“I did not listen to him.”  Her fingers sought the cross on her neck.  She seemed to threaten a prayer which might stop her ears to Saint-Castin.

“He meant no discourtesy.  If you knew his good heart, you would like him.”

“I do not like men.”  She made a calm statement of her peculiar tastes.

“Why?” inquired Saint-Castin.

Madockawando’s daughter summoned her reasons from distant vistas of the woods, with meditative dark eyes.  Evidently her dislike of men had no element of fear or of sentimental avoidance.

“I cannot like them,” she apologized, declining to set forth her reasons.  “I wish they would always stay away from me.”

“Your father and the priest are men.”

“I know it,” admitted the girl, with a deep breath like commiseration.  “They cannot help it; and our Etchemin’s husband, who keeps the lodge supplied with meat, he cannot help it, either, any more than he can his deformity.  But there is grace for men,” she added.  “They may, by repenting of their sins and living holy lives, finally save their souls.”

Saint-Castin repented of his sins that moment, and tried to look contrite.

“In some of my books,” he said, “I read of an old belief held by people on the other side of the earth.  They thought our souls were born into the world a great many times, now in this body, and now in that.  I feel as if you and I had been friends in some other state.”

The girl’s face seemed to flare toward him as flame is blown, acknowledging the claim he made upon her; but the look passed like an illusion, and she said seriously, “The sagamore should speak to Father Petit.  This is heresy.”

Madockawando’s daughter stood up, and took her pail by the handle.

“Let me carry it,” said Saint-Castin.

Her lifted palm barred his approach.

“I do not like men, sagamore.  I wish them to keep away from me.”

“But that is not Christian,” he argued.

“It cannot be unchristian:  the priest would lay me under penance for it.”

“Father Petit is a lenient soul.”

With the simplicity of an angel who would not be longer hindered by mundane society, she took up her pail, saying, “Good-day, sagamore,” and swept on across the dead leaves.

Saint-Castin walked after her.

“Go back,” commanded Madockawando’s daughter, turning.

The officer of the Carignan-Salieres regiment halted, but did not retreat.

“You must not follow me, sagamore,” she remonstrated, as with a child.  “I cannot talk to you.”

“You must let me talk to you,” said Saint-Castin.  “I want you for my wife.”