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Anne: A Novel

by Constance Fenimore Woolson · English · Gutenberg #32707 · 1,105,938 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Anne: A Novel

Author: Constance Fenimore Woolson

Illustrator: Charles Stanley Reinhart


        
Release date: June 6, 2010 [eBook #32707]
                Most recently updated: March 15, 2012

Language: English

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        Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
        produced from scanned images of public domain material
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANNE: A NOVEL ***




Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Print project and The Internet Archive.)









[Illustration: "I PUT MY ARMS AROUND HER." _See Page 470._]




ANNE

A Novel

BY
CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON

_ILLUSTRATED BY C. S. REINHART_

NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1882, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

_All rights reserved._




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.


"I PUT MY ARMS ROUND HER"                 _Frontispiece._

"THE GIRL PAUSED AND REFLECTED A MOMENT"  _To face Page_ 18

"AS SHE BENT OVER THE OLD VOLUME"            "           42

LOIS HINSDALE                                "           62

"AND IT ENDED IN THEIR RACING DOWN TOGETHER" "           84

"ALARMED, HE BENT OVER HER"                  "          104

"SHE SAT THERE HIGH IN THE AIR WHILE THE STEAMER
BACKED OUT FROM THE PIERS"                   "          120

"YOU KNOW I TOO MUST GO FAR AWAY"            "          132

TITA LISTENING                               "          136

"DEAR ME! WHAT CAN BE DONE WITH SUCH
A YOUNG SAVAGE?"                             "          152

IN THE WOODS                                 "          186

"HE TOOK HIS BEST COAT FROM HIS LEAN VALISE" "          208

"HE WAS MERELY NOTING THE EFFECT"            "          226

"SHE BATHED HER FLUSHED CHEEKS"              "          234

"SHE STARTED SLIGHTLY"                       "          254

"SHE BURIED HER FACE TREMBLINGLY IN HER
HANDS"                                       "          262

"ANNE DREW A CHAIR TO THE BEDSIDE, AND SAT
DOWN WITH HER BACK TO THE MOONLIGHT"         "          284

"WHILE HER MAID WAS COILING HER FAIR HAIR"   "          308

"IT IS, OR SHOULD BE, OVER THERE"            "          328

"MISS LOIS SIGHED DEEPLY"                    "          350

"JULY WALKED IN FRONT, WITH HIS GUN OVER
HIS SHOULDER"                                "          374

"SHE TRIED TO RISE, BUT HE HELD HER ARM WITH
BOTH HANDS"                                  "          386

"WEAK, HOLDING ON BY THE TREES"              "          392

"SAW HER SLOWLY ASCEND THE HOUSE STEPS"      "          408

"ANNE, STILL AS A STATUE"                    "          432

"HE ROSE, AND TOOK HER COLD HANDS IN HIS"    "          460

"HE OBEYED WITHOUT COMMENT"                  "          498

"THE SECOND BOAT, WHICH WAS FARTHER UP THE
LAKE, CONTAINED A MAN"                       "          514

"HE REACHED THE WINDOWS, AND PEEPED THROUGH
A CRACK IN THE OLD BLIND"                    "          530




ANNE.




CHAPTER I.

    "Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
     Shades of the prison-house begin to close
          Upon the growing boy;
     But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
          He sees it in his joy.
     The youth who daily farther from the East
     Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
          And by the vision splendid
          Is on his way attended;
     At length the man perceives it die away,
     And fade into the light of common day."

     --WORDSWORTH.

     "It is but little we can do for each other. We accompany the youth
     with sympathy and manifold old sayings of the wise to the gate of
     the arena, but it is certain that not by strength of ours, or by
     the old sayings, but only on strength of his own, unknown to us or
     to any, he must stand or fall."--EMERSON.


"Does it look well, father?"

"What, child?"

"Does this look well?"

William Douglas stopped playing for a moment, and turned his head toward
the speaker, who, standing on a ladder, bent herself to one side, in
order that he might see the wreath of evergreen, studded with cones,
which she had hung on the wall over one of the small arched windows.

"It is too compact, Anne, too heavy. There should be sprays falling from
it here and there, like a real vine. The greenery, dear, should be
either growing naturally upward or twining; large branches standing in
the corners like trees, or climbing vines. Stars, stiff circles, and set
shapes should be avoided. That wreath looks as though it had been planed
by a carpenter."

"Miss Lois made it."

"Ah," said William Douglas, something which made you think of a smile,
although no smile was there, passing over his face, "it looks like her
work; it will last a long time. And there will be no need to remove it
for Ash-Wednesday, Anne; there is nothing joyous about it."

"I did not notice that it was ugly," said the girl, trying in her bent
posture to look at the wreath, and bringing one eye and a portion of
anxious forehead to bear upon it.

"That is because Miss Lois made it," replied William Douglas, returning
to his music.

Anne, standing straight again, surveyed the garland in silence. Then she
changed its position once or twice, studying the effect. Her figure,
poised on the round of the ladder, high in the air, was, although
unsupported, firm. With her arms raised above her head in a position
which few women could have endured for more than a moment, she appeared
as unconcerned, and strong, and sure of her footing, as though she had
been standing on the floor. There was vigor about her and elasticity,
combined unexpectedly with the soft curves and dimples of a child.
Viewed from the floor, this was a young Diana, or a Greek maiden, as we
imagine Greek maidens to have been. The rounded arms, visible through
the close sleeves of the dark woollen dress, the finely moulded wrists
below the heavy wreath, the lithe, natural waist, all belonged to a
young goddess. But when Anne Douglas came down from her height, and
turned toward you, the idea vanished. Here was no goddess, no Greek;
only an American girl, with a skin like a peach. Anne Douglas's eyes
were violet-blue, wide open, and frank. She had not yet learned that
there was any reason why she should not look at everything with the calm
directness of childhood. Equally like a child was the unconsciousness of
her mouth, but the full lips were exquisitely curved. Her brown hair was
braided in a heavy knot at the back of her head; but little rings and
roughened curly ends stood up round her forehead and on her temples, as
though defying restraint. This unwritten face, with its direct gaze, so
far neutralized the effect of the Diana-like form that the girl missed
beauty on both sides. The usual ideal of pretty, slender, unformed
maidenhood was not realized, and yet Anne Douglas's face was more like
what is called a baby face than that of any other girl on the island.
The adjective generally applied to her was "big." This big, soft-cheeked
girl now stood irresolutely looking at the condemned wreath.

The sun was setting, and poured a flood of clear yellow light through
the little west windows; the man at the organ was playing a sober,
steadfast German choral, without exultation, yet full of a resolute
purpose which defied even death and the grave. Out through the eastern
windows stretched the frozen straits, the snow-covered islands, and
below rang out the bugle. "It will be dark in a few moments," said Anne
to herself; "I will do it."

She moved the ladder across to the chancel, mounted to its top again,
and placed the wreath directly over the altar, connecting it deftly with
the numerous long lines of delicate wreathing woven in thread-like green
lace-work which hung there, waiting for their key-stone--a place of
honor which the condemned wreath was to fill. It now crowned the whole.
The little house of God was but an upper chamber, roughly finished and
barren; its only treasure was a small organ, a gift from a father whose
daughter, a stranger from the South, had died upon the island,
requesting that her memorial might be music rather than a cold stone.
William Douglas had superintended the unpacking and placing of this
gift, and loved it almost as though it had been his own child. Indeed,
it was a child, a musical child--one who comprehended his varying moods
when no one else did, not even Anne.

"It makes no difference now," said Anne, aloud, carrying the ladder
toward the door; "it is done and ended. Here is the ladder, Jones, and
please keep up the fires all night, unless you wish to see us frozen
stiff to-morrow."

A man in common soldier's uniform touched his cap and took the ladder.
Anne went back. "Now for one final look, father," she said, "and then
we must go home; the children will be waiting."

William Douglas played a few more soft strains, and turned round. "Well,
child," he said, stroking his thin gray beard with an irresolute motion
habitual with him, and looking at the small perspective of the chapel
with critical gaze, "so you have put Miss Lois's wreath up there?"

"Yes; it is the only thing she had time to make, and she took so much
pains with it I could not bear to have her disappointed. It will not be
much noticed."

"Yes, it will."

"I am sorry, then; but it can not be moved. And to tell the truth,
father, although I suppose you will laugh at me, _I_ think it looks
well."

"It looks better than anything else in the room, and crowns the whole,"
said Douglas, rising and standing by his daughter's side. "It was a
stroke of genius to place it there, Anne."

"Was it?" said the girl, her face flushing with pleasure. "But I was
thinking only of Miss Lois."

"I am afraid you were," said Douglas, with his shadowy smile.

The rough walls and beams of the chapel were decorated with fine
spray-like lines of evergreen, all pointing toward the chancel; there
was not a solid spot upon which the eye could rest, no upright branches
in the corners, no massed bunches over the windows, no stars of
Bethlehem, anchors, or nondescript Greek letters; the whole chapel was
simply outlined in light feathery lines of green, which reached the
chancel, entered it, played about its walls, and finally came together
under the one massive wreath whose even circle and thick foliage held
them all firmly in place, and ended their wanderings in a restful quiet
strength. While the two stood gazing, the lemon-colored light faded, and
almost immediately it was night; the red glow shining out under the
doors of the large stoves alone illuminated the room, which grew into a
shadowy place, the aromatic fragrance of the evergreens filling the warm
air pungently, more perceptible, as fragrance always is, in the
darkness. William Douglas turned to the organ again, and began playing
the music of an old vigil.

"The bugle sounded long ago, father," said Anne. "It is quite dark now,
and very cold; I know by the crackling noise the men's feet make across
the parade-ground."

But the father played on. "Come here, daughter," he said; "listen to
this waiting, watching, praying music. Do you not see the old monks in
the cloisters telling the hours through the long night, waiting for the
dawn, the dawn of Christmas? Look round you; see this dim chapel, the
air filled with fragrance like incense. These far-off chords, now; might
they not be the angels, singing over the parapet of heaven?"

Anne stood by her father's side, and listened. "Yes," she said, "I can
imagine it. And yet I could imagine it a great deal better if I did not
know where every bench was, and every darn in the chancel carpet, and
every mended pane in the windows. I am sorry I am so dull, father."

"Not dull, but unawakened."

"And when shall I waken?" pursued the girl, accustomed to carrying on
long conversations with this dreaming father, whom she loved devotedly.

"God knows! May He be with you at your wakening!"

"I would rather have you, father; that is, if it is not wicked to say
so. But I am very often wicked, I think," she added, remorsefully.

William Douglas smiled, closed the organ, and, throwing his arm round
his tall young daughter, walked with her down the aisle toward the door.

"But you have forgotten your cloak," said Anne, running back to get it.
She clasped it carefully round his throat, drew the peaked hood over his
head, and fastened it with straps of deer's hide. Her own fur cloak and
cap were already on, and thus enveloped, the two descended the dark
stairs, crossed the inner parade-ground, passed under the iron arch, and
made their way down the long sloping path, cut in the cliff-side, which
led from the little fort on the height to the village below. The
thermometer outside the commandant's door showed a temperature several
degrees below zero; the dry old snow that covered the ground was
hardened into ice on the top, so that boys walked on its crust above the
fences. Overhead the stars glittered keenly, like the sharp edges of
Damascus blades, and the white expanse of the ice-fields below gave out
a strange pallid light which was neither like that of sun nor of moon,
of dawn nor of twilight. The little village showed but few signs of life
as they turned into its main street; the piers were sheets of ice.

Nothing wintered there; the summer fleets were laid up in the rivers
farther south, where the large towns stood on the lower lakes. The
shutters of the few shops had been tightly closed at sunset, when all
the inhabited houses were tightly closed also; inside there were
curtains, sometimes a double set, woollen cloth, blankets, or skins,
according to the wealth of the occupants. Thus housed, with great fires
burning in their dark stoves, and one small lamp, the store-keepers
waited for custom until nine o'clock, after which time hardly any one
stirred abroad, unless it was some warm-blooded youth, who defied the
elements with the only power which can make us forget them.

At times, early in the evening, the door of one of these shops opened,
and a figure entered through a narrow crack; for no islander opened a
door widely--it was giving too much advantage to the foe of his life,
the weather. This figure, enveloped in furs or a blanket, came toward
the stove and warmed its hands with deliberation, the merchant meanwhile
remaining calmly seated; then, after some moments, it threw back its
hood, and disclosed the face of perhaps an Indian, perhaps a French
fisherman, perhaps an Irish soldier from the barracks. The customer now
mentioned his errand, and the merchant, rising in his turn, stretched
himself like a shaggy dog loath to leave the fire, took his little lamp,
and prepared to go in quest of the article desired, which lay, perhaps,
beyond the circle of heat, somewhere in the outer darkness of the dim
interior. It was an understood rule that no one should ask for nails or
any kind of ironware in the evening: it was labor enough for the
merchant to find and handle his lighter goods when the cold was so
intense. There was not much bargaining in the winter; people kept their
breath in their mouths. The merchants could have made money if they had
had more customers or more energy; as it was, however, the small
population and the cold kept them lethargically honest.

Anne and her father turned northward. The southern half of the little
village had two streets, one behind the other, and both were clogged and
overshadowed by the irregular old buildings of the once-powerful fur
company. These ancient frames, empty and desolate, rose above the low
cottages of the islanders, sometimes three and four stories in height,
with the old pulleys and hoisting apparatus still in place under their
peaked roofs, like gallows ready for the old traders to hang themselves
upon, if they came back and saw the degeneracy of the furless times. No
one used these warehouses now, no one propped them up, no one pulled
them down; there they stood, closed and empty, their owners being but so
many discouraged bones under the sod; for the Company had dissolved to
the four winds of heaven, leaving only far-off doubtful and quarrelling
heirs. The little island could not have the buildings; neither could it
pull them down. They were dogs in the manger, therefore, if the people
had looked upon them with progressive American eyes; but they did not.
They were not progressive; they were hardly American. If they had any
glory, it was of that very past, the days when those buildings were full
of life. There was scarcely a family on the island that did not cherish
its tradition of the merry fur-trading times, when "grandfather" was a
factor, a superintendent, a clerk, a hunter; even a voyageur had his
importance, now that there were no more voyageurs. Those were gay days,
they said; they should never look upon their like again: unless, indeed,
the past should come back--a possibility which did not seem so unlikely
on the island as it does elsewhere, since the people were plainly
retrograding, and who knows but that they might some time even catch up
with the past?

North of the piers there was only one street, which ran along the
water's edge. On the land side first came the fort garden, where
successive companies of soldiers had vainly fought the climate in an
agricultural way, redcoats of England and blue-coats of the United
States, with much the same results of partially ripened vegetables,
nipped fruits, and pallid flowers; for the island summer was beautiful,
but too short for lusciousness. Hardy plants grew well, but there was
always a persistent preference for those that were not hardy--like
delicate beauties who are loved and cherished tenderly, while the strong
brown maids go by unnoticed. The officers' wives made catsup of the
green tomatoes, and loved their weakling flowers for far-away home's
sake; and as the Indians brought in canoe-loads of fine full-jacketed
potatoes from their little farms on the mainland, the officers could
afford to let the soldiers do fancy-work in the government fields if it
pleased the exiled ladies. Beyond the army garden was the old Agency
house. The Agency itself had long been removed farther westward,
following the retreating, dwindling tribes of the red men farther toward
the Rocky Mountains; but the old house remained. On its door a brass
plate was still fixed, bearing the words, "United States Agency." But it
was now the home of a plain, unimportant citizen, William Douglas.

Anne ran up the path toward the front door, thinking of the children and
the supper. She climbed the uneven snow-covered steps, turned the latch,
and entered the dark hall. There was a line of light under the left-hand
door, and taking off her fur-lined overshoes, she went in. The room was
large; its three windows were protected by shutters, and thick curtains
of red hue, faded but cheery; a great fire of logs was burning on the
hearth, lighting up every corner with its flame and glow, and making the
poor furniture splendid. In its radiance the curtains were damask, the
old carpet a Persian-hued luxury, and the preparations for cooking an
_Arabian Nights'_ display. Three little boys ran forward to meet their
sister; a girl who was basking in the glow of the flame looked up
languidly. They were odd children, with black eyes, coal-black hair,
dark skins, and bold eagle outlines. The eldest, the girl, was small--a
strange little creature, with braids of black hair hanging down behind
almost to her ankles, half-closed black eyes, little hands and feet, a
low soft voice, and the grace of a young panther. The boys were larger,
handsome little fellows of wild aspect. In fact, all four were of mixed
blood, their mother having been a beautiful French quarter-breed, and
their father--William Douglas.

"Annet, Annet, can't we have fried potatoes for supper, and bacon?"

"Annet, Annet, can't we have coffee?"

"It is a biting night, isn't it?" said Tita, coming to her sister's side
and stroking her cold hands gently. "I really think, Annet, that you
ought to have something substantielle. You see, _I_ think of you;
whereas those howling piggish bears think only of themselves."

All this she delivered in a soft, even voice, while Anne removed the
remainder of her wrappings.

"I have thought of something better still," said William Douglas's
eldest daughter, kissing her little sister fondly, and then stepping out
of the last covering, and lifting the heap from the floor--"batter
cakes!"

