always before seemed tinctured by the sun.  She had a sensation of moving sidewise out of her own person; and then she saw the chief Pontiac standing on the edge of the cliff.  Jenieve knew his back, and the feathers in his hair which the wind did not move.  His head turned on a pivot, sweeping the horizon from St. Ignace, where the white man first set foot, to Round Island, where the shameful fires burned.  His hard, set features were silver color rather than copper, as she saw his profile against the sky.  His arms were folded in his blanket.  Jenieve was as sure that she saw Pontiac as she was sure of the rock on which she sat.  She poked one finger through the sward to the hardness underneath.  The rock was below her, and Pontiac stood before her.  He turned his head back from Round Island to St. Ignace.  The wind blew against him, and the brier odor, sickening sweet, poured over Jenieve.

She heard the dogs bark in Mackinac village, and leaves moving behind her, and the wash of water at the base of the island which always sounded like a small rain.  Instead of feeling afraid, she was in a nightmare of sorrow.  Pontiac had loved the French almost as well as he loved his own people.  She breathed the sweetbrier scent, her neck stretched forward and her dark eyes fixed on him; and as his head turned back from St. Ignace his whole body moved with it, and he looked at Jenieve.

His eyes were like a cat’s in the purple darkness, or like that heatless fire which shines on rotting bark.  The hoar-frosted countenance was noble even in its most brutal lines.  Jenieve, without knowing she was saying a word, spoke out:—­

“Monsieur the chief Pontiac, what ails the French and Indians?”

“Malatat,” answered Pontiac.  The word came at her with force.

“Monsieur the chief Pontiac,” repeated Jenieve, struggling to understand, “I say, what ails the French and Indians?”

“Malatat!” His guttural cry rang through the bushes.  Jenieve was so startled that she sprung back, catching herself on her hands.  But without the least motion of walking he was far westward, showing like a phosphorescent bar through the trees, and still moving on, until the pallor was lost from sight.

Jenieve at once began to cross herself.  She had forgotten to do it before.  The rankness of sweetbrier followed her some distance down the path, and she said prayers all the way home.

You cannot talk with great spirits and continue to chafe about little things.  The boys’ shoes and Mama Lalotte’s lightness were the same as forgotten.  Jenieve entered her house with dew in her hair, and an unterrified freshness of body for whatever might happen.  She was certain she had seen Pontiac, but she would never tell anybody to have it laughed at.  There was no candle burning, and the fire had almost died under the supper pot.  She put a couple of sticks on the coals, more for their blaze than to heat her food.  But the Mackinac night was chill, and it was pleasant to see the interior of her little home flickering to view.  Candles were lighted in many houses along the beach, and amongst them Mama Lalotte was probably roaming,—­for she had left the door open towards the lake,—­and the boys’ voices could be heard with others in the direction of the log wharf.