“I also am anxious to have him try life on the Mississippi,” said Jenieve, and she drew a deep breath of relief.  “Why did you not tell me this before?”

“How could I know you were interested in him?”

“He is not a bad man,” she admitted kindly.  “I can see that he means very well.  If the McClures would go to the Illinois Territory with him—­But, Monsieur Crooks,” Jenieve asked sharply, “do people sometimes make sudden marriages?”

“In my case they have not,” sighed the young man.  “But I think well of sudden marriages myself.  The priest comes to the island this week.”

“Yes, and I must take the children to confession.”

“What are you going to do with me, Jenieve?”

“I am going to say good-night to you, and shut my door.”  She stepped into the house.

“Not yet.  It is only a little while since they fired the sunset gun at the fort.  You are not kind to shut me out the moment I come.”

She gave him her hand, as she always did when she said good-night, and he prolonged his hold of it.

“You are full of sweetbrier.  I didn’t know it grew down here on the beach.”

“It never did grow here, Monsieur Crooks.”

“You shall have plenty of it in your garden, when you come home with me.”

“Oh, go away, and let me shut my door, monsieur.  It seems no use to tell you I cannot come.”

“No use at all.  Until you come, then, good-night.”

Seldom are two days alike on the island.  Before sunrise the lost dews of paradise always sweeten those scented woods, and the birds begin to remind you of something you heard in another life, but have forgotten.  Jenieve loved to open her door and surprise the east.  She stepped out the next morning to fill her pail.  There was a lake of translucent cloud beyond the water lake:  the first unruffled, and the second wind-stirred.  The sun pushed up, a flattened red ball, from the lake of steel ripples to the lake of calm clouds.  Nearer, a schooner with its sails down stood black as ebony between two bars of light drawn across the water, which lay dull and bleak towards the shore.  The addition of a schooner to the scattered fleet of sailboats, bateaux, and birch canoes made Jenieve laugh.  It must have arrived from Sault Ste. Marie in the night.  She had hopes of getting rid of Michel Pensonneau that very day.  Since he was going to Cahokia, she felt stinging regret for the way she had treated him before the whole village; yet her mother could not be sacrificed to politeness.  Except his capacity for marrying, there was really no harm in the old fellow, as Monsieur Crooks had said.