The boys gave a shout of delight, and danced up and down on the hearth;
Tita went back to her corner and sat down, clasping her little brown
hands round her ankles, like the embalmed monkeys of the Nile. Her
corner was made by an old secretary and the side of the great chimney;
this space she had lined and carpeted with furs, and here she sat curled
up with her book or her bead-work all through the long winter, refusing
to leave the house unless absolutely ordered out by Anne, who filled the
place of mother to these motherless little ones. Tita was well satisfied
with the prospect of batter cakes; she would probably eat two if Anne
browned them well, and they were light and tender. But as for those
boys, those wolf-dogs, those beasts, they would probably swallow dozens.
"If you come any nearer, Louis, I shall lay open the side of your
head," she announced, gently, as the boys danced too near her hermitage;
they, accustomed alike to her decisions and her words, danced farther
away without any discussion of the subject. Tita was an excellent
playmate sometimes; her little moccasined feet, and long braids
streaming behind, formed the most exciting feature of their summer
races; her blue cloth skirt up in the tops of the tallest trees, the
provocative element in their summer climbing. She was a pallid little
creature, while they were brown; small, while they were large; but she
domineered over them like a king, and wreaked a whole vocabulary of
roughest fisherman's terms upon them when they displeased her. One awful
vengeance she reserved as a last resort: when they had been unbearably
troublesome she stole into their room at night in her little white
night-gown, with all her long thick black hair loose, combed over her
face, and hanging down round her nearly to her feet. This was a ghostly
visitation which the boys could not endure, for she left a lamp in the
hall outside, so that they could dimly see her, and then she stood and
swayed toward them slowly, backward and forward, without a sound, all
the time coming nearer and nearer, until they shrieked aloud in terror,
and Anne, hurrying to the rescue, found only three frightened little
fellows cowering together in their broad bed, and the hairy ghost gone.

"How can you do such things, Tita?" she said.

"It is the only way by which I can keep the little devils in order,"
replied Tita.

"Do not use such words, dear."

"Mother did," said the younger sister, in her soft calm voice.

This was true, and Tita knew that Anne never impugned the memory of that
mother.

"Who volunteers to help?" said Anne, lighting a candle in an iron
candlestick, and opening a door.

"I," said Louis.

"I," said Gabriel.

"Me too," said little André.

They followed her, hopping along together, with arms interlinked, while
her candle shed a light on the bare walls and floors of the rooms
through which they passed, a series of little apartments, empty and
desolate, at the end of which was the kitchen, inhabited in the daytime
by an Irishwoman, a soldier's wife, who came in the morning before
breakfast, and went home at dusk, the only servant William Douglas's
fast-thinning purse could afford. Anne might have had her kitchen nearer
what Miss Lois called the "keeping-room"; any one of the five in the
series would have answered the purpose as well as the one she had
chosen. But she had a dream of furnishing them all some day according to
a plan of her own, and it would have troubled her greatly to have used
her proposed china closet, pantry, store-room, preserve closet, or
fruit-room for culinary purposes. How often had she gone over the whole
in her mind, settling the position of every shelf, and deliberating over
the pattern of the cups! The Irishwoman had left some gleams of fire on
the hearth, and the boys immediately set themselves to work burying
potatoes in the ashes, with the hot hearth-stone beneath. "For of course
you are going to cook in the sitting-room, Annet," they said. "We made
all ready for you there; and, besides, this fire is out."

"You could easily have kept it up," said the sister, smiling. "However,
as it is Christmas-eve, I will let you have your way."

The boys alertly loaded themselves with the articles she gave them, and
went hopping back into the sitting-room. They scorned to walk on
Christmas-eve; the thing was to hop, and yet carry every dish steadily.
They arranged the table, still in a sort of dancing step, and sang
together in their shrill childish voices a tune of their own, without
any words but "Ho! ho! ho!" Tita, in her corner, kept watch over the
proceedings, and inhaled the aroma of the coffee with indolent
anticipation. The tin pot stood on the hearth near her, surrounded by
coals; it was a battered old coffee-pot, grimy as a camp-kettle, but
dear to all the household, and their principal comforter when the
weather was bitter, provisions scarce, or the boys especially
troublesome. For the boys said they did not enjoy being especially
troublesome; they could not help it any more than they could help having
the measles or the whooping-cough. They needed coffee, therefore, for
the conflict, when they felt it coming on, as much as any of the
household.

Poor Anne's cooking utensils were few and old; it was hard to make
batter cakes over an open fire without the proper hanging griddle. But
she attempted it, nevertheless, and at length, with scarlet cheeks,
placed a plateful of them, brown, light, and smoking, upon the table.
"Now, Louis, run out for the potatoes; and, Tita, call father."

This one thing Tita would do; she aspired to be her father's favorite.
She went out with her noiseless step, and presently returned leading in
the tall, bent, gray-haired father, her small brown hand holding his
tightly, her dark eyes fixed upon him with a persistent steadiness, as
if determined to isolate all his attention upon herself. William Douglas
was never thoroughly at ease with his youngest daughter; she had this
habit of watching him silently, which made him uncomfortable. The boys
he understood, and made allowances for their wildness; but this girl,
with her soft still ways, perplexed and troubled him. She seemed to
embody, as it were, his own mistakes, and he never looked at her little
pale face and diminutive figure without a vague feeling that she was a
spirit dwelling on earth in elfish form, with a half-developed
contradictory nature, to remind him of his past weakness. Standing at
the head of the table, tall and straight, with her nobly poised head and
clear Saxon eyes, his other daughter awaited him, and met his gaze with
a bright smile; he always came back to her with a sense of comfort. But
Tita jealously brought his attention to herself again by pulling his
hand, and leading him to his chair, taking her own place close beside
him. He was a tall man, and her head did not reach his elbow, but she
ruled him. The father now asked a blessing; he always hesitated on his
way through it, once or twice, as though he had forgotten what to say,
but took up the thread again after an instant's pause, and went on.
When he came to the end, and said "Amen," he always sat down with a
relieved air. If you had asked him what he had said, he could not have
told you unless you started him at the beginning, when the old formula
would have rolled off his lips in the same vague, mechanical way. The
meal proceeded in comparative quiet; the boys no longer hummed and
shuffled their feet; they were engaged with the cakes. Tita refrained
from remarks save once, when Gabriel having dropped buttered crumbs upon
her dress, she succinctly threatened him with dismemberment. Douglas
gazed at her helplessly, and sighed.

"She will be a woman soon," he said to his elder daughter, when, an hour
or two later, she joined him in his own apartment, and drew from its
hiding-place her large sewing-basket, filled with Christmas presents.

"Oh no, father, she is but a child," answered Anne, cheerfully. "As she
grows older these little faults will vanish."

"How old is she?" said Douglas.

"Just thirteen."

The father played a bar of Mendelssohn noiselessly on the arm of his
chair with his long thin fingers; he was thinking that he had married
Tita's mother when she was hardly three years older. Anne was absorbed
in her presents.

"See, father, will not this be nice for André? And this for Gabriel? And
I have made such a pretty doll for Tita."

"Will she care for it, dear?"

"Of course she will. Did I not play with my own dear doll until I was
fourteen years old--yes, almost fifteen?" said the girl, with a little
laugh and blush.

"And you are now--"

"I am over sixteen."

"A great age," said Douglas, smoothing her thick brown hair fondly, as
she sat near him, bending over her sewing.

The younger children were asleep up stairs in two old bedrooms with
rattling dormer windows, and the father and elder daughter were in a
small room opposite the sitting-room, called the study, although nothing
was ever studied there, save the dreams of his own life, by the vague,
irresolute, imaginative soul that dwelt therein, in a thin body of its
own, much the worse for wear. William Douglas was a New England man of
the brooding type, sent by force of circumstances into the ranks of
United States army surgeons. He had married Anne's mother, who had
passionately loved him, against the wishes of her family, and had
brought the disinherited young bride out to this far Western island,
where she had died, happy to the last--one of those rare natures to whom
love is all in all, and the whole world well lost for its dear and holy
sake. Grief over her death brought out all at once the latent doubts,
hesitations, and strange perplexities of William Douglas's peculiar
mind--perplexities which might have lain dormant in a happier life. He
resigned his position as army surgeon, and refused even practice in the
village. Medical science was not exact, he said; there was much pretense
and presumption in it; he would no longer countenance deception, or play
a part. He was then made postmaster, and dealt out letters through some
seasons, until at last his mistakes roused the attention of the new
officers at the fort; for the villagers, good, easy-tempered people,
would never have complained of such trifles as a forgotten mail-bag or
two under the counter. Superseded, he then attended nominally to the
highways; but as the military authorities had for years done all that
was to be done on the smooth roads, three in number, including the steep
fort hill, the position was a sinecure, and the superintendent took long
walks across the island, studying the flora of the Northern woods,
watching the birds, noticing the clouds and the winds, staying out late
to experiment with the flash of the two light-houses from their
different distances, and then coming home to his lonely house, where the
baby Anne was tenderly cared for by Miss Lois Hinsdale, who
superintended the nurse all day, watched her charge to bed, and then
came over early in the morning before she woke. Miss Lois adored the
baby; and she watched the lonely father from a distance, imagining all
his sadness. It was the poetry of her life. Who, therefore, can picture
her feelings when, at the end of three years, it was suddenly brought to
her knowledge that Douglas was soon to marry again, and that his choice
was Angélique Lafontaine, a French quarter-breed girl!

Angélique was amiable, and good in her way; she was also very beautiful.
But Miss Lois could have borne it better if she had been homely. The New
England woman wept bitter, bitter tears that night. A god had come down
and showed himself flesh; an ideal was shattered. How long had she dwelt
upon the beautiful love of Dr. Douglas and his young wife, taking it as
a perfect example of rare, sweet happiness which she herself had missed,
of which she herself was not worthy! How many times had she gone up to
the little burial-ground on the height, and laid flowers from her garden
on the mound, whose stone bore only the inscription, "Alida, wife of
William Douglas, aged twenty-two years." Miss Lois had wished to have a
text engraved under this brief line, and a date, but Dr. Douglas gently
refused a text, and regarding a date he said: "Time is nothing. Those
who love her will remember the date, and strangers need not know. But I
should like the chance visitor to note that she was only twenty-two,
and, as he stands there, think of her with kindly regret, as we all
think of the early dead, though why, Miss Lois, why, I can not tell,
since in going hence early surely the dead lose nothing, for God would
not allow any injustice, I think--yes, I have about decided in my own
mind that He does not allow it."

Miss Lois, startled, looked at him questioningly. He was then a man of
thirty-four, tall, slight, still noticeable for the peculiar refined
delicacy of face and manner which had first won the interest of sweet,
impulsive Alida Clanssen.

"I trust, doctor, that you accept the doctrines of Holy Scripture on all
such subjects," said Miss Lois. Then she felt immediately that she
should have said "of the Church"; for she was a comparatively new
Episcopalian, having been trained a New England Presbyterian of the
severest hue.

Dr. Douglas came back to practical life again in the troubled gaze of
the New England woman's eyes. "Miss Lois," he said, turning the subject,
"Alida loved and trusted you; will you sometimes think of her little
daughter?"

And then Miss Lois, the quick tears coming, forgot all about orthodoxy,
gladly promised to watch over the baby, and kept her word. But now her
life was shaken, and all her romantic beliefs disturbed and shattered,
by this overwhelming intelligence. She was wildly, furiously jealous,
wildly, furiously angry--jealous for Alida's sake, for the baby's, for
her own. It is easy to be humble when a greater is preferred; but when
an inferior is lifted high above our heads, how can we bear it? And Miss
Lois was most jealous of all for Douglas himself--that such a man should
so stoop. She hardly knew herself that night as she harshly pulled down
the curtains, pushed a stool half across the room, slammed the door, and
purposely knocked over the fire-irons. Lois Hinsdale had never since her
birth given way to rage before (nor known the solace of it), and she was
now forty-one years old. All her life afterward she remembered that
night as something akin to a witch's revel on the Brocken, a horrible
wild reign of passion which she trembled to recall, and for which she
did penance many times in tears. "It shows the devil there is in us
all," she said to herself, and she never passed the fire-irons for a
long time afterward without an unpleasant consciousness.

The limited circle of island society suggested that Miss Lois had been
hunting the loon with a hand-net--a Northern way of phrasing the wearing
of the willow; but if the New England woman loved William Douglas, she
was not conscious of it, but merged the feeling in her love for his
child, and for the memory of Alida. True, she was seven years older than
he was: women of forty-one can answer whether that makes any difference.

On a brilliant, sparkling, clear June morning William Douglas went down
to the little Roman Catholic church and married the French girl. As he
had resigned his position in the army some time before, and as there was
a new set of officers at the fort, his marriage made little impression
there save on the mind of the chaplain, who had loved him well when he
was surgeon of the post, and had played many a game of chess with him.
The whole French population of the island, however, came to the
marriage. That was expected. But what was not expected was the presence
there of Miss Lois Hinsdale, sitting severely rigid in the first pew,
accompanied by the doctor's child--a healthy, blue-eyed little girl, who
kissed her new mamma obediently, and thought her very sweet and
pretty--a belief which remained with her always, the careless, indolent,
easy-tempered, beautiful young second wife having died when her
step-daughter was eleven years old, leaving four little ones, who,
according to a common freak of nature, were more Indian than their
mother. The Douglas family grew poorer every year; but as every one was
poor there, poverty was respectable; and as all poverty is comparative,
they always esteemed themselves comfortable. For they had the old Agency
for a home, and it was in some respects the most dignified residence on
the island; and they had the remains of the furniture which the young
surgeon had brought with him from the East when his Alida was a bride,
and that was better than most of the furniture in use in the village.
The little stone fort on the height was, of course, the castle of the
town, and its commandant by courtesy the leader of society; but the
infantry officers who succeeded each other at this distant Northern post
brought little with them, camping out, as it were, in their
low-ceilinged quarters, knowing that another season might see them far
away. The Agency, therefore, preserved an air of dignity still, although
its roof leaked, its shutters rattled, although its plastering was gone
here and there, and its floors were uneven and decayed. Two of its
massive outside chimneys, clamped to the sides of the house, were half
down, looking like broken columns, monuments of the past; but there were
a number left. The Agency originally had bristled with chimneys, which
gave, on a small scale, a castellated air to its rambling outline.

Dr. Douglas's study was old, crowded, and comfortable; that is,
comfortable to those who have consciousness in their finger-ends, and no
uncertainty as to their feet; the great army of blunderers and
stumblers, the handle-everything, knock-over-everything people, who cut
a broad swath through the smaller furniture of a room whenever they
move, would have been troubled and troublesome there. The boys were
never admitted; but Tita, who stepped like a little cat, and Anne, who
had a deft direct aim in all her motions, were often present. The
comfort of the place was due to Anne; she shook out and arranged the
curtains, darned the old carpet, re-covered the lounge, polished the
andirons, and did all without disturbing the birds' wings, the shells,
the arrow-heads, the skins, dried plants, wampum, nets, bits of rock,
half-finished drawings, maps, books, and papers, which were scattered
about, or suspended from the walls. William Douglas, knowing something
of everything, was exact in nothing: now he stuffed birds, now he read
Greek, now he botanized, now he played on the flute, now he went about
in all weathers chipping the rocks with ardent zeal, now he smoked in
his room all day without a word or a look for anybody. He sketched well,
but seldom finished a picture; he went out hunting when the larder was
empty, and forgot what he went for; he had a delicate mechanical skill,
and made some curious bits of intricate work, but he never mended the
hinges of the shutters, or repaired a single article which was in daily
use in his household.

[Illustration: "THE GIRL PAUSED AND REFLECTED A MOMENT."]

By the careful attention of Anne he was present in the fort chapel every
Sunday morning, and, once there, he played the organ with delight, and
brought exquisite harmonies from its little pipes; but Anne stood there
beside him all the time, found the places, and kept him down to the
work, borrowing his watch beforehand in order to touch him when the
voluntary was too long, or the chords between the hymn verses too
beautiful and intricate. Those were the days when the old buckram-backed
rhymed versions of the psalms were steadfastly given out at every
service, and Anne's rich voice sang, with earnest fervor, words like
these:

    "His liberal favors he extends,
     To some he gives, to others lends;
     Yet when his charity impairs,
     He saves by prudence in affairs,"

while her father followed them with harmony fit for angels. Douglas
taught his daughter music in the best sense of the phrase; she read
notes accurately, and knew nothing of inferior composers, the only
change from the higher courts of melody being some of the old French
chansons of the voyageurs, which still lingered on the island, echoes of
the past. She could not touch the ivory keys with any skill, her hands
were too much busied with other work; but she practiced her singing
lessons as she went about the house--music which would have seemed to
the world of New York as old-fashioned as Chaucer.

The fire of logs blazed on the hearth, the father sat looking at his
daughter, who was sewing swiftly, her thoughts fixed upon her work. The
clock struck eleven.

"It is late, Anne."

"Yes, father, but I must finish. I have so little time during the day."

"My good child," said Douglas, slowly and fondly.

Anne looked up; his eyes were dim with tears.

"I have done nothing for you, dear," he said, as she dropped her work
and knelt by his side. "I have kept you selfishly with me here, and made
you a slave to those children."

