“I will never call my own child ‘Sister,’” vowed Madockawando.  “I could be a better Christian myself, if Father Petit had not put spells on her.”

The two conspirators against Father Petit’s proposed nunnery felt grave and wicked, but they encouraged one another in iniquity.  Madockawando smiled in bronze wrinkles when Saint-Castin told him about the proposal in the woods.  The proper time for courtship was evening, as any Frenchman who had lived a year with the tribe ought to know; but when one considered the task he had undertaken, any time was suitable; and the chief encouraged him with full consent.  A French marriage contract was no better than an Abenaqui marriage contract in Madockawando’s eyes; but if Saint-Castin could bind up his daughter for good, he would be glad of it.

The chapel of saplings and bark which first sheltered Father Petit’s altar had been abandoned when Saint-Castin built a substantial one of stone and timber within the fortress walls, and hung in its little tower a bell, which the most reluctant Abenaqui must hear at mass time.  But as it is well to cherish the sacred regard which man has for any spot where he has worshiped, the priest left a picture hanging on the wall above the bare chancel, and he kept the door repaired on its wooden hinges.  The chapel stood beyond the forest, east of Pentegoet, and close to those battlements which form the coast line here.  The tide made thunder as it rose among caverns and frothed almost at the verge of the heights.  From this headland Mount Desert could be seen, leading the host of islands which go out into the Atlantic, ethereal in fog or lurid in the glare of sunset.

Madockawando’s daughter tended the old chapel in summer, for she had first seen religion through its door.  She wound the homely chancel rail with evergreens, and put leaves and red berries on the walls, and flowers under the sacred picture; her Etchemin woman always keeping her company.  Father Petit hoped to see this rough shrine become a religious seminary, and strings of women led there every day to take, like contagion, from an abbess the instruction they took so slowly from a priest.

She and the Etchemin found it a dismal place, on their first visit after the winter retreat.  She reproached herself for coming so late; but day and night an influence now encompassed Madockawando’s daughter which she felt as a restraint on her freedom.  A voice singing softly the love-songs of southern France often waked her from her sleep.  The words she could not interpret, but the tone the whole village could, and she blushed, crowding paters on aves, until her voice sometimes became as distinct as Saint-Castin’s in resolute opposition.  It was so grotesque that it made her laugh.  Yet to a woman the most formidable quality in a suitor is determination.

When the three girls who had constituted Saint-Castin’s household at the fort passed complacently back to their own homes laden with riches, Madockawando’s daughter was unreasonably angry, and felt their loss as they were incapable of feeling it for themselves.  She was alien to the customs of her people.  The fact pressed upon her that her people were completely bound to the white sagamore and all his deeds.  Saint-Castin’s sins had been open to the tribe, and his repentance was just as open.  Father Petit praised him.