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 Southern Branch 
 of the 
 
 University of California 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 Form L I 
 
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 17 
 W58
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
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 MAY 121924 
 WA >& 3 19:30 
 
 3m-10,'19
 
 THE WHITE ISLANDER
 
 "THEY ARE MY OWN FLOWER."
 
 
 
 THE 
 
 WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 BY 
 
 MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE ROMANCE OF DOLLARD," 
 "THE LADY OF FORT ST. JOHN," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 THE CENTURY CO. 
 
 ' 19O3
 
 Copyright, 1893, by 
 
 MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD 
 
 THE DEVINNE PRESS.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE Island of Mackinac, set in the most 
 translucent waters on this continent, with 
 Huron on one side of it and Michigan on the 
 other, greatly fascinates both tourist and stu 
 dent. No landscape-gardening and placard 
 ing of commercial man can ever quite spoil 
 its wild beauty. The white cliffs and the 
 shaggy wilderness defy him. Across the 
 strait, westward, is St. Ignace, where Father 
 Marquette's grave may yet be seen, though 
 the birch-bark coffin holding his bones has 
 been removed to another shrine. On every 
 anniversary of the removal, the Manito of the 
 island remembers that despoiling, and never 
 fails to bring a storm on the lakes. Across 
 the strait, southward, on the mainland, the 
 site of Fort Michilimackinac may easily be 
 found. An irregular excavation, a scattered 
 orchard and clusters of gooseberry-bushes, a 
 
 vii
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 long stretch of deep yellow sand, and the 
 eternal glitter of the lake, remain from the 
 old tragedy. 
 
 Skull Rock is yet known on the island as 
 Henry's Cave. A venerable islander, Mr. 
 Cable, told me he had found skulls there in 
 his boyhood. 
 
 Through French, British, and early Ameri 
 can occupation, Mackinac was the center of 
 the fur trade. Indians and traders met here. 
 The crescent bay swarmed with strange 
 figures, and packs of beaver were carried 
 from canoe to warehouse, the traffic of a con 
 tinent and the result of a year's labor being 
 disposed of in a few brief days. The Ameri 
 can Fur Company had its headquarters at 
 Mackinac, and living islanders Dr. Bailey 
 and James Lasley can tell much of the life 
 it annually brought to break in one great 
 wave upon the strip of beach. You might 
 close your eyes when the moon is large over 
 the summer lakes, and almost hear again the 
 roaring song of coureurs de bois around the 
 turn of the bay.
 
 STATE IK i 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 "THEY ARE MY OWN FLOWER" Frontispiece 
 
 "AN INDIAN GIRL STOOD THERE WITH A BLANKET 
 IN HER HANDS " , 5 
 
 WAWATAM 41 
 
 " BUT NO PRIEST CAN BE A HUSBAND " 109 
 
 "FATHER JONOIS WAS BEGINNING THE MARRIAGE 
 SERVICE " 153
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 FORT MICHILIMACKINAC . . i 
 
 PART II 
 THE GHOST-FLOWER T 36 
 
 PART III 
 THE RIFT IN THE ISLAND 80 
 
 PART IV 
 THE HIGH PLATEAU .127
 
 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 PART I 
 
 FORT MICHILIMACKINAC 
 
 r I ^HE young fur-trader, Alexander Henry, 
 A sat in his house within the fort, writ 
 ing letters. The June day was sultry. Such 
 midsummer heat was rarely felt on the straits 
 where the great lakes mingled. 
 
 The Chippewa Indians of the settlement 
 were playing a game of baggatiway with 
 (^ some neighboring Sacs, and as they pursued 
 t the ball across half a mile of sandy beach 
 x. from one post to the other, their shouts 
 ^ approached or retreated. The fortress gates 
 stood open, officers and soldiers lounging 
 outside to watch the game. Henry could see 
 the expanse of sparkles which Lake Michi 
 gan spread beyond the palisade tips. Fort 
 Michilimackinac was one of the oldest out-
 
 2 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 posts of civilization on the continent. The 
 earliest explorers had rested here ; and now 
 that French rule was giving way before the 
 pressure of England, this post grudged itself 
 to the new colors hanging from the flagstaff. 
 It had never been strongly built, having only 
 wooden bastions and palisades, and it had 
 never been so carelessly guarded as on this 
 June day. 
 
 Within the area, and against eastern walls, 
 which gave them shadow, sat Chippewa 
 squaws, huddling their blankets around them 
 in spite of the heat. There was a canoe at 
 the beach, just arrived from Detroit, and the 
 trader made haste to finish his letters that he 
 might go out and inquire the news of the 
 English garrison there. His habit of self- 
 control kept him at his task while the whole 
 settlement played. 
 