"My own brothers and my own little sister, father."

"Do you feel so, Anne? Then may God bless you for it! But I should not
have kept you here."

"This is our home, papa."

"A poor one."

"Is it? It never seemed so to me."

"That is because you have known nothing better."

"But I like it, papa, just as it is. I have always been happy here."

"Really happy, Anne?"

The girl paused, and reflected a moment. "Yes," she said, looking into
the depths of the fire, with a smile, "I am happy all the time. I am
never anything but happy."

William Douglas looked at her. The fire-light shone on her face; she
turned her clear eyes toward him.

"Then you do not mind the children? They are not a burdensome weight
upon you?"

"Never, papa; how can you suppose it? I love them dearly, next to you."

"And will you stand by them, Anne? Note my words: I do not urge it, I
simply ask."

"Of course I will stand by them, papa. I give a promise of my own
accord. I will never forsake them as long as I can do anything for them,
as long as I live. But why do you speak of it? Have I ever neglected
them or been unkind to them?" said the girl, troubled, and very near
tears.

"No, dear; you love them better than they or I deserve. I was thinking
of the future, and of a time when,"--he had intended to say, "when I am
no longer with you," but the depth of love and trust in her eyes made
him hesitate, and finish his sentence differently--"a time when they may
give you trouble," he said.

"They are good boys--that is, they mean no harm, papa. When they are
older they will study more."

"Will they?"

"Certainly," said Anne, with confidence. "I did. And as for Tita, you
yourself must see, papa, what a remarkable child she is."

Douglas shaded his face with his hand. The uneasy sense of trouble which
always stirred within him when he thought of his second daughter was
rising to the surface now like a veiled, formless shape. "The sins of
the fathers," he thought, and sighed heavily.

Anne threw her arms round his neck, and begged him to look at her.
"Papa, speak to me, please. What is it that troubles you so?"

"Stand by little Tita, child, no matter what she does. Do not expect too
much of her, but remember always her--her Indian blood," said the
troubled father, in a low voice.

A flush crossed Anne's face. The cross of mixed blood in the younger
children was never alluded to in the family circle or among their
outside friends. In truth, there had been many such mixtures on the
island in the old times, although comparatively few in the modern days
to which William Douglas's second marriage belonged.

"Tita is French," said Anne, speaking rapidly, almost angrily.

"She is more French than Indian. Still--one never knows." Then, after a
pause: "I have been a slothful father, Anne, and feel myself cowardly
also in thus shifting upon your shoulders my own responsibilities.
Still, what can I do? I can not re-live my life; and even if I could,
perhaps I might do the same again. I do not know--I do not know. We are
as we are, and tendencies dating generations back come out in us, and
confuse our actions."

He spoke dreamily. His eyes were assuming that vague look with which his
children were familiar, and which betokened that his mind was far away.

"You could not do anything which was not right, father," said Anne.

She was standing by his side now, and in her young strength might have
been his champion against the whole world. The fire-light shining out
showed a prematurely old man, whose thin form, bent drooping shoulders,
and purposeless face were but Time's emphasis upon the slender, refined,
dreamy youth, who, entering the domain of doubt with honest negations
and a definite desire, still wandered there, lost to the world, having
forgotten his first object, and loving the soft haze now for itself
alone.

Anne received no answer: her father's mind had passed away from her.
After waiting a few moments in silence she saw that he was lost in one
of his reveries, and sitting down again she took up her work and went on
sewing with rapid stitches. Poor Anne and her poor presents! How coarse
the little white shirts for Louis and André! how rough the jacket for
Gabriel! How forlorn the doll! How awkwardly fashioned the small cloth
slippers for Tita! The elder sister was obliged to make her Christmas
gifts with her own hands; she had no money to spend for such
superfluities. The poor doll had a cloth face, with features painted on
a flat surface, and a painful want of profile. A little before twelve
the last stitch was taken with happy content.

"Papa, it is nearly midnight; do not sit up very late," said the
daughter, bending to kiss the father's bent, brooding brow. William
Douglas's mind came back for an instant, and looked out through his
clouded eyes upon his favorite child. He kissed her, gave her his usual
blessing, "May God help the soul He has created!" and then, almost
before she had closed the door, he was far away again on one of those
long journeyings which he took silently, only his following guardian
angel knew whither. Anne went across the hall and entered the
sitting-room; the fire was low, but she stirred the embers, and by their
light filled the four stockings hanging near the chimney-piece. First
she put in little round cakes wrapped in papers; then home-made candies,
not thoroughly successful in outline, but well-flavored and sweet; next
gingerbread elephants and camels, and an attempt at a fairy; lastly the
contents of her work-basket, which gave her much satisfaction as she
inspected them for the last time. Throwing a great knot, which would
burn slowly all night, upon the bed of dying coals, she lighted a candle
and went up to her own room.

As soon as she had disappeared, a door opened softly above, and a small
figure stole out into the dark hall. After listening a moment, this
little figure went silently down the stairs, paused at the line of light
underneath the closed study door, listened again, and then, convinced
that all was safe, went into the sitting-room, took down the stockings
one by one, and deliberately inspected all their contents, sitting on a
low stool before the fire. First came the stockings of the boys; each
parcel was unrolled, down to the last gingerbread camel, and as deftly
enwrapped again by the skillful little fingers. During this examination
there was not so much an expression of interest as of jealous scrutiny.
But when the turn of her own stocking came, the small face showed the
most profound, almost weazened, solicitude. Package after package was
swiftly opened, and its contents spread upon the mat beside her. The
doll was cast aside with contempt, the slippers examined and tried on
with critical care, and then when the candy and cake appeared and
nothing else, the eyes snapped with anger.

The little brown hand felt down to the toe of the stocking: no, there
was nothing more. "It is my opinion," said Tita, in her French island
_patois_, half aloud, "that Annet is one stupid beast."

She then replaced everything, hung the stockings on their nails, and
stole back to her own room; here, by the light of a secreted candle-end,
she manufactured the following epistle, with heavy labor of brains and
hand: "Cher papa,--I hav dreemed that Sant Klos has hare-ribbans in his
pak. Will you ask him for sum for your little Tita?" This not seeming
sufficiently expressive, she inserted "trez affecsionay" before "Tita,"
and then, folding the epistle, she went softly down the stairs again,
and stealing round in the darkness through several unused rooms, she
entered her father's bedroom, which communicated with the study, and by
sense of feeling pinned the paper carefully round his large pipe, which
lay in its usual place on the table. For William Douglas always began
smoking as soon as he rose, in this way nullifying, as it were, the
fresh, vivifying effect of the morning, which smote painfully upon his
eyes and mind alike; in the afternoon and evening he did not smoke so
steadily, the falling shadows supplying of themselves the atmosphere he
loved. Having accomplished her little manœuvre, Tita went back up stairs
to her own room like a small white ghost, and fell asleep with the
satisfaction of a successful diplomatist.

In the mean time Anne was brushing her brown hair, and thoughtfully
going over in her own mind the morrow's dinner. Her room was a bare and
comfortless place; there was but a small fire on the hearth, and no
curtains over the windows; it took so much care and wood to keep the
children's rooms warm that she neglected her own, and as for the
furniture, she had removed it piece by piece, exchanging it for
broken-backed worn-out articles from all parts of the house. One leg of
the bedstead was gone, and its place supplied by a box which the
old-fashioned valance only half concealed; the looking-glass was
cracked, and distorted her image; the chairs were in hospital and out of
service, the young mistress respecting their injuries, and using as her
own seat an old wooden stool which stood near the hearth. Upon this she
was now seated, the rippling waves of her thick hair flowing over her
shoulders. Having at last faithfully rehearsed the Christmas dinner in
all its points, she drew a long breath of relief, rose, extinguished her
light, and going over to the window, stood there for a moment looking
out. The moonlight came gleaming in and touched her with silver, her
pure youthful face and girlish form draped in white. "May God bless my
dear father," she prayed, silently, looking up to the thick studded
stars; "and my dear mother too, wherever she is to-night, in one of
those far bright worlds, perhaps." It will be seen from this prayer that
the boundaries of Anne Douglas's faith were wide enough to include even
the unknown.




CHAPTER II.

    "Heap on more wood! the wind is chill;
     But let it whistle as it will,
     We'll keep our Christmas merry still.
     The damsel donned her kirtle sheen;
     The hall was dressed with holly green;
     Forth to the wood did merry-men go,
     To gather in the mistletoe."--WALTER SCOTT.


"Can you make out what the child means?" said Douglas, as his elder
daughter entered the study early on Christmas morning to renew the fire
and set the apartment in order for the day. As he spoke he held Tita's
epistle hopelessly before him, and scanned the zig-zag lines.

"She wants some ribbons for her hair," said Anne, making out the words
over his shoulder. "Poor little thing! she is so proud of her hair, and
all the other girls have bright ribbons. But I can not make ribbons,"
she added, regretfully, as though she found herself wanting in a needful
accomplishment. "Think of her faith in Santa Klaus, old as she is, and
her writing to ask him! But there is ribbon in the house, after all,"
she added, suddenly, her face brightening. "Miss Lois gave me some last
month; I had forgotten it. That will be the very thing for Tita; she has
not even seen it."

(But has she not, thou unsuspicious elder sister?)

"Do not rob yourself, child," said the father, wearily casting his eyes
over the slip of paper again. "What spelling! The English is bad, but
the French worse."

"That is because she has no French teacher, papa; and you know I do not
allow her to speak the island _patois_, lest it should corrupt the
little she knows."

"But she does speak it; she always talks _patois_ when she is alone with
me."

"Does she?" said Anne, in astonishment. "I had no idea of that. But
_you_ might correct her, papa."

"I can never correct her in any way," replied Douglas, gloomily; and
then Anne, seeing that he was on the threshold of one of his dark moods,
lighted his pipe, stirred the fire into a cheery blaze, and went out to
get a cup of coffee for him. For the Irish soldier's wife was already at
work in the kitchen, having been to mass in the cold gray dawn, down on
her two knees on the hard floor, repentant for all her sins, and
refulgently content in the absolution which wiped out the old score (and
left place for a new one). After taking in the coffee, Anne ran up to
her own room, brought down the ribbon, and placed it in Tita's stocking;
she then made up the fire with light-wood, and set about decorating the
walls with wreaths of evergreen as the patter of the little boys' feet
was heard on the old stairway. The breakfast table was noisy that
morning. Tita had inspected her ribbons demurely, and wondered how Santa
Klaus knew her favorite colors so well. Anne glanced toward her father,
and smiled; but the father's face showed doubt, and did not respond.
While they were still at the table the door opened, and a tall figure
entered, muffled in furs. "Miss Lois!" cried the boys. "Hurrah! See our
presents, Miss Lois." They danced round her while she removed her
wrappings, and kept up such a noise that no one could speak. Miss Lois,
viewed without her cloak and hood, was a tall, angular woman, past
middle age, with sharp features, thin brown hair tinged with gray, and
pale blue eyes shielded by spectacles. She kissed Anne first with
evident affection, and afterward the children with business-like
promptitude; then she shook hands with William Douglas. "I wish you a
happy Christmas, doctor," she said.

"Thank you, Lois," said Douglas, holding her hand in his an instant or
two longer than usual.

A faint color rose in Miss Lois's cheeks. When she was young she had one
of those exquisitely delicate complexions which seem to belong to some
parts of New England; even now color would rise unexpectedly in her
cheeks, much to her annoyance: she wondered why wrinkles did not keep it
down. But New England knows her own. The creamy skins of the South, with
their brown shadows under the eyes, the rich colors of the West, even
the calm white complexions that are bred and long retained in cities,
all fade before this faint healthy bloom on old New England's cheeks,
like winter-apples.

Miss Lois inspected the boys' presents with exact attention, and added
some gifts of her own, which filled the room with a more jubilant uproar
than before. Tita, in the mean while, remained quietly seated at the
table, eating her breakfast; she took very small mouthfuls, and never
hurried herself. She said she liked to taste things, and that only
snapping dogs, like the boys, for instance, gulped their food in a mass.

"I gave her the ribbons; do not say anything," whispered Anne, in Miss
Lois's ear, as she saw the spectacled eyes turning toward Tita's corner.
Miss Lois frowned, and put back into her pocket a small parcel she was
taking out. She had forgiven Dr. Douglas the existence of the boys, but
she never could forgive the existence of Tita.

Once Anne had asked about Angélique. "I was but a child when she died,
Miss Lois," said she, "so my recollection of her may not be accurate;
but I know that I thought her very beautiful. Does Tita look like her?"

"Angélique Lafontaine was beautiful--in her way," replied Miss Lois. "I
do not say that I admire that way, mind you."

"And Tita?"

"Tita is hideous."

"Oh, Miss Lois!"

"She is, child. She is dwarfish, black, and sly."

"I do not think she is sly," replied Anne, with heat. "And although she
is dark and small, still, sometimes--"

"That, for your beauty of 'sometimes!'" said Miss Lois, snapping her
fingers. "Give me a girl who is pretty in the morning as well as by
candle-light, one who has a nice, white, well-born, down-East face, and
none of your Western-border mongrelosities!"

But this last phrase she uttered under her breath. She was ever mindful
of Anne's tender love for her father, and the severity with which she
herself, as a contemporary, had judged him was never revealed to the
child.

At half past ten the Douglas family were all in their places in the
little fort chapel. It was a bright but bitterly cold day, and the
members of the small congregation came enveloped in shaggy furs like
bears, shedding their skins at the door, where they lay in a pile near
the stove, ready for the return homeward. The military trappings of the
officers brightened the upper benches, the uniforms of the common
soldiers filled the space behind; on the side benches sat the few
Protestants of the village, denominational prejudices unknown or
forgotten in this far-away spot in the wilderness. The chaplain, the
Reverend James Gaston--a man who lived in peace with all the world, with
Père Michaux, the Catholic priest, and William Douglas, the deist--gazed
round upon his flock with a benignant air, which brightened into
affection as Anne's voice took up the song of the angels, singing, amid
the ice and snow of a new world, the strain the shepherds heard on the
plains of Palestine.

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men,"
sang Anne, with all her young heart. And Miss Lois, sitting with folded
hands, and head held stiffly erect, saw her wreath in the place of honor
over the altar, and was touched first with pride and then with a slight
feeling of awe. She did not believe that one part of the church was more
sacred than another--she could not; but being a High-Church Episcopalian
now, she said to herself that she ought to; she even had appalling
visions of herself, sometimes, going as far as Rome. But the old spirit
of Calvinism was still on the ground, ready for many a wrestling match
yet; and stronger than all else were the old associations connected with
the square white meeting-house of her youth, which held their place
undisturbed down below all these upper currents of a new faith. William
Douglas was also a New-Englander, brought up strictly in the creed of
his fathers; but as Miss Lois's change of creed was owing to a change of
position, as some Northern birds turn their snow-color to a darker hue
when taken away from arctic regions, so his was one purely of mind,
owing to nothing but the processes of thought within him. He had drifted
away from all creeds, save in one article: he believed in a Creator. To
this great Creator's praise, and in worship of Him, he now poured forth
his harmonies, the purest homage he could offer, "unless," he thought,
"Anne is a living homage as she stands here beside me. But no, she is a
soul by herself; she has her own life to live, her own worship to offer;
I must not call her mine. That she is my daughter is naught to me save a
great blessing. I can love her with a human father's love, and thank God
for her affection. But that is all."

So he played his sweetest music, and Miss Lois fervently prayed, and
made no mistake in the order of her prayers. She liked to have a vocal
part in the service. It was a pleasure to herself to hear her own voice
lifted up, even as a miserable sinner; for at home in the old white
meeting-house all expression had been denied to her, the small outlet
of the Psalms being of little avail to a person who could not sing. This
dumbness stifled her, and she had often said to herself that the men
would never have endured it either if they had not had the
prayer-meetings as a safety-valve. The three boys were penned in at Miss
Lois's side, within reach of her tapping finger. They had decided to
attend service on account of the evergreens and Anne's singing, although
they, as well as Tita, belonged in reality to the flock of Father
Michaux. Anne never interfered with this division of the family; she
considered it the one tie which bound the children to the memory of
their mother; but Miss Lois shook her head over it, and sighed
ominously. The boys were, in fact, three little heathen; but Tita was a
devout Roman Catholic, and observed all the feast and fast days of the
Church, to the not infrequent disturbance of the young mistress of the
household, to whom a feast-day was oftentimes an occasion bristling with
difficulty. But to-day, in honor of Christmas, the usual frugal dinner
had been made a banquet indeed, by the united efforts of Anne and Miss
Lois; and when they took their seats at the table which stood in the
sitting-room, all felt that it held an abundance fit even for the old
fur-trading days, Miss Lois herself having finally succumbed to that
island standard of comparison. After the dinner was over, while they
were sitting round the fire sipping coffee--the ambrosia of the Northern
gods, who find some difficulty in keeping themselves warm--a tap at the
door was heard, and a tall youth entered, a youth who was a vivid
personification of early manhood in its brightest form. The warm air was
stirred by the little rush of cold that came in with him, and the dreamy
and drowsy eyes round the fire awoke as they rested upon him.

