squirrels, the fox, and the tame eagle, Père Michaux's
companions in his hermitage. The appearance of the room was peculiar,
yet picturesque and full of comfort. It was a long, low apartment, the
walls made warm in the winter with skins instead of tapestry, and the
floor carpeted with blankets; other skins lay before the table and fire
as mats. The furniture was rude, but cushioned and decorated, as were
likewise the curtains, in a fashion unique, by the hands of half-breed
women, who had vied with each other in the work; their primitive
embroidery, whose long stitches sprang to the centre of the curtain or
cushion, like the rays of a rising sun, and then back again, was as
unlike modern needle-work as the vase-pictured Egyptians, with eyes in
the sides of their heads, are like a modern photograph; their patterns,
too, had come down from the remote ages of the world called the New,
which is, however, as old as the continent across the seas. Guns and
fishing-tackle hung over the mantel, a lamp swung from the centre of the
ceiling, little singing-birds flew into and out of their open cages near
the windows, and the tame eagle sat solemnly on his perch at the far end
of the long room. The squirrels and the fox were visible in their
quarters, peeping out at the new-comers; but their front doors were
barred, for they had broken parole, and were at present in disgrace. The
ceiling was planked with wood, which had turned to a dark cinnamon hue;
the broad windows let in the sunshine on three sides during the day, and
at night were covered with heavy curtains, all save one, which had but a
single thickness of red cloth over the glass, with a candle behind which
burned all night, so that the red gleam shone far across the ice, like a
winter light-house for the frozen Straits. More than one despairing man,
lost in the cold and darkness, had caught its ray, and sought refuge,
with a thankful heart. The broad deep fire-place of this room was its
glory: the hearts of giant logs glowed there: it was a fire to dream of
on winter nights, a fire to paint on canvas for Christmas pictures to
hang on the walls of barren furnace-heated houses, a fire to remember
before that noisome thing, a close stove. Round this fire-place were set
like tiles rude bits of pottery found in the vicinity, remains of an
earlier race, which the half-breeds brought to Père Michaux whenever
their ploughs upturned them--arrow-heads, shells from the wilder
beaches, little green pebbles from Isle Royale, agates, and fragments of
fossils, the whole forming a rough mosaic, strong in its story of the
region. From two high shelves the fathers of the Church and the classics
of the world looked down upon this scene. But Père Michaux was no
bookworm; his books were men. The needs and faults of his flock absorbed
all his days, and, when the moon was bright, his evenings also. "There
goes Père Michaux," said the half-breeds, as the broad sail of his boat
went gleaming by in the summer night, or the sound of his sledge bells
came through their closed doors; "he has been to see the dying wife of
Jean," or "to carry medicine to François." On the wild nights and the
dark nights, when no one could stir abroad, the old priest lighted his
lamp, and fed his mind with its old-time nourishment. But he had nothing
modern; no newspapers. The nation was to him naught. He was one of a
small but distinctly marked class in America that have a distaste for
and disbelief in the present, its ideals, thoughts, and actions, and
turn for relief to the past; they represent a reaction. This class is
made up of foreigners like the priest, of native-born citizens with
artistic tastes who have lived much abroad, modern Tories who regret the
Revolution, High-Church Episcopalians who would like archbishops and an
Establishment, restless politicians who seek an empire--in all, a very
small number compared with the mass of the nation at large, and not
important enough to be counted at all numerically, yet not without its
influence. And not without its use too, its members serving their
country, unconsciously perhaps, but powerfully, by acting as a balance
to the self-asserting blatant conceit of the young nation--a drag on the
wheels of its too-rapidly speeding car. They are a sort of Mordecai at
the gate, and are no more disturbed than he was by being in a minority.
In any great crisis this element is fused with the rest at once, and
disappears; but in times of peace and prosperity up it comes again, and
lifts its scornful voice.
Père Michaux occupied himself first with the boys. The religious
education of Louis, Gabriel, and André was not complex--a few plain
rules that three colts could have learned almost as well, provided they
had had speech. But the priest had the rare gift of holding the
attention of children while he talked with them, and thus the three boys
learned from him gradually and almost unconsciously the tenets of the
faith in which their young mother had lived and died. The rare gift of
holding the attention of boys--O poor Sunday-school teachers all over
the land, ye know how rare that gift is!--ye who must keep restless
little heads and hands quiet while some well-meaning but slow,
long-winded, four-syllabled man "addresses the children." It is
sometimes the superintendent, but more frequently a visitor, who beams
through his spectacles benevolently upon the little flock before him,
but has no more power over them than a penguin would have over a colony
of sparrows.