 A trampling rush of the Indians driving 
 their ball to the post nearest the fort came 
 like a sudden rustle of the lake against its 
 beach. Out of this noise rose another, echo 
 ing from the pine-woods back of the clearing, 
 and filling the sky's hollow and the lake's 
 plane. It was the Indian war-whoop, and 
 meant death to the garrison.
 
 FORT MICHILIMACK1NAC 3 
 
 Henry sprang to his feet, and seized his 
 rifle, expecting to hear the drum-call to arms. 
 But the savages took the fort in an instant. 
 Not an English voice was raised except in 
 death-cries. The squaws threw back their 
 blankets, revealing the weapons they had car 
 ried into the inclosure, and gave these to the 
 swarming Chippewas. Half-naked figures, 
 their rigid sinews working like lines of fire, 
 struck down and scalped all they met in their 
 furious courses. The earth seemed turned to 
 a frightful picture, and incredible things were 
 done where a deceitful tribe had just been 
 amusing themselves and their victims with 
 ball-play. 
 
 That long moment of waiting for the signal 
 of defense blanched the young trader. It was 
 useless for him to take up arms alone against 
 four hundred Indians. He saw through his 
 open windows more than one soldier strug 
 gling between buckskin knees. The first 
 savage eye turned his way would mark him 
 for its next victim. The Canadians of the 
 fort stood by unhurt, looking at the destruc 
 tion of the English, as trees appear to rise 
 calmly above a flood which they cannot stop, 
 but which does not sweep them away. That
 
 4 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 kindness between French and aboriginal 
 blood, which grew from century to century, 
 was strongest at this very time. The French 
 settlers were not to be included in the mas 
 sacre. 
 
 Lake Michigan sparkled. The hot sun 
 shine lay unchanged and serene on a turf 
 soaking pools of scarlet, and on bodies out 
 stretched or doubled upon themselves in 
 heaps. Henry was conscious of perfume 
 from the garden outside the palisades. Bees 
 were stooping to gooseberry-bushes or search 
 ing the apple-boughs. A water-freshened 
 breeze came upon the land, stirring foliage, 
 while seventy men were being hacked down 
 by six times as many savages. The gun 
 sank in the trader's grasp. He looked 
 around for some hiding-place. As soon as 
 the savages left off slaughter for sacking, 
 his storehouse would be their first thought. 
 He could not escape through the palisades 
 to the woods. Langlade's cottage stood 
 next to his. The French family were gath 
 ered safely within, and it flashed through 
 Henry that they might mercifully hide him. 
 He had reached his back door, when it 
 opened, and an Indian girl stood there with
 
 "AN INDIAN GIRL STOOD THERE WITH A BLANKET IN HER HANDS.
 
 FORT MICHILIMACKINAC 7 
 
 a blanket in her hands. She was Langlade's 
 slave, whose name her owners never took 
 the trouble to pronounce. They called her 
 Pani, from her tribe. Her copper skin had 
 not its usual tint, the grayness of extreme 
 anxiety clouding it. Pani had often come 
 into the storehouse, and stood looking at the 
 trader. She wore silver bands riveted on her 
 naked ankles. Her rounded arms were bare. 
 Only that morning, when the sun showed the 
 crimson of her cheeks, Henry had noticed 
 that she was handsomer than the girls of the 
 northern tribes ; but he saw her now as the 
 means of escape. Pani beckoned to him, and 
 threw the blanket over his head. The trader 
 knew he was stumbling on the low fence, 
 and then within Langlade's door. It was 
 a back room into which Pani took him, and 
 she pushed him up a staircase. The mob's 
 howling filled every crevice of earth and sky 
 that sound could penetrate. 
 
 They reached the attic. The Indian girl 
 looked at him earnestly before she closed the 
 attic door, shaking her head when he whis 
 pered his thanks. The young man heard her 
 draw the key from the lock as she turned it, 
 and her moccasins went down-stairs without
 
 8 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 his knowledge. She had put him out of the 
 massacre for as long a time as his hiding- 
 place would conceal him. There were no 
 windows in this roof-room, but Henry found 
 a crevice between timbers through which he 
 could look into the fort. Chippewa voices 
 were already raising the shout, "It is done ! " 
 Some half-naked fellows ran, knife in hand, 
 toward the storehouse. At the same instant 
 he heard others breaking into the room 
 below. 
 