"The world _is_ alive, then, outside, after all," said Miss Lois,
briskly straightening herself in her chair, and taking out her knitting.
"How do you do, Erastus?"

But her greeting was drowned by the noise of the boys, who had been
asleep together on the rug in a tangled knot, like three young bears,
but now, broadly awake again, were jumping round the new-comer,
displaying their gifts and demanding admiration. Disentangling himself
from them with a skill which showed a long experience in their modes of
twisting, the young man made his way up to Anne, and, with a smile and
bow to Dr. Douglas and Miss Lois, sat down by her side.

"You were not at church this morning," said the girl, looking at him
rather gravely, but giving him her hand.

"No, I was not; but a merry Christmas all the same, Annet," answered the
youth, throwing back his golden head with careless grace. At this moment
Tita came forward from her furry corner, where she had been lying with
her head on her arm, half asleep, and seated herself in the red light of
the fire, gazing into the blaze with soft indifference. Her dark woollen
dress was brightened by the ribbons which circled her little waist and
knotted themselves at the ends of the long braids of her hair. She had a
string of yellow beads round her neck, and on her feet the little
slippers which Anne had fashioned for her with so much care. Her brown
hands lay crossed on her lap, and her small but bold-featured profile
looked more delicate than usual, outlined in relief like a little cameo
against the flame. The visitor's eyes rested upon her for a moment, and
then turned back to Anne. "There is to be a dance to-night down in one
of the old warehouses," he said, "and I want you to go."

"A dance!" cried the boys; "then _we_ are going too. It is Christmas
night, and we know how to dance. See here." And they sprang out into the
centre of the room, and began a figure, not without a certain wild grace
of its own, keeping time to the shrill whistling of Gabriel, who was the
fifer and leader of the band.

Miss Lois put down her knitting, and disapproved, for the old training
was still strong in her; then she remembered that these were things of
the past, shook her head at herself, sighed, and resumed it again.

"Of course you will go," said the visitor.

"I do not know that I _can_ go, Rast," replied Anne, turning toward her
father, as if to see what he thought.

"Yes, go," said Douglas--"go, Annet." He hardly ever used this name,
which the children had given to their elder sister--a name that was not
the French "Annette," but, like the rest of the island _patois_, a
mispronunciation--"An´net," with the accent on the first syllable. "It
is Christmas night," said Douglas, with a faint interest on his faded
face; "I should like it to be a pleasant recollection for you, Annet."

The young girl went to him; he kissed her, and then rose to go to his
study; but Tita's eyes held him, and he paused.

"Will _you_ go, Miss Lois?" said Anne.

"Oh no, child," replied the old maid, primly, adjusting her spectacles.

"But you must go, Miss Lois, and dance with me," said Rast, springing up
and seizing her hands.

"Fie, Erastus! for shame! Let me go," said Miss Lois, as he tried to
draw her to her feet. He still bent over her, but she tapped his cheek
with her knitting-needles, and told him to sit down and behave himself.

"I won't, unless you promise to go with us," he said.

"Why should you not go, Lois?" said Douglas, still standing at the door.
"The boys want to go, and some one must be with them to keep them in
order."

"Why, doctor, imagine me at a dancing party!" said Miss Lois, the
peach-like color rising in her thin cheeks again.

"It is different here, Lois; everybody goes."

"Yes; even old Mrs. Kendig," said Tita, softly.

Miss Lois looked sharply at her; old Mrs. Kendig was fat, toothless, and
seventy, and the active, spare New England woman felt a sudden wrath at
the implied comparison. Griselda was not tried upon the subject of her
age, or we might have had a different legend. But Tita looked as idly
calm as a summer morning, and Miss Lois turned away, as she had turned a
hundred times before, uncertain between intention and simple chance.

"Very well, then, I will go," she said. "How you bother me, Erastus!"

"No, I don't," said the youth, releasing her. "You know you like me,
Miss Lois; you know you do."

"Brazen-face!" said Miss Lois, pushing him away. But any one could see
that she did like him.

"Of course I may go, father?" said Tita, without stirring, but looking
at him steadily.

"I suppose so," he answered, slowly; "that is, if Erastus will take care
of you."

"Will you take care of me, Erastus?" asked the soft voice.

"Don't be absurd, Tita; of course he will," said Miss Lois, shortly. "He
will see to you as well as to the other children."

And then Douglas turned and left the room.

Erastus, or Rast, as he was called, went back to his place beside Anne.
He was a remarkably handsome youth of seventeen, with bright blue eyes,
golden hair, a fine spirited outline, laughing mouth, and impetuous,
quick movements; tall as a young sapling, his figure was almost too
slender for its height, but so light and elastic that one forgave the
fault, and forgot it in one look at the mobile face, still boyish in
spite of the maturity given by the hard cold life of the North.

"Why have we not heard of this dance before, Erastus?" asked Miss Lois,
ever mindful and tenacious of a dignity of position which no one
disputed, but which was none the less to her a subject of constant and
belligerent watchfulness--one by which she gauged the bow of the
shop-keeper, the nod of the passing islander, the salute of the little
half-breed boys who had fish to sell, and even the guttural ejaculations
of the Chippewas who came to her door offering potatoes and Indian
sugar.

"Because it was suggested only a few hours ago, up at the fort. I was
dining with Dr. Gaston, and Walters came across from the commandant's
cottage and told me. Since then I have been hard at work with them,
decorating and lighting the ball-room."

"Which one of the old shells have you taken?" asked Miss Lois. "I hope
the roof will not come down on our heads."

"We have Larrabee's; that has the best floor. And as to coming down on
our heads, those old warehouses are stronger than you imagine, Miss
Lois. Have you never noticed their great beams?"

"I have noticed their toppling fronts and their slanting sides, their
bulgings out and their leanings in," replied Miss Lois, nodding her head
emphatically.

"The leaning tower of Pisa, you know, is pronounced stronger than other
towers that stand erect," said Rast. "That old brown shell of Larrabee's
is jointed together so strongly that I venture to predict it will
outlive us all. We might be glad of such joints ourselves, Miss Lois."

"If it will only not come down on our heads to-night, that is all I ask
of its joints," replied Miss Lois.

Soon after seven o'clock the ball opened: darkness had already lain over
the island for nearly three hours, and the evening seemed well advanced.

"Oh, Tita!" said Anne, as the child stepped out of her long cloak and
stood revealed, clad in a fantastic short skirt of black cloth barred
with scarlet, and a little scarlet bodice, "that dress is too thin, and
besides--"

"She looks like a circus-rider," said Miss Lois, in dismay. "Why did you
allow it, Anne?"

"I knew nothing of it," replied the elder sister, with a distressed
expression on her face, but, as usual, not reproving Tita. "It is the
little fancy dress the fort ladies made for her last summer when they
had tableaux. It is too late to go back now; she must wear it, I
suppose; perhaps in the crowd it will not be noticed."

Tita, unmoved, had walked meanwhile over to the hearth, and sitting down
on the floor before the fire, was taking off her snow-boots and donning
her new slippers, apparently unconscious of remark.

The scene was a striking one, or would have been such to a stranger. The
lower floor of the warehouse had been swept and hastily garnished with
evergreens and all the flags the little fort could muster; at each end
on a broad hearth a great fire of logs roared up the old chimney, and
helped to light the room, a soldier standing guard beside it, and
keeping up the flame by throwing on wood every now and then from the
heap in the corner near by. Candles were ranged along the walls, and
lanterns hung from the beams above; all that the island could do in the
way of illumination had been done. The result was a picturesque mingling
of light and shade as the dancers came into the ruddy gleam of the fires
and passed out again, now seen for a moment in the paler ray of a candle
farther down the hall, now lost in the shadows which everywhere swept
across the great brown room from side to side, like broad-winged ghosts
resting in mid-air and looking down upon the revels. The music came from
six French fiddlers, four young, gayly dressed fellows, and two
grizzled, withered old men, and they played the tunes of the century
before, and played them with all their might and main. The little fort,
a one-company post, was not entitled to a band; but there were, as
usual, one or two German musicians among the enlisted men, and these now
stood near the French fiddlers and watched them with slow curiosity,
fingering now and then in imagination the great brass instruments which
were to them the keys of melody, and dreaming over again the happy days
when they, too, played "with the band." But the six French fiddlers
cared nothing for the Germans; they held themselves far above the common
soldiers of the fort, and despised alike their cropped hair, their
ideas, their uniforms, and the strict rules they were obliged to obey.
They fiddled away with their eyes cast up to the dark beams above, and
their tunes rang out in that shrill, sustained, clinging treble which no
instrument save a violin can give. The entire upper circle of society
was present, and a sprinkling of the second; for the young officers
cared more for dancing than for etiquette, and a pretty young French
girl was in their minds of more consequence than even the five Misses
Macdougall with all their blood, which must have been, however, of a
thin, although, of course, precious, quality, since between the whole
five there seemed scarcely enough for one. The five were there, however,
in green plaided delaines with broad lace collars and large flat
shell-cameo breastpins with scroll-work settings: they presented an
imposing appearance to the eyes of all. The father of these ladies, long
at rest from his ledgers, was in his day a prominent resident official
of the Fur Company; his five maiden daughters lived on in the old house,
and occupied themselves principally in remembering him. Miss Lois seated
herself beside these acknowledged heads of society, and felt that she
was in her proper sphere. The dance-music troubled her ears, but she
endured it manfully.

"A gay scene," she observed, gazing through her spectacles.

The five Misses Macdougall bowed acquiescence, and said that it was
fairly gay; indeed, rather too gay, owing to more of a mingling than
they approved; but nothing, ah! nothing, to the magnificent
entertainments of times past, which had often been described to them by
their respected parent. (They never seemed to have had but one.)

"Of course you will dance, Anne?" said Rast Pronando.

She smiled an assent, and they were soon among the dancers. Tita, left
alone, followed them with her eyes as they passed out of the fire-light
and were lost in the crowd and the sweeping shadows. Then she made her
way, close to the wall, down to the other end of the long room, where
the commandant's wife and the fort ladies sat in state, keeping up the
dignity of what might be called the military end of the apartment. Here
she sought the brightest light she could find, and placed herself in it
carelessly, and as though by chance, to watch the dancers.

"Look at that child," said the captain's wife. "What an odd little thing
it is!"

"It is Tita Douglas, Anne's little sister," said Mrs. Bryden, the wife
of the commandant. "I am surprised they allowed her to come in that
tableau dress. Her mother was a French girl, I believe. Dr. Douglas, you
know, came to the island originally as surgeon of the post."

"There is Anne now, and dancing with young Pronando, of course," said
the wife of one of the lieutenants.

"Dr. Gaston thinks there is no one like Anne Douglas," observed Mrs.
Bryden. "He has educated her almost entirely; taught her Latin and
Greek, and all sorts of things. Her father is a musical genius, you
know, and in one way the girl knows all about music; in another, nothing
at all. Do you think she is pretty, Mrs. Cromer?"

Mrs. Cromer thought "Not at all; too large, and--unformed in every way."

"I sometimes wonder, though, why she is not pretty," said Mrs. Bryden,
in a musing tone. "She ought to be."

"I never knew but one girl of that size and style who was pretty, and
she had had every possible advantage of culture, society, and foreign
travel; wore always the most elaborately plain costumes--works of art,
in a Greek sort of way; said little; but sat or stood about in
statuesque attitudes that made you feel thin and insignificant, and glad
you had all your clothes on," said Mrs. Cromer.

"And was this girl pretty?"

"She was simply superb," said the captain's wife. "But do look at young
Pronando. How handsome he is to-night!"

"An Apollo Belvedere," said the wife of the lieutenant, who, having
rashly allowed herself to spend a summer at West Point, was now living
in the consequences.

But although the military element presided like a court circle at one
end of the room, and the five Misses Macdougall and Miss Lois like an
element of first families at the other, the intervening space was well
filled with a motley assemblage--lithe young girls with sparkling black
eyes and French vivacity, matrons with a shade more of brown in their
complexions, and withered old grandams who sat on benches along the
walls, and looked on with a calm dignity of silence which never came
from Saxon blood. Intermingled were youths of rougher aspect but of fine
mercurial temperaments, who danced with all their hearts as well as
bodies, and kept exact time with the music, throwing in fancy steps from
pure love of it as they whirled lightly down the hall with their
laughing partners. There were a few young men of Scotch descent present
also, clerks in the shops, and superintendents of the fisheries which
now formed the only business of the once thriving frontier village.
These were considered by island parents of the better class desirable
suitors for their daughters--far preferable to the young officers who
succeeded each other rapidly at the little fort, with attachments
delightful, but as transitory as themselves. It was noticeable, however,
that the daughters thought otherwise. Near the doorway in the shadow a
crowd of Indians had gathered, while almost all of the common soldiers
from the fort, on one pretext or another, were in the hall, attending to
the fires and lights, or acting as self-appointed police. Even Chaplain
Gaston looked in for a moment, and staid an hour; and later in the
evening the tall form of Père Michaux appeared, clad in a furred mantle,
a black silk cap crowning his silver hair. Tita immediately left her
place and went to meet him, bending her head with an air of deep
reverence.

"See the child--how theatrical!" said Mrs. Cromer.

"Yes. Still, the Romanists do believe in all kinds of amusements, and
even ask a blessing on it," said the lieutenant's wife.

"It was not that--it was the little air and attitude of devoutness that
I meant. See the puss now!"

But the puss was triumphant at last. One of the younger officers had
noted her solemn little salutation in front of the priest, and now
approached to ask her to dance, curious to see what manner of child this
small creature could be. In another moment she was whirling down the
hall with him, her dark face flushed, her eyes radiant, her dancing
exquisitely light and exact. She passed Anne and Rast with a sparkling
glance, her small breast throbbing with a swell of satisfied vanity that
almost stopped her breath.

"There is Tita," said the elder sister, rather anxiously. "I hope Mr.
Walters will not spoil her with his flattery."

"There is no danger; she is not pretty enough," answered Rast.

A flush rose in Anne's face. "You do not like my little sister," she
said.

"Oh, I do not dislike her," said Rast. "I could not dislike anything
that belonged to _you_," he added, in a lower tone.

She smiled as he bent his handsome head toward her to say this. She was
fond of Rast; he had been her daily companion through all her life; she
scarcely remembered anything in which he was not concerned, from her
first baby walk in the woods back of the fort, her first ride in a
dog-sledge on the ice, to yesterday's consultation over the chapel
evergreens.

The six French fiddlers played on; they knew not fatigue. In imagination
they had danced every dance. Tita was taken out on the floor several
times by the officers, who were amused by her little airs and her small
elfish face: she glowed with triumph. Anne had but few invitations, save
from Rast; but as his were continuous, she danced all the evening. At
midnight Miss Lois and the Misses Macdougall formally rose, and the fort
ladies sent for their wrappings: the ball, as far as the first circle
was concerned, was ended. But long afterward the sound of the fiddles
was still heard, and it was surmised that the second circle was having
its turn, possibly not without a sprinkling of the third also.




CHAPTER III.

     "Wassamequin, Nashoonon, and Massaconomet did voluntarily submit
     themselves to the English, and promise to be willing from time to
     time to be instructed in the knowledge of God. Being asked not to
     do any unnecessary work on the Sabbath day, they answered, 'It is
     easy to them; they have not much to do on any day, and can well
     take rest on that day as any other.' So then we, causing them to
     understand the articles, and all the ten commandments of God, and
     they freely assenting to all, they were solemnly received; and the
     Court gave each of them a coat of two yards of cloth, and their
     dinner; and to them and their men, every one of them, a cup of sack
     at their departure. So they took leave, and went
     away."--_Massachusetts Colonial Records._


Dr. Gaston sat in his library, studying a chess problem. His clerical
coat was old and spotted, his table was of rough wood, the floor
uncarpeted; by right, Poverty should have made herself prominent there.
But she did not. Perhaps she liked the old chaplain, who showed a fine,
amply built person under her reign, with florid complexion, bright blue
eyes, and a curly brown wig--very different in aspect from her usual
lean and dismal retinue; perhaps, also, she stopped here herself to warm
her cold heart now and then in the hot, bright, crowded little room,
which was hers by right, although she did not claim it, enjoying it,
however, as a miserly money-lender enjoys the fine house over which he
holds a mortgage, rubbing his hands exultingly, as, clad in his thin old
coat, he walks by. Certainly the plastering had dropped from the walls
here and there; there was no furniture save the tables and shelves made
by the island carpenter, and one old leathern arm-chair, the parson's
own, a miracle of comfort, age, and hanging leather tatters. But on the
shelves and on the tables, on the floor and on the broad window-sills,
were books; they reached the ceiling on the shelves; they wainscoted the
walls to the height of several feet all round the room; small volumes
were piled on the narrow mantel as far up as they could go without
toppling over, and the tables were loaded also. Aisles were kept open
leading to the door, to the windows, and to the hearth, where the ragged
arm-chair stood, and where there was a small parade-ground of open
floor; but everywhere else the printed thoughts held sway. The old
fire-place was large and deep, and here burned night and day, throughout
the winter, a fire which made the whole room bright; add to this the
sunshine streaming through the broad, low, uncurtained windows, and you
have the secret of the cheerfulness in the very face of a barren lack of
everything we are accustomed to call comfort.

