“Bring your mother up to the Fur Company’s quarters with you, and the neighbors will no longer have a chance to put mischief into her head.”

Jenieve took him seriously, though she had often suspected, from what she could see at the fort, that Americans had not the custom of marrying an entire family.

“It is really too fine a place for us.”

Young Crooks laughed.  Squaws had lived in the Fur Company’s quarters, but he would not mention this fact to the girl.

His eyes dwelt fondly on her in the darkness, for though the fire behind her had again sunk to embers, it cast up a little glow; and he stood entirely in the star-embossed outside world.  It is not safe to talk in the dark:  you tell too much.  The primitive instinct of truth-speaking revives in force, and the restraints of another’s presence are gone.  You speak from the unseen to the unseen over leveled barriers of reserve.  Young Crooks had scarcely said that place was nothing, and he would rather live in that little house with Jenieve than in the Fur Company’s quarters without her, when she exclaimed openly, “And have old Michel Pensonneau put over you!”

The idea of Michel Pensonneau taking precedence of him as master of the cedar hut was delicious to the American, as he recalled the engage’s respectful slouch while receiving the usual bill of credit.

“One may laugh, monsieur.  I laugh myself; it is better than crying.  But it is the truth that Mama Lalotte is more care to me than all the boys.  I have no peace except when she is asleep in bed.”

“There is no harm in Madame Lalotte.”

“You are right, monsieur.  Jean Bati’ McClure’s wife puts all the mischief in her head.  She would even learn to spin, if that woman would let her alone.”

“And I never heard any harm of Michel Pensonneau.  He is a good enough fellow, and he has more to his credit on the Company’s books than any other engage now on the island.”

“I suppose you would like to have him sit and smoke his pipe the rest of his days on your doorstep?”

“No, I wouldn’t,” confessed the young agent.  “Michel is a saving man, and he uses very mean tobacco, the cheapest in the house.”

“You see how I am situated, monsieur.  It is no use to talk to me.”

“But Michel Pensonneau is not going to trouble you long.  He has relations at Cahokia, in the Illinois Territory, and he is fitting himself out to go there to settle.”

“Are you sure of this, monsieur?”

“Certainly I am, for we have already made him a bill of credit to our correspondent at Cahokia.  He wants very few goods to carry across the Chicago portage.”

“Monsieur, how soon does he intend to go?”

“On the first schooner that sails to the head of the lake; so he may set out any day.  Michel is anxious to try life on the Mississippi, and his three years’ engagement with the Company is just ended.”