“I thought the Marquis de Ferrier a courteous gentleman.”

“Did you ever see him?”

“Twice only.”

“He used to tell his wife he intended to live a hundred years.  And I suppose he would have done it, if he had not been tomahawked and scalped.  ‘You’ll never get De Chaumont,’ he used to say to her.  ’I’ll see that he never gets you!’ I remember the name very well, because it was the name of that pretty creature who danced for us in the cabin on Lake George.”

“De Chaumont was her father,” I said.  “He would have married Madame de Ferrier, and restored her estate, if she had accepted him, and the marquis had not come back.”

“Saints have pity!” said Madame Ursule.  “And the poor old man must make everybody and himself so uncomfortable!”

“But how could he help living?”

“True enough.  God’s times are not ours.  But see what he has made of her!”

I thought of my Cloud-Mother walking enclosed from the world upon a height of changeless youth.  She could not feel another shock.  She was past both ambition and poverty.  If she had ever felt the sweet anguish of love—­Oh! she must have understood when she kissed me and said:  “I will come to you sometime!”—­the anguish—­the hoping, waiting, expecting, receiving nothing, all were gone by.  Even mother cares no longer touched her.  Paul was grown.  She could not be made anything that was base.  Unseen forces had worked with her and would work with her still.

“You told me,” I said to Madame Ursule, “the Indians were afraid of her when they burned the settlement.  Was the change so sudden?”

“Madame Jordan’s story was like this:  It happened in broad daylight.  Two men went into the woods hunting bee trees.  The Indians caught and killed them within two miles of the clearing—­some of those very Winnebagoes you treated with for your land.  It was a sunshiny day in September.  You could hear the poultry crowing, and the children playing in the dooryards.  Madeleine’s little Paul was never far away from her.  The Indians rushed in with yells and finished the settlement in a few minutes.  Madame Jordan and her family were protected, but she saw children dashed against trees, and her neighbors struck down and scalped before she could plead for them.  And little good pleading would have done.  An Indian seized Paul.  His father and the old servant lay dead across the doorstep.  His mother would not let him go.  The Indian dragged her on her knees and struck her on the head.  Madame Jordan ran out at the risk of being scalped herself, and got the poor girl into her cabin.  The Indian came back for Madeleine’s scalp.  Madeleine did not see him.  She never seemed to notice anybody again.  She stood up quivering the whole length of her body, and laughed in his face.  It was dreadful to hear her above the cries of the children.  The Indian went away like a scared hound.  And none of the others would touch her.”