 Langlade's house had nothing but a layer 
 of boards between lower rooms and attic. 
 Distinctly the guttural inquiry rose through 
 loosely covered joists: 
 
 "Are any English hiding in this house?" 
 " I do not know of any," replied the 
 Frenchman. 
 
 "Where, then, is the trader?" 
 " You can search for him if you think he 
 is here, and satisfy yourselves." 
 
 The man in the attic stood up and looked 
 around him. There was a feather-bed on the 
 floor, and in one corner were some birch-bark 
 vessels and troughs used in making maple 
 sugar, and during their season of disuse piled 
 at one end of the floor under the low rafters.
 
 FORT MICHILIMACKINAC 9 
 
 Henry crept to the heap and inserted him 
 self feet foremost. He could hear the crowd 
 ing of moccasins on the narrow stairs as he 
 labored. Water stood in chill drops on his 
 face. He dared not disturb the light birch 
 boxes too vigorously, for fear they would fall 
 with a clatter, or raise suspicious dust in the 
 air. Indians have many senses beside sight. 
 They shook the locked door, and bumped it 
 with their hatchets, until the key was handed 
 up from below. Then four light-footed 
 searchers came into the room. 
 
 Henry was scarcely concealed. His breath 
 stopped. He expected to be seized and 
 dragged from the heap instantly, and closed 
 his eyes to his fate. Buckskin legs trod 
 around in the darkness of the attic, kicking 
 the pile, and twice brushing against him. 
 The boxes rattled, but did not fall apart. 
 The exhilarated savages talked of what they 
 had done, and stood counting the number of 
 scalps they had taken. Their search was 
 rapid and careless. They trod on the 
 feather-bed, and prodded the darkest corners 
 with their hatchets. They went down-stairs, 
 still talking, obligingly locking the door 
 again before returning the key.
 
 io THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 The trader crept out to the feather-bed and 
 lay down, exhausted by suspense. His body 
 relaxed, and he fell soundly asleep. 
 
 When he awoke it was as black as midnight 
 in the attic, and rain was beating the bark 
 roof over his head. The tinkling and the 
 rush of streams down irregular grooves 
 soothed him. It was one of those moments 
 between perils when a fugitive rests, indiffer 
 ent to his pursuers. He could hear the storm 
 roaring on the lake. He knew it was wash 
 ing away blood-stains in the fort, and perhaps 
 quenching to sullen smoke fires which the 
 Indians would be sure to start. Their voices 
 in drunken cries at intervals struck across the 
 monotone of the storm. Casks of liquor 
 were long ago rolled out from the fort's 
 stores. In the rain, or under shelter of bar 
 racks or officers' quarters, the victors were 
 sprawling and drinking. 
 
 Henry sat up and looked at his hopeless 
 case. He was probably the only living Eng 
 lishman in Fort Michilimackinac. It was four 
 hundred miles to Detroit, the nearest point 
 of safety. If the door were unlocked, or if he 
 could make an opening in the roof and steal 
 out unseen as far as the beach, and find a
 
 FORT MICHILIMACKINAC n 
 
 canoe, he had nothing with which to stock it ; 
 and the whole route lay through hostile 
 tribes who were evidently united in rising 
 against the English. Yet to stay was to die. 
 The Indians knew him well. They owed 
 him for goods. By morning they would 
 search him out, and as many as could unite 
 in paying him with their hatchets would cut 
 him down. 
 
 His troubled thoughts, and the downpour 
 on the roof, must have shut his ears to noise 
 in the room below ; for he was startled at 
 seeing a rod of light appear under the attic 
 door. By this token Henry knew a candle 
 was coming up-stairs. 
 
 Monsieur Langlade was the bearer of it. 
 
 " You searched the place yourselves," he 
 said outside the door, his key groping for its 
 bolt in the lock. " Very good. Look again. 
 Look until you are satisfied." 
 
 The door swung back, and Monsieur Lang- 
 lade stepped in, lifting his candle so that its 
 sheen fell upon naked red heads and shoul 
 ders gorging the staircase. 
 
 The young trader stood up. His person 
 expanded, and he fixed an unmoving eye on 
 the rabble. As Monsieur Langlade's candle
 
 12 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 revealed the occupant of the attic, he uttered 
 a nervous cry. It was for the children asleep 
 below, rather than for the trader, whose con 
 cealment in his house might bring vengeance 
 on them. He had himself so many times 
 braved death with coolness that it did not 
 seem to him the worst thing which could be 
 fall a man, but it was a pitiable thing for the 
 very young. 
 