The Reverend James Gaston was an Englishman by birth. On coming to
America he had accepted a chaplaincy in the army, with the intention of
resigning it as soon as he had become sufficiently familiar with the
ways of the Church in this country to feel at ease in a parish. But
years had passed, and he was a chaplain still; for evidently the country
parishes were not regulated according to his home ideas, the rector's
authority--yes, even the tenure of his rectorship--being dependent upon
the chance wills and fancies of his people. Here was no dignity, no time
for pleasant classical studies, and no approval of them; on the
contrary, a continuous going out to tea, and a fear of offending, it
might be, a warden's wife, who very likely had been brought up a
Dissenter. The Reverend James Gaston therefore preferred the government
for a master.

Dr. Gaston held the office of post chaplain, having been, on
application, selected by the council of administration. He had no
military rank, but as there happened to be quarters to spare, a cottage
was assigned to him, and as he had had the good fortune to be liked and
respected by all the officers who had succeeded each other on the little
island, his position, unlike that of some of his brethren, was
endurable, and even comfortable. He had been a widower for many years;
he had never cared to marry again, but had long ago recovered his
cheerfulness, and had brought up, intellectually at least, two children
whom he loved as if they had been his own--the boy Erastus Pronando, and
Anne Douglas. The children returned his affection heartily, and made a
great happiness in his lonely life. The girl was his good scholar, the
boy his bad one; yet the teacher was severe with Anne, and indulgent to
the boy. If any one had asked the reason, perhaps he would have said
that girls were docile by nature, whereas boys, having more temptations,
required more lenity; or perhaps that girls who, owing to the
constitution of society, never advanced far in their studies, should
have all the incitement of severity while those studies lasted, whereas
boys, who are to go abroad in the world and learn from life, need no
such severity. But the real truth lay deeper than this, and the chaplain
himself was partly conscious of it; he felt that the foundations must be
laid accurately and deeply in a nature like that possessed by this young
girl.

"Good-morning, uncle," said Anne, entering and putting down her Latin
books (as children they had adopted the fashion of calling their teacher
"uncle"). "Was your coffee good this morning?"

"Ah, well, so-so, child, so-so," replied the chaplain, hardly aroused
yet from his problem.

"Then I must go out and speak to--to--what is this one's name, uncle?"

"Her name is--here, I have it written down--Mrs. Evelina Crangall," said
the chaplain, reading aloud from his note-book, in a slow, sober voice.
Evidently it was a matter of moment to him to keep that name well in his
mind.

Public opinion required that Dr. Gaston should employ a Protestant
servant; no one else was obliged to conform, but the congregation felt
that a stand must be made somewhere, and they made it, like a chalk
line, at the parson's threshold. Now it was very well known that there
were no Protestants belonging to the class of servants on the island who
could cook at all, that talent being confined to the French
quarter-breeds and to occasional Irish soldiers' wives, none of them
Protestants. The poor parson's cooking was passed from one incompetent
hand to another--lake-sailors' wives, wandering emigrants, moneyless
forlorn females left by steamers, belonging to that strange floating
population that goes forever travelling up and down the land, without
apparent motive save a vague El-Dorado hope whose very conception would
be impossible in any other country save this. Mrs. Evelina Crangall was
a hollow-chested woman with faded blue eyes, one prominent front tooth,
scanty light hair, and for a form a lattice-work of bones. She
preserved, however, a somewhat warlike aspect in her limp calico, and
maintained that she thoroughly understood the making of coffee, but that
she was accustomed to the use of a French coffee-pot. Anne, answering
serenely that no French coffee-pot could be obtained in that kitchen,
went to work and explained the whole process from the beginning, the
woman meanwhile surveying her with suspicion, which gradually gave way
before the firm but pleasant manner. With a long list of kindred
Evelinas, Anne had had dealings before. Sometimes her teachings effected
a change for the better, sometimes they did not, but in any case the
Evelinas seldom remained long. They were wanderers by nature, and had
sudden desires to visit San Francisco, or to "go down the river to
Newerleens." This morning, while making her explanation, Anne made
coffee too. It was a delicious cupful which she carried back with her
into the library, and the chaplain, far away in the chess country, came
down to earth immediately in order to drink it. Then they opened the
Latin books, and Anne translated her page of Livy, her page of Cicero,
and recited her rules correctly. She liked Latin; its exactness suited
her. Mrs. Bryden was wrong when she said that the girl studied Greek.
Dr. Gaston had longed to teach her that golden tongue, but here William
Douglas had interfered. "Teach her Latin if you like, but not Greek," he
said. "It would injure the child--make what is called a blue-stocking of
her, I suppose--and it is my duty to stand between her and injury."

"Ah! ah! you want to make a belle of her, do you?" said the cheery
chaplain.

[Illustration: "AS SHE BENT OVER THE OLD VOLUME."]

"I said it was my duty; I did not say it was my wish," replied the
moody father. "If I could have my wish, Anne should never know what a
lover is all her life long."

"What! you do not wish to have her marry, then? There are happy
marriages. Come, Douglas, don't be morbid."

"I know what men are. And you and I are no better."

"But she may love."

"Ah! there it is; she may. And that is what I meant when I said that it
was my duty to keep her from making herself positively unattractive."

"Greek need not do that," said Dr. Gaston, shortly.

"It need not, but it does. Let me ask you one question: did you ever
fall in love, or come anywhere near falling in love, with a girl who
understood Greek?"

"That is because only the homely ones take to it," replied the chaplain,
fencing a little.

But Anne was not taught Greek. After Cicero she took up algebra, then
astronomy. After that she read aloud from a ponderous Shakspeare, and
the old man corrected her accentuation, and questioned her on the
meanings. A number of the grand old plays the girl knew almost entirely
by heart; they had been her reading-books from childhood. The
down-pouring light of the vivid morning sunshine and the up-coming white
glare of the ice below met and shone full upon her face and figure as
she bent over the old volume laid open on the table before her, one hand
supporting her brow, the other resting on the yellow page. Her hands
were firm, white, and beautifully shaped--strong hands, generous hands,
faithful hands; not the little, idle, characterless, faithless palms so
common in America, small, dainty, delicate, and shapeless, coming from a
composite origin. Her thick hair, brown as a mellowed chestnut, with a
gleam of dark red where the light touched it, like the red of November
oak leaves, was, as usual, in her way, the heavy braids breaking from
the coil at the back of her head, one by one, as she read on through
_Hamlet_. At last impatiently she drew out the comb, and they all fell
down over her shoulders, and left her in momentary peace.

The lesson was nearly over when Rast Pronando appeared; he was to enter
college--a Western college on one of the lower lakes--early in the
spring, and that prospect made the chaplain's lessons seem dull to him.
"Very likely they will not teach at all as he does; I shall do much
better if I go over the text-books by myself," he said, confidentially,
to Anne. "I do not want to appear old-fashioned, you know."

"Is it unpleasant to be old-fashioned? I should think the old fashions
would be sure to be the good ones," said the girl. "But I do not want
you to go so far beyond me, Rast; we have always been even until now.
Will you think _me_ old-fashioned too when you come back?"

"Oh no; you will always be Anne. I can predict you exactly at twenty,
and even thirty: there is no doubt about _you_."

"But shall I be old-fashioned?"

"Well, perhaps; but we don't mind it in women. All the goddesses were
old-fashioned, especially Diana. _You_ are Diana."

"Diana, a huntress. She loved Endymion, who was always asleep," said
Anne, quoting from her school-girl mythology.

This morning Rast had dropped in to read a little Greek with his old
master, and to walk home with Anne. The girl hurried through her
_Hamlet_, and then yielded the place to him. It was a three-legged
stool, the only companion the arm-chair had, and it was the seat for the
reciting scholar; the one who was studying sat in a niche on the
window-seat at a little distance. Anne, retreating to this niche, began
to rebraid her hair.

"But she, within--within--singing with enchanting tone, enchanting
voice, wove with a--with a golden shuttle the sparkling web," read Rast,
looking up and dreamily watching the brown strands taking their place in
the long braid. Anne saw his look, and hurried her weaving. The girl had
thought all her life that her hair was ugly because it was so heavy, and
neither black nor gold in hue; and Rast, following her opinion, had
thought so too: she had told him it was, many a time. It was
characteristic of her nature that while as a child she had admired her
companion's spirited, handsome face and curling golden locks, she had
never feared lest he might not return her affection because she happened
to be ugly; she drew no comparisons. But she had often discussed the
subject of beauty with him. "I should like to be beautiful," she said;
"like that girl at the fort last summer."

"Pooh! it doesn't make much difference," answered Rast, magnanimously.
"I shall always like you."

"That is because you are so generous, dear."

"Perhaps it is," answered the boy.

This was two years before, when they were fourteen and fifteen years
old; at sixteen and seventeen they had advanced but little in their
ideas of life and of each other. Still, there was a slight change, for
Anne now hurried the braiding; it hurt her a little that Rast should
gaze so steadily at the rough, ugly hair.

When the Greek was finished they said good-by to the chaplain, and left
the cottage together. As they crossed the inner parade-ground, taking
the snow path which led toward the entrance grating, and which was kept
shovelled out by the soldiers, the snow walls on each side rising to
their chins, Rast suddenly exclaimed: "Oh, Annet, I have thought of
something! I am going to take you down the fort hill on a sled. Now you
need not object, because I shall do it in any case, although we _are_
grown up, and I _am_ going to college. Probably it will be the last
time. I shall borrow Bert Bryden's sled. Come along."

All the boy in him was awake; he seized Anne's wrist, and dragged her
through first one cross-path, then another, until at last they reached
the commandant's door. From the windows their heads had been visible,
turning and crossing above the heaped-up snow. "Rast, and Anne Douglas,"
said Mrs. Bryden, recognizing the girl's fur cap and the youth's golden
hair. She tapped on the window, and signed to them to enter without
ceremony. "What is it, Rast? Good-morning, Anne; what a color you have,
child!"

"Rast has been making me run," said Anne, smiling, and coming toward
the hearth, where the fort ladies were sitting together sewing, and
rather lugubriously recalling Christmas times in their old Eastern
homes.

"Throw off your cloak," said Mrs. Cromer, "else you will take cold when
you go out again."

"We shall only stay a moment," answered Anne.

The cloak was of strong dark blue woollen cloth, closely fitted to the
figure, with a small cape; it reached from her throat to her ankles, and
was met and completed by fur boots, fur gloves, and a little fur cap.
The rough plain costume was becoming to the vigorous girl. "It tones her
down," thought the lieutenant's wife; "she really looks quite well."

In the mean while Rast had gone across to the dining-room to find Bert
Bryden, the commandant's son, and borrow his sled.

"And you're really going to take Miss Douglas down the hill!" said the
boy. "Hurrah! I'll look out of the side window and see. What fun! Such a
big girl to go sliding!"

Anne was a big girl to go; but Rast was not to be withstood. She would
not get on the sled at the door, as he wished, but followed him out
through the sally-port, and round to the top of the long steep fort
hill, whose snowy slippery road-track was hardly used at all during the
winter, save by coasters, and those few in number, for the village boys,
French and half-breeds, did not view the snow as an amusement, or
toiling up hill as a recreation. The two little boys at the fort, and
what Scotch and New England blood there was in the town, held a monopoly
of the coasting.

"There they go!" cried Bert, from his perch on the deep window-seat
overlooking the frozen Straits and the village below. "Mamma, you must
let me take you down now; you are not so big as Miss Douglas."

Mrs. Bryden, a slender little woman, laughed. "Fancy the colonel's
horror," she said, "if he should see me sliding down that hill! And yet
it looks as if it might be rather stirring," she added, watching the
flying sled and its load. The sled, of island manufacture, was large
and sledge-like; it carried two comfortably. Anne held on by Rast's
shoulders, sitting behind him, while he guided the flying craft. Down
they glided, darted, faster and faster, losing all sense of everything
after a while save speed. Reaching the village street at last, they flew
across it, and out on the icy pier beyond, where Rast by a skillful
manœuvre stopped the sled on the very verge. The fort ladies were all at
the windows now, watching.

"How dangerous!" said Mrs. Bryden, forgetting her admiration of a moment
before with a mother's irrelevant rapidity. "Albert, let me never see or
hear of your sliding on that pier; another inch, and they would have
gone over, down on the broken ice below!"

"I couldn't do it, mamma, even if I tried," replied Master Albert,
regretfully; "I always tumble off the sled at the street, or else run
into one of the warehouses. Only Rast Pronando can steer across
slanting, and out on that pier."

"I am very glad to hear it," replied Mrs. Bryden; "but your father must
also give you his positive commands on the subject. I had no idea that
the pier was ever attempted."

"And it is not, mamma, except by Rast," said the boy. "Can't I try it
when I am as old as he is?"

"Hear the child!" said Mrs. Cromer, going back to her seat by the fire;
"one would suppose he expected to stay here all his life. Do you not
know, Bert, that we are only here for a little while--a year or two?
Before you are eighteen months older very likely you will find yourself
out on the plains. What a life it is!"

The fort ladies all sighed. It was a habit they had. They drew the
dreariest pictures of their surroundings and privations in their letters
homeward, and really believed them, theoretically. In truth, there were
some privations; but would any one of them have exchanged army life for
civilian? To the last, thorough army ladies retain their ways; you
recognize them even when retired to private and perhaps more prosperous
life. Cosmopolitans, they do not sink into the ruts of small-town life;
they are never provincial. They take the world easily, having a
pleasant, generous taste for its pleasures, and making light of the
burdens that fall to their share. All little local rules and ways are
nothing to them: neither here nor anywhere are they to remain long. With
this habit and manner they keep up a vast amount of general
cheeriness--vast indeed, when one considers how small the incomes
sometimes are. But if small, they are also sure.

"Rast Pronando is too old for such frolics, I think," said Mrs. Rankin,
the lieutenant's wife, beginning another seam in the new dress for her
baby.

"He goes to college in the spring; that will quiet him," said Mrs.
Bryden.

"What will he do afterward? Is he to live here? At this end of the
world--this jumping-off place?"

"I suppose so; he has always lived here. But he belongs, you know, to
the old Philadelphia family of the same name, the Peter Pronandos."

"Does he? How strange! How did he come here?"

"He was born here: Dr. Gaston told me his history. It seems that the
boy's father was a wild younger son of the second Peter, grandson, of
course, of the original Peter, from whom the family derive all their
greatness--_and_ money. This Peter the third, only his name was not
Peter, but John (the eldest sons were the Peters), wandered away from
home, and came up here, where his father's name was well known among the
directors of the Fur Company. John Pronando, who must have been of very
different fibre from the rest of the family, liked the wild life of the
border, and even went off on one or two long expeditions to the Red
River of the North and the Upper Missouri after furs with the hunters of
the Company. His father then offered him a position here which would
carry with it authority, but he curtly refused, saying that he had no
taste for a desk and pen like Peter. Peter was his brother, who had
begun dutifully at an early age his life-long task of taking care of the
large accumulation of land which makes the family so rich. Peter was the
good boy always. Father Peter was naturally angry with John, and
inclined even then to cross his name off the family list of heirs; this,
however, was not really done until the prodigal crowned his long course
of misdeeds by marrying the pretty daughter of a Scotchman, who held one
of the smaller clerkships in the Company's warehouses here--only a grade
above the hunters themselves. This was the end. Almost anything else
might have been forgiven save a marriage of that kind. If John Pronando
had selected the daughter of a flat-boat man on the Ohio River, or of a
Pennsylvania mountain wagoner, they might have accepted her--at a
distance--and made the best of her. But a person from the rank and file
of their own Fur Company--it was as though a colonel should marry the
daughter of a common soldier in his own regiment: yes, worse, for
nothing can equal the Pronando pride. From that day John Pronando was
simply forgotten--so they said. His mother was dead, so it may have been
true. A small sum was settled upon him, and a will was carefully drawn
up forever excluding him and the heirs he might have from any share in
the estate. John did not appear to mind this, but lived on merrily
enough for some years afterward, until his sweet little wife died; then
he seemed to lose his strength suddenly, and soon followed her, leaving
this one boy, Erastus, named after the maternal grandfather, with his
usual careless disregard of what would be for his advantage. The boy has
been brought up by our good chaplain, although he lives with a family
down in the village; the doctor has husbanded what money there was
carefully, and there is enough to send him through college, and to start
him in life in some way. A good education he considered the best
investment of all."

"In a fresh-water college?" said Mrs. Cromer, raising her eyebrows.

"Why not, for a fresh-water boy? He will always live in the West."

"He is so handsome," said Mrs. Rankin, "that he might go Eastward,
captivate his relatives, and win his way back into the family again."

"He does not know anything about his family," said the colonel's wife.

"Then some one ought to tell him."

"Why? Simply for the money? No: let him lead his own life out here, and
make his own way," said Mrs. Bryden, warmly.

"What a radical you are, Jane!"

"No, not a radical; but I have seen two or three of the younger
Pronandos, of the fourth generation, I mean, and whenever I think of
their dead eyes, and lifeless, weary manner, I feel like doing what I
can to keep Rast away from them."