But if the religion of the boys was simple, that of Tita was of a very
different nature; it was as complex, tortuous, unresting, as personal
and minute in detail, as some of those religious journals we have all
read, diaries of every thought, pen-photographs of every mood, wonderful
to read, but not always comfortable when translated into actual life,
where something less purely self-engrossed, if even less saintly, is apt
to make the household wheels run more smoothly. Tita's religious ideas
perplexed Anne, angered Miss Lois, and sometimes wearied even the priest
himself. The little creature aspired to be absolutely perfect, and she
was perfect in rule and form. Whatever was said to her in the way of
correction she turned and adjusted to suit herself; her mental ingenuity
was extraordinary. Anne listened to the child with wonder; but Père
Michaux understood and treated with kindly carelessness the strong
selfism, which he often encountered among older and deeply devout women,
but not often in a girl so young. Once the elder sister asked with some
anxiety if he thought Tita was tending toward conventual life.
"Oh no," replied the old man, smiling; "anything but that."
"But is she not remarkably devout?"
"As Parisiennes in Lent."
"But it is Lent with her all the year round."
"That is because she has not seen Paris yet."
"But we can not take her to Paris," said Anne, in perplexity.
"What should I do if I had to reply to you always, mademoiselle?" said
the priest, smiling, and patting her head.
"You mean that I am dull?" said Anne, a slight flush rising in her
cheeks. "I have often noticed that people thought me so."
"I mean nothing of the kind. But by the side of your honesty we all
appear like tapers when the sun breaks in," said Père Michaux,
gallantly. Still, Anne could not help thinking that he did think her
dull.
To-day she sat by the window, looking out over the ice. The boys,
dismissed from their bench, had, with the sagacity of the dogs, gone
immediately to the kitchen. The soft voice of Tita was repeating
something which sounded like a litany to the Virgin, full of mystic
phrases, a selection made by the child herself, the priest requiring no
such recitation, but listening, as usual, patiently, with his eyes half
closed, as the old-time school-teacher listened to Wirt's description of
Blennerhasset's Island. Père Michaux had no mystical tendencies. His
life was too busy; in the winter it was too cold, and in the summer the
sunshine was too brilliant, on his Northern island, for mystical
thoughts. At present, through Tita's recitation, his mind was occupied
with a poor fisherman's family over on the mainland, to whom on the
morrow he was going to send assistance. The three boys came round on the
outside, and peered through the windows to see whether the lesson was
finished. Anne ordered them back by gesture, for they were bareheaded,
and their little faces red with the cold. But they pressed their noses
against the panes, glared at Tita, and shook their fists. "It's all
ready," they said, in sepulchral tones, putting their mouths to the
crack under the sash, "and it's a pudding. Tell her to hurry up, Annet."
But Tita's murmuring voice went steadily on, and the Protestant sister
would not interrupt the little Catholic's recitation; she shook her head
at the boys, and motioned to them to go back to the kitchen. But they
danced up and down to warm themselves, rubbed their little red ears with
their hands, and then returned to the crack, and roared in chorus, "Tell
her to hurry up; we shall not have time to eat it."
"True," said Père Michaux, overhearing this triple remonstrance. "That
will do for to-day, Tita."
"But I have not finished, my father."
"Another time, child."
"I shall recite it, then, at the next lesson, and learn besides as much
more; and the interruption was not of my making, but a crime of those
sacrilegious boys," said Tita, gathering her books together. The boys,
seeing Père Michaux rise from his chair, ran back round the house to
announce the tidings to Pierre; the priest came forward to the window.
"That is the mail-train, is it not?" said Anne, looking at a black spot
coming up the Strait from the east.
"It is due," said Père Michaux; "but the weather has been so cold that I
hardly expected it to-day." He took down a spy-glass, and looked at the
moving speck. "Yes, it is the train. I can see the dogs, and Denis
himself. I will go over to the village with you, I think. I expect
letters."
Père Michaux's correspondence was large. From many a college and mission
station came letters to this hermit of the North, on subjects as various
as the writers: the flora of the region, its mineralogy, the Indians and
their history, the lost grave of Father Marquette (in these later days
said to have been found), the legends of the fur-trading times, the
existing commerce of the lakes, the fisheries, and kindred subjects were
mixed with discussions kept up with fellow Latin and Greek scholars
exiled at far-off Southern stations, with games of chess played by
letter, with recipes for sauces, and with humorous skirmishing with New
York priests on topics of the day, in which the Northern hermit often
had the best of it.
A hurrah in the kitchen, an opening of doors, a clattering in the hall,
and the boys appeared, followed by old Pierre, bearing aloft a pudding
enveloped in steam, exhaling fragrance, and beautiful with raisins,
currants, and citron--rarities regarded by Louis, Gabriel, and André
with eager eyes.
"But it was for your dinner," said Anne.
"It is still for my dinner. But it would have lasted three days, and now
it will end its existence more honorably in one," replied the priest,
beginning to cut generous slices.
Tita was the last to come forward. She felt herself obliged to set down
all the marks of her various recitations in a small note-book after each
lesson; she kept a careful record, and punished or rewarded herself
accordingly, the punishments being long readings from some religious
book in her corner, murmured generally half aloud, to the exasperation
of Miss Lois when she happened to be present, Miss Lois having a
vehement dislike for "sing-song." Indeed, the little, soft, persistent
murmur sometimes made even Anne think that the whole family bore their
part in Tita's religious penances. But what could be said to the child?
