“You boys are living like Indians.”

“We are Indians,” asserted Francois.

“But you are French, too.  You are my brothers.  I want you to go to mass looking as well as anybody.”

Hitherto their object in life had been to escape mass.  They objected to increasing their chances of church-going.  Moccasins were the natural wear of human beings, and nobody but women needed even moccasins until cold weather.  The proud look of an Iroquois taking spoils disappeared from the face of the youngest, giving way to uneasy anguish.  The three boys sat down to tug, Jenieve going encouragingly from one to another.  Francois lay on his back and pushed his heels skyward.  Contempt and rebellion grew also in the faces of Gabriel and Toussaint.  They were the true children of Francois Iroquois, her mother’s second husband, who had been wont to lounge about Mackinac village in dirty buckskins and a calico shirt having one red and one blue sleeve.  He had also bought a tall silk hat at the Fur Company’s store, and he wore the hat under his blanket when it rained.  If tobacco failed him, he scraped and dried willow peelings, and called them kinnickinnick.  This worthy relation had worked no increase in Jenieve’s home except an increase of children.  He frequently yelled around the crescent bay, brandishing his silk hat in the exaltation of rum.  And when he finally fell off the wharf into deep water, and was picked out to make another mound in the Indian burying-ground, Jenieve was so fiercely elated that she was afraid to confess it to the priest.  Strange matches were made on the frontier, and Indian wives were commoner than any other kind; but through the whole mortifying existence of this Indian husband Jenieve avoided the sight of him, and called her mother steadily Mama Lalotte.  The girl had remained with her grandmother, while Francois Iroquois carried off his wife to the Indian village on a western height of the island.  Her grandmother had died, and Jenieve continued to keep house on the beach, having always with her one or more of the half-breed babies, until the plunge of Francois Iroquois allowed her to bring them all home with their mother.  There was but one farm on the island, and Jenieve had all the spinning which the sheep afforded.  She was the finest spinner in that region.  Her grandmother had taught her to spin with a little wheel, as they still do about Quebec.  Her pay was small.  There was not much money then in the country, but bills of credit on the Fur Company’s store were the same as cash, and she managed to feed her mother and the Indian’s family.  Fish were to be had for the catching, and she could get corn-meal and vegetables for her soup pot in partial exchange for her labor.  The luxuries of life on the island were air and water, and the glories of evening and morning.  People who could buy them got such gorgeous clothes as were brought by the Company.  But usually Jenieve felt happy enough when she put on her best red homespun bodice and petticoat for mass or to go to dances.  She did wish for shoes.  The ladies at the fort had shoes, with heels which clicked when they danced.  Jenieve could dance better, but she always felt their eyes on her moccasins, and came to regard shoes as the chief article of one’s attire.