"But the boy must live his life, Jane. These very Pronandos whom you
describe will probably be sober and staid at fifty: the Pronandos always
are. And Rast, after all, is one of them."

"But not like them. _He_ would go to ruin, he has so much more
imagination than they have."

"And less stability?"

"Well, no; less epicureanism, perhaps. It is the solid good things of
life that bring the Pronandos back, after they have indulged in youthful
wildness: they have no taste for husks."

Then the colonel came in, and, soon after, the sewing circle broke up,
Mrs. Cromer and Mrs. Rankin returning to their quarters in the other
cottages through the walled snow-paths. The little fort was perched on
the brow of the cliff, overlooking the village and harbor; the windows
of the stone cottages which formed the officers' quarters commanded an
uninterrupted view of blue water in summer, and white ice fields in
winter, as far as the eye could reach. It could hardly have withstood a
bombardment; its walls and block-houses, erected as a defense against
the Indians, required constant propping and new foundation-work to keep
them within the requirements of safety, not to speak of military
dignity. But the soldiers had nothing else to do, and, on the whole, the
fort looked well, especially from the water, crowning the green height
with buttressed majesty. During eight months of the year the officers
played chess and checkers, and the men played fox-and-geese. The
remaining four months, which comprised all there was of spring, summer,
and autumn, were filled full of out-door work and enjoyment; summer
visitors came, and the United States uniform took its conquering place,
as usual, among the dancers, at the picnics, and on the fast-sailing
fishing-boats which did duty as yachts, skimming over the clear water in
whose depths fish could be seen swimming forty feet below. These same
fish were caught and eaten--the large lake trout, and the delicate
white-fish, aristocrat of the freshwater seas; three-quarters of the
population were fishermen, and the whole town drew its food from the
deep. The business had broadened, too, as the Prairie States became more
thickly settled, namely, the salting and packing for sale of these
fresh-water fish. Barrels stood on the piers, and brisk agents, with
pencils behind their ears, stirred the slow-moving villagers into
activity, as the man with a pole stirs up the bears. Fur-bearing animals
had had their day; it was now the turn of the creatures of the deep.

"Let us stop at the church-house a moment and see Miss Lois," said Rast,
as, dragging the empty sled behind him, he walked by Anne's side through
the village street toward the Agency.

"I am afraid I have not time, Rast."

"Make it, then. Come, Annet, don't be ill-natured. And, besides, you
ought to see that I go there, for I have not called upon Miss Lois this
year."

"As this year only began last week, you are not so very far behind,"
said the girl, smiling. "Why can you not go and see Miss Lois alone?"

"I should be welcome, at any rate; _she_ adores me."

"Does she, indeed!"

"Yes, Miss Douglas, she does. She pretends otherwise, but that is always
the way with women. Oh! I know the world."

"You are only one year older than I am."

"In actual time, perhaps; but twenty years older in knowledge."

"What will you be, then, when you come back from college? An old man?"

"By no means; for _I_ shall stay where I am. But in the mean time you
will catch up with me."

Handsome Rast had passed through his novitiate, so he thought. His
knowledge of the world was derived partly from Lieutenant Walters, who,
although fresh from West Point, was still several years older than young
Pronando, and patronized him accordingly, and partly from a slender,
low-voiced Miss Carew, who was thirty, but appeared twenty, after the
manner of slender yellow-white blondes who have never possessed any
rose-tints, having always been willowy and amber-colored. Miss Carew
sailed, for a summer's amusement through the Great Lakes of the West;
and then returned Eastward with the opinion that they were but so many
raw, blank, inland oceans, without sensations or local coloring enough
to rouse her. The week on the island, which was an epoch in Rast's life,
had held for her but languid interest; yet even the languid work of a
master-hand has finish and power, and Rast was melancholy and silent for
fifteen days after the enchantress had departed. Then he wrote to her
one or two wild letters, and received no answer; then he grew bitter.
Then Walters came, with his cadet's deep experience in life, and the
youth learned from him, and re-appeared on the surface again with a
tinge of cynicism which filled Anne with wonder. For he had never told
her the story of the summer; it was almost the only event in his life
which she had not shared. But it was not that he feared to tell her,
they were as frank with each other as two children; it was because he
thought she would not understand it.

"I do not like Mr. Walters," she said, one day.

"He was very much liked at the Point, I assure you," said Rast, with
significant emphasis. "By the ladies, I mean, who come there in the
summer."

"How could they like him, with that important, egotistical air?"

"But it is to conquer him they like," said Tita, looking up from her
corner.

"Hear the child!" said Rast, laughing. "Are _you_ going to conquer,
Tita?"

"Yes," said Tita, stroking the cat which shared the corner with her--a
soft coated yellow pussy that was generally sleepy and quiet, but which
had, nevertheless, at times, extraordinary fits of galloping round in a
circle, and tearing the bark from the trees as though she was
possessed--an eccentricity of character which the boys attributed to the
direct influence of Satan.

Miss Lois lived in the church-house. It was an ugly house; but then, as
is often said of a plain woman, "so good!" It did not leak or rattle, or
fall down or smoke, or lean or sag, as did most of the other houses in
the village, in regard to their shingles, their shutters, their
chimneys, their side walls, and their roof-trees. It stood straightly
and squarely on its stone foundation, and every board, nail and latch
was in its proper position. Years before, missionaries had been sent
from New England to work among the Indians of this neighborhood, who had
obtained their ideas of Christianity, up to that time, solely from the
Roman Catholic priests, who had succeeded each other in an unbroken line
from that adventurous Jesuit, the first explorer of these inland seas,
Father Marquette. The Presbyterians came, established their mission,
built a meeting-house, a school-house, and a house for their pastor, the
buildings being as solid as their belief. Money was collected for this
enterprise from all over New England, that old-time, devout,
self-sacrificing community whose sternness and faith were equal; tall
spare men came westward to teach the Indians, earnest women with bright
steadfast eyes and lath-like forms were their aiders, wives, and
companions. Among these came Miss Lois--then young Lois
Hinsdale--carried Westward by an aunt whose missionary zeal was burning
splendidly up an empty chimney which might have been filled with family
loves and cares, but was not: shall we say better filled? The
missionaries worked faithfully; but, as the Indians soon moved further
westward, the results of their efforts can not be statistically
estimated now, or the accounts balanced.

"The only good Indian is a dead Indian," is a remark that crystallizes
the floating opinion of the border. But a border population has not a
missionary spirit. New England, having long ago chased out, shot down,
and exterminated all her own Indians, had become peaceful and pious, and
did not agree with these Western carriers of shot-guns. Still, when
there were no more Indians to come to this island school, it was of
necessity closed, no matter which side was right. There were still
numbers of Chippewas living on the other islands and on the mainland;
but they belonged to the Roman Catholic faith, and were under the
control of Père Michaux.

The Protestant church--a square New England meeting-house, with steeple
and bell--was kept open during another year; but the congregation grew
so small that at last knowledge of the true state of affairs reached the
New England purses, and it was decided that the minister in charge
should close this mission, and go southward to a more promising field
among the prairie settlers of Illinois. All the teachers connected with
the Indian school had departed before this--all save Miss Lois and her
aunt; for Priscilla Hinsdale, stricken down by her own intense energy,
which had consumed her as an inward fire, was now confined to her bed,
partially paralyzed. The New England woman had sold her farm, and put
almost all her little store of money into island property. "I shall live
and die here," she had said; "I have found my life-work." But her work
went away from her; her class of promising squaws departed with their
pappooses and their braves, and left her scholarless.

"With all the blessed religious privileges they have here, besides other
advantages, I can not at all understand it--I can not understand it,"
she repeated many times, especially to Sandy Forbes, an old Scotchman
and fervent singer of psalms.

"Aweel, aweel, Miss Priscilla, I donnot suppose ye can," replied Sandy,
with a momentary twinkle in his old eyes.

While still hesitating over her future course, illness struck down the
old maid, and her life-work was at last decided for her: it was merely
to lie in bed, motionless, winter and summer, with folded hands and
whatever resignation she was able to muster. Niece Lois, hitherto a
satellite, now assumed the leadership. This would seem a simple enough
charge, the household of two women, poor in purse, in a remote village
on a Northern frontier. But exotics of any kind require nursing and
vigilance, and the Hinsdale household was an exotic. Miss Priscilla
required that every collar should be starched in the New England
fashion, that every curtain should fall in New England folds, that every
dish on the table should be of New England origin, and that every clock
should tick with New England accuracy. Lois had known no other training;
and remembering as she did also the ways of the old home among the New
Hampshire hills with a child's fidelity and affection, she went even
beyond her aunt in faithfulness to her ideal; and although the elder
woman had long been dead, the niece never varied the habits or altered
the rules of the house which was now hers alone.

"A little New England homestead strangely set up here on this far
Western island," William Douglas had said.

The church house, as the villagers named it, was built by the
Presbyterian missionaries, many of them laboring with their own hands at
the good work, seeing, no doubt, files of Indian converts rising up in
another world to call them blessed. When it came into the hands of Miss
Priscilla, it came, therefore, ready-made as to New England ideas of
rooms and closets, and only required a new application of white and
green paint to become for her an appropriate and rectangular bower. It
stood near the closed meeting-house, whose steeple threw a slow-moving
shadow across its garden, like a great sun-dial, all day. Miss Lois had
charge of the key of the meeting-house, and often she unlocked its door,
went in, and walked up and down the aisle, as if to revive the memories
of the past. She remembered the faith and sure hope that used to fill
the empty spaces, and shook her head and sighed. Then she upbraided
herself for sighing, and sang in her thin husky voice softly a verse or
two of one of their old psalms by way of reparation. She sent an annual
report of the condition of the building to the Presbyterian Board of
Missions, but in it said nothing of the small repairs for which her own
purse paid. Was it a silent way of making amends to the old walls for
having deserted their tenets?

"Cod-fish balls for breakfast on Sunday morning, of course," said Miss
Lois, "and fried hasty-pudding. On Wednesdays a boiled dinner. Pies on
Tuesdays and Saturdays."

The pins stood in straight rows on her pincushion; three times each week
every room in the house was swept, and the floors as well as the
furniture dusted. Beans were baked in an earthen pot on Saturday night,
and sweet-cake was made on Thursday. Rast Pronando often dropped in to
tea on Thursday. Winter or summer, through scarcity or plenty, Miss Lois
never varied her established routine, thereby setting an example, she
said, to the idle and shiftless. And certainly she was a faithful
guide-post, continually pointing out an industrious and systematic way,
which, however, to the end of time, no French-blooded, French-hearted
person will ever travel, unless dragged by force. The villagers
preferred their lake trout to Miss Lois's salt cod-fish, their savory
stews and soups to her corned beef, their tartines to her corn-meal
puddings, and their eau-de-vie to her green tea; they loved their
disorder and their comfort; her bar soap and scrubbing-brush were a
horror to their eyes. They washed the household clothes two or three
times a year: was not that enough? Of what use the endless labor of this
sharp-nosed woman with glasses over her eyes at the church-house? Were
not, perhaps, the glasses the consequences of such toil? And her figure
of a long leanness also?

The element of real heroism, however, came into Miss Lois's life in her
persistent effort to employ Indian servants. The old mission had been
established for their conversion and education; any descendant of that
mission, therefore, should continue to the utmost of her ability the
beneficent work. The meeting-house was closed, the school-house
abandoned, she could reach the native race by no other influence save
personal; that personal influence, then, she would use. Through long
years had she persisted, through long years would she continue to
persist. A succession of Chippewa squaws broke, stole, and skirmished
their way through her kitchen with various degrees of success, generally
in the end departing suddenly at night with whatever booty they could
lay their hands on. It is but justice to add, however, that this was not
much, a rigid system of keys and excellent locks prevailing in the
well-watched household. Miss Lois's conscience would not allow her to
employ half-breeds, who were sometimes endurable servants; duty
required, she said, that she should have full-blooded natives. And she
had them. She always began to teach them the alphabet within three days
after their arrival, and the spectacle of a tearful, freshly caught
Indian girl, very wretched in her calico dress and white apron, worn out
with the ways of the kettles and brasses, dejected over the fish-balls,
and appalled by the pudding, standing confronted by a large alphabet on
the well-scoured table, and Miss Lois by her side with a pointer, was
frequent and even regular in its occurrence, the only change being in
the personality of the learners. No one of them had ever gone through
the letters; but Miss Lois was not discouraged. Patiently she began over
again--she was always beginning over again. And in the mean time she was
often obliged not only to do almost all the household work with her own
hands, but to do it twice over in order to instruct the new-comer. By
the unwritten law of public opinion, Dr. Gaston was obliged to employ
only Protestant servants; by the unwritten law of her own conscience,
Miss Lois was obliged to employ only Indians. But in truth she did not
employ them so much as they employed her.

Miss Lois received her young friends in the sitting-room. There was a
parlor with Brussels carpet and hair-cloth sofa across the hall, but its
blinds were closed, and its shades drawn down. The parlor of
middle-class households in the cold climate of the Northern States
generally is a consecrated apartment, with the chill atmosphere and much
of the solemnity of a tomb. It may be called the high altar of the
careful housewife; but even here her sense of cleanliness and dustless
perfection is such that she keeps it cold. No sacred fire burns, no
cheerful ministry is allowed; everything is silent and veiled. The
apartment is of no earthly use--nor heavenly, save perhaps for ghosts.
But take it away, and the housewife is miserable; leave it, and she
lives on contentedly in her sitting-room all the year round, knowing it
is _there_.

Miss Lois's sitting-room was cheery; it had a rag-carpet, a bright fire,
and double-glass panes instead of the heavy woollen curtains which the
villagers hung over their windows in the winter--curtains that kept out
the cold, but also the light. Miss Lois's curtains were of white dimity
with knotted fringe, and her walls were freshly whitewashed. Her framed
sampler, and a memorial picture done with pen and ink, representing two
weeping-willows overshadowing a tombstone, ornamented the high
mantel-piece, and there were also two gayly colored china jars filled
with dried rose-leaves. They were only wild-brier roses; the real roses,
as she called them, grew but reluctantly in this Northern air. Miss Lois
never loved the wild ones as she had loved the old-fashioned
cinnamon-scented pink and damask roses of her youth, but she gathered
and dried these leaves of the brier from habit. There was also hanging
on the wall a looking-glass tilted forward at such an angle that the
looker-in could see only his feet, with a steep ascent of carpet going
up hill behind him. This looking-glass possessed a brightly hued picture
at the top, divided into two compartments, on one side a lovely lady
with a large bonnet modestly concealing her face, very bare shoulders,
leg-of-mutton sleeves, and a bag hanging on her arm; on the other old
Father Time, scythe in hand, as if he was intended as a warning to the
lovely lady that minutes were rapid and his stroke sure.

"Why do you keep your glass tilted forward so far that we can not look
in it, Miss Lois?" Rast had once asked.

Miss Lois did it from habit. But she answered: "To keep silly girls from
looking at themselves while they are pretending to talk to me. They say
something, and then raise their eyes quickly to see how they looked
when they said it. I have known them keep a smile or a particular
expression half a minute while they studied the effect--ridiculous
calves!"

"Calves have lovely eyes sometimes," said Rast.

"Did I say the girls were ugly, Master Pert? But the homely girls look
too."

"Perhaps to see how they can improve themselves."

"Perhaps," said the old maid, dryly. "Pity they never learn!"

In the sitting-room was a high chest of drawers, an old clock, a
chintz-covered settle, and two deep narrow old rocking-chairs, intended
evidently for scant skirts; on an especial table was the family Bible,
containing the record of the Hinsdale family from the date of the
arrival of the _Mayflower_. Miss Lois's prayer-book was not there; it
was up stairs in a bureau drawer. It did not seem to belong to the
old-time furniture of the rooms below, nor to the Hinsdale Bible.

The story of Miss Lois's change from the Puritan to the Episcopal ritual
might to-day fill a volume if written by one of those brooding,
self-searching woman-minds of New England--those unconscious, earnest
egotists who bring forth poetry beautiful sometimes to inspiration, but
always purely subjective. And if in such a volume the feelings, the
arguments, and the change were all represented as sincere,
conscientious, and prayerful, they would be represented with entire
truth. Nevertheless, so complex are the influences which move our lives,
and so deep the under-powers which we ourselves may not always
recognize, that it could be safely added by a man of the world as a
comment that Lois Hinsdale would never have felt these changes, these
doubts, these conflicts, if William Douglas had not been of another
creed. For in those days Douglas had a creed--the creed of his young
bride.

"Miss Hinsdale, we have come to offer you our New-Year's good wishes,"
said Rast, taking off his cap and making a ceremonious bow. "Our
equipage will wait outside. How charming is your apartment, madam! And
yourself--how Minerva-like the gleam of the eye, the motion of the hand,
which--"

"Which made the pies now cooling in the pantry, Rast Pronando, to whose
fragrance, I presume, I owe the honor of this visit."

"Not for myself, dear madam, but for Anne. She has already confided to
me that she feels a certain sinking sensation that absolutely requires
the strengthening influence of pie."

Anne laughed. "Are you going to stay long?" she asked, still standing at
the doorway.

"Certainly," replied Rast, seating himself in one of the narrow
rocking-chairs; "I have a number of subjects to discuss with our dear
Miss Lois."

