and so easily got rid of, might bring some reproach on a man.  Michel had begun to see that it did.  He was an easy, gormandizing, good fellow, shapelessly fat, and he never had stirred himself during his month of freedom to do any courting.  But Frenchmen of his class considered fifty the limit of an active life.  It behooved him now to begin looking around; to prepare a fireside for himself.  Michel was a good clerk to his employers.  Cumbrous though his body might be, when he was in the woods he never shirked any hardship to secure a specially fine bale of furs.

Mama Lalotte, propelled against her will, sat down, trembling, in the house.  Jenieve, trembling also, took the wooden bowls and spoons from a shelf and ladled out soup for the evening meal.  Mama Lalotte was always willing to have the work done without trouble to herself, and she sat on a three-legged stool, like a guest.  The supper pot boiled in the centre of the house, hanging on the crane which was fastened to a beam overhead.  Smoke from the clear fire passed that richly darkened transverse of timber as it ascended, and escaped through a hole in the bark roof.  The Fur Company had a great building with chimneys; but poor folks were glad to have a cedar hut of one room, covered with bark all around and on top.  A fire-pit, or earthen hearth, was left in the centre, and the nearer the floor could be brought to this hole, without danger, the better the house was.  On winter nights, fat French and half-breed children sat with heels to this sunken altar, and heard tales of massacre or privation which made the family bunks along the wall seem couches of luxury.  It was the aboriginal hut patterned after his Indian brother’s by the Frenchman; and the succession of British and American powers had not yet improved it.  To Jenieve herself, the crisis before her, so insignificant against the background of that historic island, was more important than massacre or conquest.

“Mama,”—­she spoke tremulously,—­“I was obliged to bring you in.  It is not proper to be seen on the street with an engage”.  The town is now full of these bush-lopers.”

“Bush-lopers, mademoiselle!” The little flaxen-haired woman had a shrill voice.  “What was your own father?”

“He was a clerk, madame,” maintained the girl’s softer treble, “and always kept good credit for his family at the Company’s store.”

“I see no difference.  They are all the same.”

“Francois Iroquois was not the same.”  As the girl said this she felt a powder-like flash from her own eyes.

Mama Lalotte was herself a little ashamed of the Francois Iroquois alliance, but she answered, “He let me walk outside the house, at least.  You allow me no amusement at all.  I cannot even talk over the fence to Jean Bati’ McClure’s wife.”

“Mama, you do not understand the danger of all these things, and I do.  Jean Bati’ McClure’s wife will be certain to get you into trouble.  She is not a proper woman for you to associate with.  Her mind runs on nothing but match-making.”