Was she not engaged in saving her soul?
The marks being at last all set down, she took her share of pudding to
the fire, and ate it daintily and dreamily, enjoying it far more than
the boys, who swallowed too hastily; far more than Anne, who liked the
simplest food. The priest was the only one present who appreciated
Pierre's skill as Tita appreciated it. "It is délicieux," she said,
softly, replacing the spoon in the saucer, and leaning back against the
cushions with half-closed eyes.
"Will you have some more, then?" said Anne.
Tita shook her head, and waved away her sister impatiently.
"She is as thorough an epicure as I am," said the priest, smiling; "it
takes away from the poetry of a dish to be asked to eat more."
It was now time to start homeward, and Père Michaux's sledge made its
appearance, coming from a little islet near by. Old Pierre would not
have dogs upon his shores; yet he went over to the other island himself
every morning, at the expense of much time and trouble, to see that the
half-breed in charge had not neglected them. The result was that Père
Michaux's dogs were known as far as they could be seen by their fat
sides, the only rotundities in dog-flesh within a circle of five hundred
miles. Père Michaux wished to take Tita with him in his sledge, in order
that Anne might ride also; but the young girl declined with a smile,
saying that she liked the walk.
"Do not wait for us, sir," she said; "your dogs can go much faster than
ours."
But the priest preferred to make the journey in company with them; and
they all started together from the house door, where Pierre stood in his
red skull-cap, bowing farewell. The sledges glided down the little slope
to the beach, and shot out on the white ice, the two drivers keeping by
the side of their teams, the boys racing along in advance, and Anne
walking with her quick elastic step by the side of Père Michaux's
conveyance, talking to him with the animation which always came to her
in the open air. The color mounted in her cheeks; with her head held
erect she seemed to breathe with delight, and to rejoice in the clear
sky, the cold, the crisp sound of her own footsteps, while her eyes
followed the cliffs of the shore-line crowned with evergreens--savage
cliffs which the short summer could hardly soften. The sun sank toward
the west, the air grew colder; Tita drew the furs over her head, and
vanished from sight, riding along in her nest half asleep, listening to
the bells. The boys still ran and pranced, but more, perhaps, from a
sense of honor than from natural hilarity. They were more exact in
taking their turns in the sledge now, and more slow in coming out from
the furs upon call; still, they kept on. As the track turned little by
little, following the line of the shore, they came nearer to the
mail-train advancing rapidly from the east in a straight line.
"Denis is determined to have a good supper and sleep to-night," said
Père Michaux; "no camp to make in the snow _this_ evening." Some minutes
later the mail-train passed, the gaunt old dogs which drew the sledge
never even turning their heads to gaze at the party, but keeping
straight on, having come in a direct line, without a break, from the
point, ten miles distant. The young dogs in Antoine's team pricked up
their ears, and betrayed a disposition to rush after the mail-train;
then René and Lebeau, after looking round once or twice, after turning
in their great paws more than usual as they walked, and holding back
resolutely, at length sat deliberately down on their haunches, and
stopped the sledge.
"And thou art entirely right, René, and thou too, Lebeau," said old
Antoine. "To waste breath following a mail-train at a gallop is worthy
only of young-dog silliness."
So saying he administered to the recreant members of the team enough
chastisement to make them forget the very existence of mail-trains,
while René and Lebeau waited composedly to see justice done; they then
rose in a dignified manner and started on, the younger dogs following
now with abject humility. As they came nearer the village the western
pass opened out before them, a long narrow vista of ice, with the dark
shore-line on each side, and the glow of the red sunset shining
strangely through, as though it came from a tropical country beyond. A
sledge was crossing down in the west--a moving speck; the scene was as
wild and arctic as if they had been travelling on Baffin's Bay. The busy
priest gave little attention to the scene, and the others in all the
winters of their lives had seen nothing else: to the Bedouins the great
desert is nothing. Anne noted every feature and hue of the picture, but
unconsciously. She saw it all, but without a comment. Still, she saw it.
She was to see it again many times in after-years--see it in cities, in
lighted drawing-rooms, in gladness and in sorrow, and more than once
through a mist of tears.
Later in the evening, when the moon was shining brightly, and she was on
her way home from the church-house with Rast, she saw a sledge moving
toward the northern point. "There is Père Michaux, on his way home," she
said. Then, after a moment, "Do you know, Rast, he thinks me dull."
"He would not if he had seen you this evening," replied her companion.
A deep flush, visible even in the moonlight, came into the girl's face.
"Do not ask me to recite again," she pleaded; "I can not. You _must_ let
me do what I feel is right."
"What is there wrong in reciting Shakspeare?"
"I do not know. But something comes over me at times, and I am almost
swept away. I can not bear to think of the feeling."
"Then don't," said Rast.
"You do not understand me."
"I don't believe you understand yourself; girls seldom do."
"Why?"
"Let me beg you not to fall into the power of that uncomfortable word,
Annet. Walters says women of the world never use it. They never ask a
single question."
"But how can they learn, then?"
"By observation," replied young Pronando, oracularly.