"Then I will leave you here, for Tita is waiting for me. I have promised
to take them all over to Père Michaux's house this afternoon."

Miss Lois groaned--two short abrupt groans on different keys.

"Have you? Then I'm going too," said Rast, rising.

"Oh no, Rast; please do not," said the girl, earnestly. "When you go, it
is quite a different thing--a frolic always."

"And why not?" said Rast.

"Because the children go for religious instruction, as you well know; it
is their faith, and I feel that I ought to give them such opportunities
as I can to learn what it means."

"It means mummery!" said Miss Lois, loudly and sternly.

Anne glanced toward her old friend, but stood her ground firmly. "I must
take them," she said; "I promised I would do so as long as they were
children, and under my care. When they are older they can choose for
themselves."

"To whom did you make that promise, Anne Douglas?"

"To Père Michaux."

"And you call yourself a Protestant!"

"Yes; but I hope to keep a promise too, dear Miss Lois."

"Why was it ever made?"

"Père Michaux required it, and--father allowed it."

Miss Lois rubbed her forehead, settled her spectacles with her first and
third fingers, shook her head briskly once or twice to see if they were
firmly in place, and then went on with her knitting. What William
Douglas allowed, how could she disallow?

Rast, standing by Anne's side putting on his fur gloves, showed no
disposition to yield.

"Please do not come, Rast," said the girl again, laying her hand on his
arm.

"I shall go to take care of you."

"It is not necessary; we have old Antoine and his dogs, and the boys are
to have a sled of their own. We shall be at home before dark, I think,
and if not, the moon to-night is full."

"But I shall go," said Rast.

"Nonsense!" said Miss Lois. "Of course you will not go; Anne is right.
You romp and make mischief with those children always. Behave now, and
you shall come back this evening, and Anne shall come too, and we will
have apples and nuts and gingerbread, and Anne shall recite."

"Will you, Annet? I will yield if you promise."

"If I must, I must," said Anne, reluctantly.

"Go, then, proud maid; speed upon your errand. And in the mean time,
Miss Lois, something fragrant and spicy in the way of a reward _now_
would not come amiss, and then some music."

Among the possessions which Miss Lois had inherited from her aunt was a
small piano. The elder Miss Hinsdale, sent into the world with an almost
Italian love of music, found herself unable to repress it even in cold
New England; turning it, therefore, into the channel of the few stunted
psalms and hymns and spiritual songs of the day, she indulged it in a
cramped fashion, like a full-flowing stream shut off and made to turn a
mill. When the missionary spirit seized her in its fiery whirlwind, she
bargained with it mentally that her piano should be included; she
represented to the doubting elder that it would be an instrument of
great power among the savages, and that even David himself accompanied
the psalms with a well-stringed harp. The elder still doubted; he liked
a tuning-fork; and besides, the money which Miss Priscilla would pay for
the transportation of "the instrument" was greatly needed for boots for
the young men. But as Miss Priscilla was a free agent, and quite
determined, he finally decided, like many another leader, to allow what
he could not prevent, and the piano came. It was a small, old-fashioned
instrument, which had been kept in tune by Dr. Douglas, and through long
years the inner life of Miss Lois, her hopes, aspirations, and
disappointments, had found expression through its keys. It was a curious
sight to see the old maid sitting at her piano alone on a stormy
evening, the doors all closed, the shutters locked, no one stirring in
the church-house save herself. Her playing was old-fashioned, her hands
stiff; she could not improvise, and the range of the music she knew was
small and narrow, yet unconsciously it served to her all the purposes of
emotional expression. When she was sad, she played "China"; when she was
hopeful, "Coronation." She made the bass heavy in dejection, and played
the air in octaves when cheerful. She played only when she was entirely
alone. The old piano was the only confidant of the hidden remains of
youthful feeling buried in her heart.

[Illustration: LOIS HINSDALE.]

Rast played on the piano and the violin in an untrained fashion of his
own, and Anne sang; they often had small concerts in Miss Lois's parlor.
But a greater entertainment lay in Anne's recitations. These were all
from Shakspeare. Not in vain had the chaplain kept her tied to its pages
year after year; she had learned, almost unconsciously, as it were,
large portions of the immortal text by heart, and had formed her own
ideals of the characters, who were to her real persons, although as
different from flesh-and-blood people as are the phantoms of a dream.
They were like spirits who came at her call, and lent her their
personality; she could identify herself with them for the time being so
completely, throw herself into the bodies and minds she had
constructed for them so entirely, that the effect was startling, and all
the more so because her conceptions of the characters were girlish and
utterly different from those that have ruled the dramatic stage for
generations. Her ideas of Juliet, of Ophelia, of Rosalind, and Cleopatra
were her own, and she never varied them; the very earnestness of her
personations made the effect all the more extraordinary. Dr. Gaston had
never heard these recitations of his pupil; William Douglas had never
heard them; either of these men could have corrected her errors and
explained to her her mistakes. She herself thought them too trifling for
their notice; it was only a way she had of amusing herself. Even Rast,
her playmate, found it out by chance, coming upon her among the cedars
one day when she was Ophelia, and overhearing her speak several lines
before she saw him; he immediately constituted himself an audience of
one, with, however, the peremptory manners of a throng, and demanded to
hear all she knew. Poor Anne! the great plays of the world had been her
fairy tales; she knew no others. She went through her personations
timidly, the wild forest her background, the open air and blue Straits
her scenery. The audience found fault, but, on the whole, enjoyed the
performance, and demanded frequent repetitions. After a while Miss Lois
was admitted into the secret, and disapproved, and was curious, and
listened, and shook her head, but ended by liking the portraitures,
which were in truth as fantastic as phantasmagoria. Miss Lois had never
seen a play or read a novel in her life. For some time the forest
continued Anne's theatre, and more than once Miss Lois had taken
afternoon walks, for which her conscience troubled her: she could not
decide whether it was right or wrong. But winter came, and gradually it
grew into a habit that Anne should recite at the church-house now and
then, the Indian servant who happened to be at that time the occupant of
the kitchen being sent carefully away for the evening, in order that her
eye should not be guiltily glued to the key-hole during the exciting
visits of Ophelia and Juliet. Anne was always reluctant to give these
recitations now that she had an audience. "Out in the woods," she said,
"I had only the trees and the silence. I never thought of myself at
all."

"But Miss Lois and I are as handsome as trees; and as to silence, we
never say a word," replied Rast. "Come, Annet, you know you like it."

"Yes; in--in one way I do."

"Then let us take that way," said Rast.




CHAPTER IV.

     --"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.




CHAPTER V.

    "It was Peboan, the winter!
         From his eyes the tears were flowing
         As from melting lakes the streamlets,
         And his body shrunk and dwindled
         As the shouting sun ascended;
         And the young man saw before him,
         On the hearth-stone of the wigwam,
         Where the fire had smoked and smouldered,
         Saw the earliest flower of spring-time,
         Saw the miskodeed in blossom.
     Thus it was that in that Northland
     Came the spring with all its splendor,
     All its birds and all its blossoms,
     All its flowers and leaves and grasses."

    --LONGFELLOW. _The Song of Hiawatha._


On this Northern border Spring came late--came late, but in splendor.
She sent forward no couriers, no hints in the forest, no premonitions on
the winds. All at once she was there herself. Not a shy maid, timid,
pallid, hesitating, and turning back, but a full-blooming goddess and
woman. One might almost say that she was not Spring at all, but Summer.
The weeks called spring farther southward showed here but the shrinking
and fading of winter. First the snow crumbled to fine dry grayish
powder; then the ice grew porous and became honeycombed, and it was no
longer safe to cross the Straits; then the first birds came; then the
far-off smoke of a steamer could be seen above the point, and the
village wakened. In the same day the winter went and the summer came.

On the highest point of the island were the remains of an old
earth-work, crowned by a little surveyor's station, like an arbor on
stilts, which was reached by the aid of a ladder. Anne liked to go up
there on the first spring day, climb the ice-coated rounds, and,
standing on the dry old snow that covered the floor, gaze off toward the
south and east, where people and cities were, and the spring; then
toward the north, where there was still only fast-bound ice and snow
stretching away over thousands of miles of almost unknown country, the
great wild northland called British America, traversed by the hunters
and trappers of the Hudson Bay Company--vast empire ruled by private
hands, a government within a government, its line of forts and posts
extending from James Bay to the Little Slave, from the Saskatchewan
northward to the Polar Sea. In the early afternoon she stood there now,
having made her way up to the height with some difficulty, for the
ice-crust was broken, and she was obliged to wade knee-deep through some
of the drifts, and go round others that were over her head, leaving a
trail behind her as crooked as a child's through a clover field.
Reaching the plateau on the summit at last, and avoiding the hidden pits
of the old earth-work, she climbed the icy ladder, and stood on the
white floor again with delight, brushing from her woollen skirt and
leggings the dry snow which still clung to them. The sun was so bright
and the air so exhilarating that she pushed back her little fur cap, and
drew a long breath of enjoyment. Everything below was still
white-covered--the island and village, the Straits and the mainland; but
coming round the eastern point four propellers could be seen floundering
in the loosened ice, heaving the porous cakes aside, butting with their
sharp high bows, and then backing briskly to get headway to start
forward again, thus breaking slowly a passageway for themselves, and
churning the black water behind until it boiled white as soap-suds as
the floating ice closed over it. Now one boat, finding by chance a
weakened spot, floundered through it without pause, and came out
triumphantly some distance in advance of the rest; then another, wakened
to new exertions by this sight, put on all steam, and went pounding
along with a crashing sound until her bows were on a line with the
first. The two boats left behind now started together with much
splashing and sputtering, and veering toward the shore, with the hope
of finding a new weak place in the floe, ran against hard ice with a
thud, and stopped short; then there was much backing out and floundering
round, the engines panting and the little bells ringing wildly, until
the old channel was reached, where they rested awhile, and then made
another beginning. These manœuvres were repeated over and over again,
the passengers and crew of each boat laughing and chaffing each other as
they passed and repassed in the slow pounding race. It had happened more
than once that these first steamers had been frozen in after reaching
the Straits, and had been obliged to spend several days in company fast
bound in the ice. Then the passengers and crews visited each other,
climbing down the sides of the steamers and walking across. At that
early season the passengers were seldom pleasure-travellers, and
therefore they endured the delay philosophically. It is only the real
pleasure-traveller who has not one hour to spare.

The steamers Anne now watched were the first from below. The lower lakes
were clear; it was only this northern Strait that still held the ice
together, and kept the fleets at bay on the east and on the west.
White-winged vessels, pioneers of the summer squadron, waited without
while the propellers turned their knife-bladed bows into the ice, and
cut a pathway through. Then word went down that the Straits were open,
all the freshwater fleet set sail, the lights were lit again in the
light-houses, and the fishing stations and lonely little wood docks came
to life.

"How delightful it is!" said Anne, aloud.

There are times when a person, although alone, does utter a sentence or
two, that is, thinks aloud; but such times are rare. And such sentences,
also, are short--exclamations. The long soliloquies of the stage, so
convenient in the elucidation of plot, do not occur in real life, where
we are left to guess at our neighbor's motives, untaught by so much as a
syllable. How fortunate for Dora's chances of happiness could she but
overhear that Alonzo thinks her a sweet, bigoted little fool, but wants
that very influence to keep him straight, nothing less than the intense
convictions of a limited intelligence and small experience in life being
of any use in sweeping him over with a rush by means of his feelings
alone, which is what he is hoping for. Having worn out all the pleasure
there is to be had in this world, he has now a mind to try for the next.

What an escape for young Conrad to learn from Honoria's own passionate
soliloquy that she is marrying him from bitterest rage against Manuel,
and that those tones and looks that have made him happy are second-hand
wares, which she flings from her voice and eyes with desperate scorn!
Still, we must believe that Nature knows what she is about; and she has
not as yet taught us to think aloud.

But sometimes, when the air is peculiarly exhilarating, when a distant
mountain grows purple and gold tipped as the sun goes down behind it,
sometimes when we see the wide ocean suddenly, or come upon a bed of
violets, we utter an exclamation as the bird sings: we hardly know we
have spoken.

"Yes, it _is_ delightful," said some one below, replying to the girl's
sentence.

It was Rast, who had come across the plateau unseen, and was now
standing on the old bastion of the fort beneath her. Anne smiled, then
turned as if to descend.

"Wait; I am coming up," said Rast.

"But it is time to go home."

"Apparently it was not time until I came," said the youth, swinging
himself up without the aid of the ladder, and standing by her side.
"What are you looking at? Those steamers?"

"Yes, and the spring, and the air."

"You can not see the air."

"But I can feel it; it is delicious. I wonder, if we should go far away,
Rast, and see tropical skies, slow rivers, great white lilies, and
palms, whether they would seem more beautiful than this?"

"Of course they would; and we are going some day. We are not intending
to stay here on this island all our lives, I hope."

"But it is our home, and I love it. I love this water and these woods, I
love the flash of the light-houses, and the rushing sound the vessels
make sweeping by at night under full sail, close in shore."

"The island is well enough in its way, but there are other places; and
I, for one, mean to see the world," said young Pronando, taking off his
cap, throwing it up, and catching it like a ball.

"Yes, you will see the world," answered Anne; "but I shall stay here.
You must write and tell me all about it."

"Of course," said Rast, sending the cap up twice as high, and catching
it with unerring hand. Then he stopped his play, and said, suddenly,
"Will you care very much when I am gone away?"

"Yes," said Anne; "I shall be very lonely."

"But shall you care?" said the youth, insistently. "You have so little
feeling, Annet; you are always cold."

"I shall be colder still if we stay here any longer," said the girl,
turning to descend. Rast followed her, and they crossed the plateau
together.

"How much shall you care?" he repeated. "You never say things out,
Annet. You are like a stone."

[Illustration: "AND IT ENDED IN THEIR RACING DOWN TOGETHER."]

"Then throw me away," answered the girl, lightly. But there was a
moisture in her eyes and a slight tremor in her voice which Rast
understood, or, rather, thought he understood. He took her hand and
pressed it warmly; the two fur gloves made the action awkward, but he
would not loosen his hold. His spirits rose, and he began to laugh, and
to drag his companion along at a rapid pace. They reached the edge of
the hill, and the steep descent opened before them; the girl's
remonstrances were in vain, and it ended in their racing down together
at a break-neck pace, reaching the bottom, laughing and breathless, like
two school-children. They were now on the second plateau, the level
proper of the island above the cliffs, which, high and precipitous on
three sides, sank down gradually to the southwestern shore, so that
one might land there, and drag a cannon up to the old earth work on the
summit--a feat once performed by British soldiers in the days when the
powers of the Old World were still fighting with each other for the New.
How quaint they now seem, those ancient proclamations and documents with
which a Spanish king grandly meted out this country from Maine to
Florida, an English queen divided the same with sweeping patents from
East to West, and a French monarch, following after, regranted the whole
virgin soil on which the banners of France were to be planted with
solemn Christian ceremony! They all took possession; they all planted
banners. Some of the brass plates they buried are turned up occasionally
at the present day by the farmer's plough, and, wiping his forehead, he
stops to spell out their high-sounding words, while his sunburned boys
look curiously over his shoulder. A place in the county museum is all
they are worth now.

Anne Douglas and Rast went through the fort grounds and down the hill
path, instead of going round by the road. The fort ladies, sitting by
their low windows, saw them, and commented.

"That girl does not appreciate young Pronando," said Mrs. Cromer. "I
doubt if she even sees his beauty."

"Perhaps it is just as well that she does not," replied Mrs. Rankin,
"for he must go away and live his life, of course; have his adventures."

"Why not she also?" said Mrs. Bryden, smiling.

"In the first place, she has no choice; she is tied down here. In the
second, she is a good sort of girl, without imagination or enthusiasm.
Her idea of life is to marry, have meat three times a week, fish three
times, lights out at ten o'clock, and, by way of literature, Miss
Edgeworth's novels and Macaulay's _History of England_."

"And a very good idea," said Mrs. Bryden.

"Certainly, only one can not call that adventures."

"But even such girls come upon adventures sometimes," said Mrs. Cromer.

"Yes, when they have beauty. Their beauty seems often to have an
extraordinary power over the most poetical and imaginative men, too,
strange as it may appear. But Anne Douglas has none of it."

"How you all misunderstand her!" said a voice from the little
dining-room opening into the parlor, its doorway screened by a curtain.

"Ah, doctor, are you there?" said Mrs. Bryden. "We should not have said
a word if we had known it."

"Yes, madam, I am here--with the colonel; but it is only this moment
that I have lifted my head to listen to your conversation, and I remain
filled with astonishment, as usual, at the obtuseness manifested by your
sex regarding each other."

"Hear! hear!" said the colonel.

"Anne Douglas," continued the chaplain, clearing his throat, and
beginning in a high chanting voice, which they all knew well, having
heard it declaiming on various subjects during long snow-bound winter
evenings, "is a most unusual girl."

"Oh, come in here, doctor, and take a seat; it will be hard work to say
it all through that doorway," called Mrs. Bryden.

"No, madam, I will not sit down," said the chaplain, appearing under the
curtain, his brown wig awry, his finger impressively pointed. "I will
simply say this, namely, that as to Anne Douglas, you are all mistaken."