 The foremost savage caught Henry by the 
 collar, and lifted his knife. Death was en 
 dured in that action, though the raised arm 
 was not permitted to inflict it. A Chippewa 
 in hunting-dress caught the knife-handle. 
 
 The little yellow flame scarcely showed two 
 struggling figures, or the faces brought close 
 together by the bracing of sinewy limbs. 
 Other Indians poured into the attic, but 
 waited, weapons in hand, respecting the brief 
 wrestle of the two for the knife. In the midst 
 of this effort made for him, Henry was con 
 scious that a mouse squeaked in a corner, and 
 he saw the heap of birch-bark troughs enlarg 
 ing and contracting in the weird play of light. 
 Imperfect as was his knowledge of the Chip 
 pewa tongue, he seized the meaning of the 
 fierce words between the holders of the knife.
 
 FORT MICHILIMACKINAC 13 
 
 " Will you kill my adopted brother before 
 my eyes ? " The hunter was Wawatam. 
 Henry knew his voice. 
 
 " We will make broth of all the English." 
 
 " But every man in the tribe promised me 
 to save the life of my brother, if I would go 
 away and not tell him. I went." 
 
 " We know that well. We know Wawatam 
 went hunting, instead of lifting the hatchet 
 against the English. The fort at Detroit is 
 taken, and all the tribes are risen with Pon- 
 tiac to sweep the English from our country. 
 And Wawatam goes hunting." 
 
 " Stop ! I am a Chippewa, but I cannot eat 
 my brother's people. My blood is in his arm, 
 and his blood is in my arm. I cannot eat my 
 own blood." 
 
 " But we can eat all the English." 
 
 " Give me this knife. I believed you were 
 false Chippewas, and so I came back." 
 
 " Let go the knife ! " 
 
 " I will not let it go. I have brought a 
 present to give in exchange for my brother. 
 You taunt me with going hunting. I went to 
 my lodge." 
 
 " Yes ; Wawatam goes to his lodge in 
 time of war."
 
 H THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 "It is well for you now that you hold the 
 knife. I am no woman, but neither am I the 
 eater of my brother's flesh. Will the Chip- 
 pewas take my present and let him go, or 
 will they cut down one of their chiefs with 
 their enemies ? " 
 
 The Frenchman who held the light waited 
 the end of this dispute with more visible 
 anxiety than the Englishman. Henry began 
 to feel that no Indian could kill him. His 
 brother Wawatam seemed to prevail. The 
 squad of warriors remembered their prom 
 ise. They were a people ruled only by per 
 suasive eloquence moving on the surface of 
 their passions, and they felt in their own lives 
 and practices the force of Wawatam's plea. 
 The Chippewa in his grasp inquired where 
 his present was. Wawatam said it was in 
 the kitchen below. His antagonist relaxed 
 hold, and Monsieur Langlade lifted the 
 candle high to light the descent. 
 
 A knot of bodies emerged from the foot of 
 the stairs, Wawatam keeping close to Henry. 
 Rain was pouring down the kitchen windows 
 in sheets, showing diamond lights against a 
 background of blackness. The muddy prints 
 of many moccasins tarnished Madame Lang-
 
 FORT MICHILIMACKINAC 15 
 
 lade's scoured floor. Her husband's face was 
 drawn with anxiety to have the business over 
 and the party out of his house. 
 
 Wawatam dragged his packet from the 
 spot where he had dropped it, and stooped to 
 one knee while he uncorded it. Fine skins 
 and wampum enough to satisfy the greedy 
 eyes around him were displayed as well as 
 the light could display them. Wawatam 
 was quick in completing his tacit bargain. 
 Only a few of his tribe were parties to 
 the exchange, and so jealous and changeable 
 is the savage nature that he could not count 
 on their continued acceptance of it. 
 
 "Take your brother," said the man with 
 whom he had struggled for the knife ; and 
 Wawatam at once opened the door and 
 slipped with Henry into the storm. He gave 
 no backward glance at Chippewas dividing 
 the furs, or the Frenchman waiting their plea 
 sure, but he and Henry made their way 
 around the house and toward the palisade 
 gate. It stood wide open. They could see 
 the whiteness of the hissing lake. Wawatam 
 spoke at his brother's ear, wind and water 
 even . then half destroying the sound, and 
 directed Henry to tread close behind him.
 
 16 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 They stumbled across bodies. Lightning 
 smote the world vivid with its glare, and 
 Henry saw one of those faces ; but Wawa- 
 tam swept his eye around for living and 
 drunken Chippewas. He mistook a shout 
 for the outcry of discovery and pursuit, and 
 leaped with Henry through the gate into 
 deep wet sand. 
 