"And who is to be the judge between us?"

"The future, madam."

"Very well; we will leave it to the future, then," said Mrs. Bryden,
skillfully evading the expected oration.

"We may safely do that, madam--safely indeed; the only difficulty is
that we may not live to see it."

"Oh, a woman's future is always near at hand, doctor. Besides, we are
not so very old ourselves."

"True, madam--happily true for all the eyes that rest upon you.
Nevertheless, the other side, I opine, is likewise true, namely, that
Anne Douglas is very young."

"She is sixteen; and I myself am only twenty," said Mrs. Rankin.

"With due respect, ladies, I must mention that not one of you was ever
in her life so young as Anne Douglas at the present moment."

"What in the world do you mean, doctor?"

"What I say. I can see you all as children in my mind's eye," continued
the chaplain, unflinchingly; "pretty, bright, precocious little
creatures, finely finished, finely dressed, quick-witted, graceful, and
bewitching. But at that age Anne Douglas was a--"

"Well, what?"

"A mollusk," said the chaplain, bringing out the word emphatically.

"And what is she now, doctor?"

"A promise."

"To be magnificently fulfilled in the future?"

"That depends upon fate, madam; or rather circumstances."

"For my part, I would rather be fulfilled, although not perhaps
magnificently, than remain even the most glorious promise," said Mrs.
Rankin, laughing.

The fort ladies liked the old chaplain, and endured his long monologues
by adding to them running accompaniments of their own. To bright society
women there is nothing so unendurable as long arguments or dissertations
on one subject. Whether from want of mental training, or from impatience
of delay, they are unwilling to follow any one line of thought for more
than a minute or two; they love to skim at random, to light and fly away
again, to hover, to poise, and then dart upward into space like so many
humming-birds. Listen to a circle of them sitting chatting over their
embroidery round the fire or on a piazza; no man with a thoroughly
masculine mind can follow them in their mental dartings hither and
thither. He has just brought his thoughts to bear upon a subject, and is
collecting what he is going to say, when, behold! they are miles away,
and he would be considered stupid to attempt to bring them back. His
mental processes are slow and lumbering compared with theirs. And when,
once in a while, a woman appears who likes to search out a subject, she
finds herself out of place and bewildered too, often a target for the
quick tongues and light ridicule of her companions. If she likes to
generalize, she is lost. Her companions never wish to generalize; they
want to know not the general view of a subject, but what Mrs. Blank or
Mr. Star thinks of it. Parents, if you have a daughter of this kind, see
that she spends in her youth a good portion of every day with the most
volatile swift-tongued maidens you can find; otherwise you leave her
without the current coin of the realm in which she must live and die,
and no matter if she be fairly a gold mine herself, her wealth is
unavailable.

Spring burst upon the island with sudden glory; the maples showed all at
once a thousand perfect little leaflets, the rings of the juniper
brightened, the wild larches beckoned with their long green fingers from
the height. The ice was gone, the snow was gone, no one knew whither;
the Straits were dotted with white sails. Bluebells appeared, swinging
on their hair-like stems where late the icicles hung, and every little
Indian farm set to work with vigor, knowing that the time was short. The
soldiers from the fort dug in the military garden under the cliff,
turning up the mould in long ridges, and pausing to hang up their coats
on the old stockade with a finely important air of heat: it was so long
since they had been too warm! The little village was broad awake now;
there was shipping at the piers again, and a demand for white-fish; all
the fishing-boats were out, and their half-breed crews hard at work. The
violins hung unused on the walls of the little cabins that faced the
west, for the winter was ended, and the husbands and lovers were off on
the water: the summer was their time for toil.

And now came the parting. Rast was to leave the island, and enter the
Western college which Dr. Gaston had selected for him. The chaplain
would have sent the boy over to England at once to his own _alma mater_
had it been possible; but it was not possible, and the good man knew
little or nothing of the degree of excellence possessed by American
colleges, East or West. Harvard and Yale and old Columbia would not have
believed this; yet it was true.

Rast was in high spirits; the brilliant world seemed opening before him.
Everything in his life was as he wished it to be; and he was not
disturbed by any realization that this was a rare condition of affairs
which might never occur again. He was young, buoyant, and beautiful;
everybody liked him, and he liked everybody. He was going to set sail
into his far bright future, and he would find, probably, an island of
silver and diamonds, with peacocks walking slowly about spreading their
gorgeous feathers, and pleasure-boats at hand with silken sails and
golden oars. It was not identically this that he dreamed, but things
equally shining and unattainable--that is, to such a nature as his. The
silver and diamond islands are there, but by a law of equalization only
hard-featured prosaic men attain them and take possession, forming
thereafterward a lasting contrast to their own surroundings, which then
goes into the other scale, and amuses forever the poverty-stricken poets
who, in their poor old boats, with ragged canvas and some small ballast
of guitars and lutes, sail by, eating their crusts and laughing at them.

"I shall not go one step, even now, unless you promise to write
regularly, Annet," said Rast, the evening before his departure, as they
stood together on the old piazza of the Agency watching for the lights
of the steamer which was to carry him away.

"Of course I shall write, Rast; once a week always."

"No; I wish no set times fixed. You are simply to promise that you will
immediately answer every letter _I_ write."

"I will answer; but as to the time--I may not always be able--"

"You may if you choose; and I will not go unless you promise," said
Rast, with irritation. "Do you want to spoil everything, my education
and all my future? I would not be so selfish, Annet, if I were you. What
is it I ask? A trifle. I have no father, no mother, no sister; only you.
I am going away for the first time in my life, and you grudge me a
letter!"

"Not a letter, Rast, but a promise; lest I might not be able to fulfill
it. I only meant that something might happen in the house which would
keep me from answering within the hour, and then my promise would be
broken. I will always answer as soon as I can."

"You will not fail me, then?"

The girl held out her hand and clasped his with a warm, honest pressure;
he turned and looked at her in the starlight. "God bless you for your
dear sincere eyes!" he said. "The devil himself would believe you."

"I hope he would," said Anne, smiling.

What with Miss Lois's Calvinism, and the terrific picture of his Satanic
Majesty at the death-bed of the wicked in the old Catholic church, the
two, as children, had often talked about the devil and his
characteristics, Rast being sure that some day he should see him. Miss
Lois, overhearing this, agreed with the lad dryly, much to Anne's
dismay.

"What is the use of the devil?" she had once demanded.

"To punish the wicked," answered Miss Lois.

"Does he enjoy it?"

"I suppose he does."

"Then he must be very wicked himself?"

"He is."

"Who created him?"

"You know as well as I do, Anne. God created him, of course."

"Well," said the child, after a silence, going as usual to the root of
the matter, "I don't think _I_ should have made him at all if I couldn't
have made him better."

The next morning the sun rose as usual, but Rast was gone. Anne felt a
loneliness she had never felt before in all her life. For Rast had been
her companion; hardly a day had passed without his step on the piazza,
his voice in the hall, a walk with him or a sail; and always, whether at
home or abroad, the constant accompaniment of his suggestions, his
fault-findings, his teachings, his teasings, his grumblings, his
laughter and merry nonsense, the whole made bearable--nay, even
pleasant--by the affection that lay underneath. Anne Douglas's nature
was faithful to an extraordinary degree, faithful to its promises, its
duties, its love; but it was an intuitive faithfulness, which never
thought about itself at all. Those persons who are in the habit of
explaining voluminously to themselves and everybody else the lines of
argument, the struggles, and triumphant conclusions reached by their
various virtues, would have considered this girl's mind but a poor dull
thing, for Anne never analyzed herself at all. She had never lived for
herself or in herself, and it was that which gave the tinge of coldness
that was noticed in her. For warm-heartedness generally begins at home,
and those who are warm to others are warmer to themselves; it is but the
overflow.

Meantime young Pronando, sailing southward, felt his spirits rise with
every shining mile. Loneliness is crowded out of the mind of the one who
goes by the myriad images of travel; it is the one who stays who
suffers. But there was much to be done at the Agency. The boys grew out
of their clothes, the old furniture fell to pieces, and the father
seemed more lost to the present with every day and hour. He gave less
and less attention to the wants of the household, and at last Anne and
Miss Lois together managed everything without troubling him even by a
question. For strange patience have loving women ever had with dreamers
like William Douglas--men who, viewed by the eyes of the world, are
useless and incompetent; tears are shed over their graves oftentimes
long after the successful are forgotten. For personally there is a
sweetness and gentleness in their natures which make them very dear to
the women who love them. The successful man, perhaps, would not care for
such love, which is half devotion, half protection; the successful man
wishes to domineer. But as he grows old he notices that Jane is always
quiet when the peach-trees are in bloom, and that gray-haired sister
Catherine always bends down her head and weeps silently whenever the
choir sings "Rockingham"; and then he remembers who it was that died
when the peach-trees showed their blossoms, and who it was who went
about humming "Rockingham," and understands. Yet always with a slow
surprise, and a wonder at women's ways, since both the men were, to his
idea, failures in the world and their generation.

Any other woman of Miss Lois's age and strict prudence, having general
charge of the Douglas household, would have required from Anne long ago
that she should ask her father plainly what were his resources and his
income. To a cent were all the affairs of the church-house regulated and
balanced; Miss Lois would have been unhappy at the end of the week if a
penny remained unaccounted for. Yet she said nothing to the daughter,
nothing to the father, although noticing all the time that the small
provision was no larger, while the boys grew like reeds, and the time
was at hand when more must be done for them. William Douglas's way was
to give Anne at the beginning of each week a certain sum. This he had
done as far back as his daughter could remember, and she had spent it
under the direction of Miss Lois. Now, being older, she laid it out
without much advice from her mentor, but began to feel troubled because
it did not go as far. "It goes as far," said Miss Lois, "but the boys
have gone farther."

"Poor little fellows! they must eat."

"And they must work."

"But what can they do at their age, Miss Lois?"

"Form habits," replied the New England woman, sternly. "In my opinion
the crying evil of the country to-day is that the boys are not trained;
educated, I grant you, but not trained--trained as they were when times
were simpler, and the rod in use. Parents are too ambitious; the
mechanic wishes to make his sons merchants, the merchant wishes to make
his gentlemen; but, while educating them and pushing them forward, the
parents forget the homely habits of patient labor, strict veracity in
thought and action, and stern self-denials which have given _them_ their
measure of success, and so between the two stools the poor boys fall to
the ground. It is my opinion," added Miss Lois, decisively, "that,
whether you want to build the Capitol at Washington or a red barn, you
must first have a firm foundation."

"Yes, I know," replied Anne. "And I _do_ try to control them."

"Oh, General Putnam! _you_ try!" said Miss Lois. "Why, you spoil them
like babies."

Anne always gave up the point when Miss Lois reverted to Putnam. This
Revolutionary hero, now principally known, like Romulus, by a wolf
story, was the old maid's glory and remote ancestor, and helped her over
occasional necessities for strong expressions with ancestral kindness.
She felt like reverting to him more than once that summer, because, Rast
having gone, there was less of a whirlwind of out-door life, of pleasure
in the woods and on the water, and the plain bare state of things stood
clearly revealed. Anne fell behind every month with the household
expenses in spite of all her efforts, and every month Miss Lois herself
made up the deficiency. The boys were larger, and careless. The old
house yawned itself apart. Of necessity the gap between the income and
the expenditure must grow wider and wider. Anne did not realize this,
but Miss Lois did. The young girl thought each month that she must have
been unusually extravagant; she counted in some item as an extra expense
which would not occur again, gave up something for herself, and began
anew with fresh hope. On almost all subjects Miss Lois had the smallest
amount of patience for what she called blindness, but on this she was
silent. Now and then her eyes would follow Anne's father with a troubled
gaze; but if he looked toward her or spoke, she at once assumed her
usual brisk manner, and was even more cheerful than usual. Thus, the
mentor being silent, the family drifted on.

The short Northern summer, with its intense sunshine and its cool
nights, was now upon them. Fire crackled upon the hearth of the Agency
sitting-room in the early morning, but it died out about ten o'clock,
and from that time until five in the afternoon the heat and the
brightness were peculiarly brilliant and intense. It seemed as though
the white cliffs must take fire and smoulder in places where they were
without trees to cover them; to climb up and sit there was to feel the
earth burning under you, and to be penetrated with a sun-bath of rays
beating straight down through the clear air like white shafts. And yet
there was nothing resembling the lowland heats in this atmosphere, for
all the time a breeze blew, ruffling the Straits, and bearing the
vessels swiftly on to the east and the west on long tacks, making the
leaves in the woods flutter on their branchlets, and keeping the
wild-brier bushes, growing on angles and points of the cliff, stretched
out like long whip-cords wreathed in pink and green. There was nothing,
too, of the stillness of the lowlands, for always one could hear the
rustling and laughing of the forest, and the wash of the water on the
pebbly beach. There were seldom any clouds in the summer sky, and those
that were there were never of that soft, high-piled white downiness that
belongs to summer clouds farther south. They came up in the west at
evening in time for the sunset, or they lay along the east in the early
morning, but they did not drift over the zenith in white laziness at
noontide, or come together violently in sudden thunder-storms. They were
sober clouds of quiet hue, and they seemed to know that they were not to
have a prominent place in the summer procession of night, noon, and
morning in that Northern sky, as though there was a law that the sun
should have uninterrupted sway during the short season allotted to him.
Anne walked in the woods as usual, but not far. Rast was gone. Rast
always hurried everybody; left alone, she wandered slowly through the
aisles of the arbor vitæ on the southern heights. The close ranks of
these trees hardly made what is called a grove, for the flat green plats
of foliage rose straight into the air, and did not arch or mingle with
each other; a person walking there could always see the open sky above.
But so dense was the thickness on each side that though the little paths
with which the wood was intersected often ran close to each other,
sometimes side by side, persons following them had no suspicion of each
other's presence unless their voices betrayed them. In the hot sun the
trees exhaled a strong aromatic fragrance, and as the currents of air
did not penetrate their low green-walled aisles, it rested there,
although up above everything was dancing along--butterflies, petals of
the brier, waifs and strays from the forest, borne lakeward on the
strong breeze. The atmosphere in these paths was so hot, still, and
aromatic that now and then Anne loved to go there and steep herself in
it. She used to tell Miss Lois that it made her feel as though she was
an Egyptian princess who had been swathed in precious gums and spices
for a thousand years.

Over on the other side of the island grew the great pines. These had two
deeply worn Indian trails leading through them from north to south, not
aimless, wandering little paths like those through the arbor vitæ, but
one straight track from the village to the western shore, and another
leading down to the spring on the beach. The cliffs on whose summit
these pines grew were high and precipitous, overlooking deep water; a
vessel could have sailed by so near the shore that a pebble thrown from
above would have dropped upon her deck. With one arm round an old trunk,
Anne often sat on the edge of these cliffs, looking down through the
western pass. She had never felt any desire to leave the island, save
that sometimes she had vague dreams of the tropics--visions of
palm-trees and white lilies, the Pyramids and minarets, as fantastic as
her dreams of Shakspeare. But she loved the island and the island trees;
she loved the wild larches, the tall spires of the spruces bossed with
lighter green, the gray pines, and the rings of the juniper. She had a
peculiar feeling about trees. When she was a little girl she used to
whisper to them how much she loved them, and even now she felt that they
noticed her. Several times since these recent beginnings of care she had
turned back and gone over part of the path a second time, because she
felt that she had not been as observant as usual of her old friends, and
that they would be grieved by the inattention. But this she never told.

There was, however, less and less time for walking in the woods; there
was much to do at home, and she was faithful in doing it: every spring
of the little household machinery felt her hand upon it, keeping it in
order. The clothes she made for Tita and the boys, the dinners she
provided from scanty materials, the locks and latches she improvised,
the paint she mixed and applied, the cheerfulness and spirit with which
she labored on day after day, were evidences of a great courage and
unselfishness; and if the garments were not always successful as regards
shape, nor the dinners always good, she was not disheartened, but bore
the fault-findings cheerfully, promising to do better another time. For
they all found fault with her, the boys loudly, Tita quietly, but with a
calm pertinacity that always gained its little point. Even Miss Lois
thought sometimes that Anne was careless, and told her so. For Miss Lois
never concealed her light under a bushel. The New England woman believed
that household labor held the first place among a woman's duties and
privileges; and if the housekeeper spent fourteen hours out of the
twenty-four in her task, she was but fulfilling her destiny as her
Creator had intended. Anne was careless in the matter of piece-bags,
having only two, whereas four, for linen and cotton, colors and black
materials, were, as every one knew, absolutely necessary. There was also
the systematic halving of sheets and resewing them at the first signs of
wear somewhat neglected, and also a particularity as to the saving of
string. Even the vaguely lost, thought-wandering father, too, finding
that his comforts diminished, spoke of it, not with complaint so much as
surprise; and then the daughter restored what he had missed at any
sacrifice. All this was done without the recognition by anybody that it
was much to do. Anne did not think of it in that way, and no one thought
for her. For they were all so accustomed to her strong, cheerful spirit
that they took what she did as a matter of course. Dr. Gaston understood
something of the life led at the Agency; but he too had fallen into a
way of resting upon the girl. She too

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