 The Chippewa chief pushed his canoe di 
 rectly out, and bade his brother get in. They 
 were off from the shore in a breath, each bal 
 ancing himself and paddling with desperate 
 care. No Indian would ordinarily trust his 
 life to the lake on such a night. If driven to 
 the water, he would skirt the shore. But Wa- 
 watam steered out across the straits as well as 
 he could in the darkness. Their first efforts 
 kept the two men from seeing anything but 
 the lake heaving its awful shoulders to swamp 
 them. They rode swells which made the little 
 boat shiver. Foam hissed around them, and 
 stuck upon their persons in white specks. But 
 as their muscles grew to acting with automa 
 tic sweep and balance, the universe around 
 them could be swiftly noticed. There was 
 no sky except when the lightning spilled it. 
 Then vision flashed abroad to immensity, and
 
 FORT MICHILIMACKINAC 17 
 
 suddenly contracted to blindness. Thunder 
 bellowed among the islands, and shook like 
 some substance afloat in the air, until the long 
 reverberations lost themselves. The fort was 
 an opaque mass against a low-lying fore 
 ground, lighted in one or two spots. White 
 Canadian houses' behind it showed their sleek 
 walls as phosphorescence, and then vanished. 
 The scant forest on the mainland pricked out 
 its pine points, and withdrew them again. 
 
 Rain trickled down Henry's face, and his 
 long hair clung in tendrils around his neck 
 and ears. He had no hat. Wawatam, who 
 never wore anything on his shaven poll but a 
 chief's decoration, shone when electrical light 
 revealed him. Their peril grew as they ad 
 vanced farther into the waste blackness. The 
 Englishman answered the motions of his pilot 
 with steady nerve. That day had given him 
 sights which seared the mind. He was ready 
 to drown, though if the canoe swamped he felt 
 he might mechanically swim. 
 
 From the general direction of their zigzag 
 tossing he guessed the port which Wawatam 
 hoped to reach. But no talk could pass be 
 tween the two men except at the top of their 
 voices, and they kept silence.
 
 i8 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 Henry knew very little about this Chip- 
 pewa who had adopted him with the super 
 stitious selection peculiar to the Indian na 
 ture. Wawatam had begun a year before to 
 make him presents, speeches, and lover-like 
 visits. Henry had responded, amused and 
 touched, giving presents in return, and prac 
 tising his store of Chippewa words with a 
 good will. He felt no sacred claim upon 
 the Indian, and acknowledged in himself no 
 necessity to risk life in such a service as this. 
 The character of the silent red man loomed 
 before him a colossal manito, of unsuspected 
 worth. He had seen the brutal side of 
 savage nature ; he was seeing now its spir 
 itual side. 
 
 The trader understood that Wawatam had 
 a family, and he thought of the squaw waiting 
 in anguish, and looking from her lodge at 
 this black chaos. They had been out so 
 long that he forgot every function of life ex 
 cept an automatic balance and the fight with 
 the paddles, when he began to take notice of 
 a roseate star in the north. Lightning blot 
 ted it, but in darkness it burned steadily, and 
 he finally saw it was low against a mass of 
 land.
 
 FORT MICHILIMACKINAC 19 
 
 "The island of Mackinac?" he shouted in 
 Chippewa at Wawatam. 
 
 "Yes; the Great Turtle," shouted back 
 Wawatam. 
 
 Henry had not crossed the straits since 
 his arrival at Fort Michilimackinac, and the 
 islands were unknown worlds to him. He 
 was the pioneer of the English fur-trade, and 
 had ventured with audacious courage to the 
 wooden outpost poorly maintained by a mere 
 advance-guard of his nation. Received coldly 
 by the settled French, with warnings by the 
 soldiers, and sullenly by the Indians, he had 
 not plunged into the woods at all, though 
 their spring freshness tempted him, and the 
 glare on the sand was a monotonous sight, 
 but remained about the fort, guarding his 
 stores, and making such headway as he 
 could into savage friendship. The Great 
 Turtle, or Mackinac, Island, was about five 
 miles distant from Fort Michilimackinac 
 across the strait. On clear days, in the 
 elastic and transparent air at the mouth of 
 the lakes, he could see the white cliffs of 
 Mackinac half smothered in foliage. He 
 knew the Chippewas venerated it with super 
 stitious feeling. They gathered there for
 
 20 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 their great ceremonies. It was sometimes 
 thronged with lodges, and sometimes left 
 in solitude. A colossal manito brooded over 
 the place, and other invisible beings worked 
 spells there. Henry smiled in the darkness 
 at being flung for safety, through flood and 
 storm, upon this enchanted land. Wawatam 
 was attempting as well as he could to put 
 his brother in barbarian sanctuary. 
 
 A smaller island lying south of the Great 
 Turtle reached out for them with a long 
 phosphorescent arm. Pale green and dia 
 mond lights flashed from this sandy bar as 
 the water rolled over it, coruscating and 
 changing through countless tones of color. 
 Wawatam steered far from the uncanny 
 grappling-hook. Henry was ignorant of 
 these insular coast-lines. When, therefore, 
 after long darkness the dying lightning made 
 its revelations, he was startled by the near 
 ness of the shore. It stood above him. The 
 canoe tossed like a chip at the base of 
 wooded heights. The low-lying star which 
 he had watched emerged from the windings 
 of their course a conflagration. They no 
 longer needed the lightning. A fire roared 
 in a stone fireplace on the beach, and rose-
 
 FORT MICHILIMACKINAC 21 
 
 colored smoke escaped from the penthouse 
 of its front. Logs of some size, and much 
 small fuel, heaped the hearth. Henry could 
 hear through the hiss of water a crackling of 
 pine and cedar. The fireplace was in a shel 
 tered cove partly walled around by rocks. 
 On the beach floor and in front of the glare 
 two figures moved about, the rain scarcely 
 veiling them. Henry was so wet that he 
 knew his fingers were shrunken and white 
 around the paddles. The June night chill 
 reached his bones. The fire, like a home 
 hearth inviting him to this unknown coast, 
 appealed with a power that his flesh instantly 
 acknowledged. But the tenders of it so sur 
 prised him that his discomfort was forgotten 
 in straining sight at them. They were two 
 white children, a girl, and a short, grotesque 
 boy. The girl stood well within the shelter 
 of rocks, and directed the boy in his laying 
 of the wood. Light poured upon her, now 
 rising so that Henry could even note the 
 flush of her cheek and the lines of her eye 
 brows, and now sinking until her face became 
 a rosy blot in the dimness. She appeared 
 to be dressed in gray gull-feathers lying 
 smoothly downward, untarnished by the rain:
 
 22 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 This plumage gave roundness to her young 
 shape. Her hair hung in two large braids 
 down the front of her shoulders. When the 
 boy had put wood on the fire, he resumed 
 turning a leather string on which a piece of 
 meat hung roasting. The string was fas 
 tened to a crosspiece upheld by two forks 
 set in sand and stones. At a corner of the 
 hearth a bark platter of fish stood ready, 
 savory incense suggesting itself in the air 
 above. Henry noted all these things with 
 a quick glance or two ; the picture of the 
 wilderness kitchen so illuminated filled his 
 mind by a single impression. 
 
 Such a narrow strip of beach paved it that 
 every swell of the lake threatened to over 
 whelm the fire. Yet the high-riding water 
 always broke hissing among fragments of 
 rock lying scattered at the edge waste stuff 
 that it had carved out in past ages when it 
 made the fireplace. Not a spatter of foam 
 reached the girl or the supper she was 
 tending. 
 
 She and her companion watched the outer 
 darkness, but, dazzled by the light in which 
 they stood, they were blind to the speck rid 
 ing so near them. Wawatam knew every
 
 FORT MICHILIMACKINAC 23 
 
 inch of the Mackinac coast ; but remember 
 ing all they had dared that night, Henry 
 thought he was absurdly cautious about land 
 ing his canoe. He held it out in the weather, 
 and moved on eastward, until the kitchen's 
 shine lay behind them, a heaving bar across 
 the water. They passed a turn of the cliff, 
 and after much skilful paddling came into a 
 softly rounded cove which could scarcely be 
 called a bay, but which sheltered and let 
 them easily on shore. Henry guessed at 
 these things by the massing or retreating of 
 glooms above him, and the line of the water. 
 The organ breathing of evergreens overhead 
 convinced him that pine and cedar clothed 
 these heights like a garment. 
 
 To feel hard pebbles underfoot, and to 
 grasp a rock or a bough, was returning to 
 life after long suspension in what was neither 
 life nor death. They pulled their canoe in, 
 and Henry helped Wawatam conceal it and 
 the paddles in a thicket of balsam fir which 
 scratched their hands with its wet needles. 
 
 Their path under the cliff was a very nar 
 row one. Several times they had to wade, 
 and the lake washed their legs as they 
 hugged the wall. Wawatam led the way.
 
 24 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 He grunted cautious words to Henry when 
 the Englishman fell behind in crossing a pool 
 or lost the direction among rocks. Again they 
 saw the shine on the water, and felt it reaching 
 to them through chinks of the trees. Wawa- 
 tam suddenly raised his voice in a low, pene 
 trating hoot. He held the trader in a pause. 
 A similar call answered him from the kitchen. 
 
 They came to the broadening of the beach 
 and the roaring fireplace. If it had seemed 
 cheerful from the lake, it seemed home's own 
 altar now, and the offerings smoked in readi 
 ness for two hungry, exhausted men. Henry 
 looked eagerly around. No human being 
 was there ; not a rustle came from the 
 shadows. He felt disappointed. He felt even 
 tricked by the influences of the island. Two 
 figures had certainly passed before the hearth. 
 In this empty place he had traced the outlines 
 of a girl's eyebrows. No noise of climbing, 
 no crackle of broken brush, betrayed a re 
 treat. There was only the crackle of the fire, 
 and to that he was obliged to give himself, 
 turning himself in luxury and drying his 
 steaming clothes. 
 
 Wawatam seemed only half pleased by 
 what the vanished islanders had done for
 
 FORT MICHILIMACKINAC 25 
 
 them. He took his knife and swiftly cut 
 small pines, piling them between the glowing 
 fireplace and the lake. It required so many 
 to make a screen high enough, that Henry 
 was quite dry when Wawatam finished his 
 task. 
 
 Still looking waterward with misgivings, 
 he made his English brother sit against the 
 pile, hid from possible voyagers, while they 
 ate their supper. 
 
 Before Wawatam sat down he brought 
 water from a spring near by. Listening, 
 Henry could distinguish its gush from the 
 falling of the rain. It came down the cliff, as 
 he learned for himself later, but at that time 
 he thought its small noise was simply an 
 escape into the lake. The water and the 
 venison and fish were delicious enchanted 
 drink and food. Henry felt his blood revived 
 with sudden impetus such as wine gives. It 
 flew through his arteries, a distinct rapture. 
 His eyes laughed, and the long taciturnity of 
 the night passed away, like a trance. He 
 wanted to raise a shout, and make his voice 
 ring against the cliff, but the precautions of 
 Wawatam were a warning to recklessness. 
 So he only talked rapidly, managing the
 
 26 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 Chippewa words as well as he could, but ex 
 uberantly slipping into English or French 
 where expression failed him. 
 
 Wawatam listened, and answered seriously, 
 or with a smile slightly loosening the corners 
 of his mouth. He was glad his brother was 
 safe and full of spirits. He was a straight- 
 featured Indian, spare but sinewy. His face, 
 as it dried in the firelight, showed a clear 
 ness of tint and a benignity unusual in his 
 tribe. The draggling rain robbed him of no 
 dignified effect in his clothes. He was well 
 dressed in buckskins, the fringed collar open 
 ing and showing a clean-cut neck finely done 
 in human bronze. Exposure to sun and 
 weather had printed small radiating lines at 
 the corners of his unshaded eyes. He was 
 very little older than Henry, but his fore 
 fathers of the wilderness had left their somber 
 and aging impress on him, as Saxon and 
 Norman had left their brighter impress on 
 the Englishman. 
 
 " My brother has brought me to a good 
 lodge." 
 
 " Best not stay here long," said Wawatam. 
 
 " Have you some hole to put me in on the 
 island ? "
 
 FORT MICHILIMACKINAC 27 
 
 " A good hole," said Wawatam. 
 
 " You are not going to let your brother 
 down like Joseph into some pit ? " 
 
 "Joseph is not in a pit. Joseph stands on 
 the altar," remarked Wawatam, whose know 
 ledge of Hebrew history was bounded by the 
 mission church at L'Arbre Croche. 
 
 " I did n't mean the saint. But I shall be 
 safe wherever you put me." 
 
 "There is no pit," said Wawatam, "except 
 the rift; and that is not a pit. It is where the 
 heart of the island broke." 
 
 " What broke its heart ? " 
 
 " Once the manito left Mackinac : that 
 broke the island's heart ? " 
 
 " Did he ever come back? " 
 
 " Who could stay away ? " 
 
 " Is your lodge on the island, Wawatam?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " You are never afraid of the spirits ? " 
 
 Wawatam glanced around under the rims 
 of his eyelashes. He did not answer, but 
 excused the light inquiry of his brother. 
 
 The young Englishman rested against his 
 evergreen cushion and looked at the myste 
 rious cliffs. He was open to beautiful impres 
 sions. Strong love of the wilderness had
 
 28 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 brought him to this perilous frontier. Before 
 penetrating a yard into the island he felt its 
 influence like the premonition of love. It 
 drew him and claimed him. The fire gave 
 
 o 
 
 him a flickering sight of crumbly limestone 
 full of little sockets and cleavages filled with 
 moss. Gnarly pine-trees hung down, dis 
 torted with gripping the rock. Wet young 
 ferns breathed somewhere under cover, their 
 shy maid's breath being brought to him by 
 the dampness. 
 
 "Who were those spirits tending the fire 
 before we landed ? " inquired Henry. 
 
 Wawatam relaxed his mouth-corners more, 
 and answered : " They were no spirits. They 
 were part of my family." 
 
 " But seen from the lake they looked like a 
 white boy and girl." 
 
 "Yes; they are white." 
 
 " How did you get a white family, Wa 
 watam ? " 
 
 " Not all my family are white. My old 
 grandmother is Chippewa." 
 
 " How many are there in my brother Wa- 
 watam's family ? " 
 
 " Three : my old grandmother and the boy 
 and girl."
 
 FORT MICHILIMACKINAC 29 
 
 " Was their mother a white woman ? " 
 " Yes ; both their mothers were white." 
 " Then they are not your children ? " 
 " No ; the boy is my adopted son. He has 
 but one eye. The girl is my wife." 
 
 Henry had a sensation of discomfort mar 
 ring his perfect physical happiness. As he 
 lowered his eyes to the glowing coals he 
 asked himself why an Indian like Wawatam 
 should not have a white wife if he wanted 
 one. 
 
 " Your wife ? " repeated the trader. 
 "She will be my wife," corrected Wawatam. 
 " She lives yet in the lodge with my grand 
 mother. When peace comes I will take her 
 in my canoe to the priest at L'Arbre Croche. 
 No time for marrying now. Too much war ; 
 too many evil birds making a noise." 
 " Who is she, Wawatam ? " 
 " She is a girl without father or mother." 
 " I understand, then, that my brother has 
 at some time kept her from being killed as he 
 has just kept me from being killed. Is she 
 English ? " 
 
 " No ; French." 
 
 " But your people are the friends of the 
 French."
 
 30 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 " I did not say I had kept her from being 
 killed." 
 
 " And is the boy her brother ? " 
 
 " No ; he is English. He is what you call 
 an idiot," said Wawatam, with unconscious 
 humor. " But we do not call it so." Henry 
 laughed. 
 
 "The English at Michilimackinac certainly 
 behaved like idiots to-day when they threw 
 the fortress gates open. And nearly all of us 
 have died the death of idiots. My escape 
 was by no wisdom of mine." 
 
 " No more time to talk," said Wawatam, 
 rising. " You must hide." 
 
 He took the largest firebrands and plunged 
 them into the lake. The logs and coals he 
 put out with water carried in the gourd which 
 had supplied them from the spring. A hiss 
 ing white vapor and clouds of ashes drove 
 Henry up from the evergreens, and darkness 
 grew where the hospitable hearth had shone. 
 
 As the ashes settled, and steam ceased 
 rising, Wawatam spoke in the darkness to 
 his adopted brother. 
 
 " I must go back to my tribe, to the feasts 
 and war-councils, or they may search you out
 
 FORT MICHILIMACKINAC 31 
 
 and kill you yet. They think I am only half 
 hearted in this war. The French girl that is 
 to be my wife will have to bring you food, for 
 there is no one else on the island but my old 
 grandmother, and the boy, who could not re 
 member." 
 
 Henry drew in his breath with a quick im 
 pulse. But he waited with all the gravity 
 which this hint imposed. After a few minutes 
 he made the promise : 
 
 " She shall be my sister as Wawatam is my 
 brother." 
 
 The Indian on his side kept silence in the 
 darkness. When he spoke he said : 
 
 " I will trust my brother." 
 
 He began the march, and Henry followed 
 him. They took the same way along the 
 beach by which they had come, wading pools 
 and walking around rocks. The rain thinned, 
 and the lightning had become a flicker on the 
 horizon, but the angry lake still rolled in white 
 ridges, and made a wide-spread noise of its 
 wash on the shore. When they came to the 
 cove where the canoe lay hidden, Wawatam 
 waited and listened. Satisfied by sound or 
 lack of sound which could not be detected
 
 32 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 by his white brother, he then made rapid pro 
 gress. The ground stooped to them ; the 
 wooded heights sloped down to draw a lovely 
 semi-circle, rounding the froth and glitter of 
 waters. Wawatam did not follow the shore 
 line here, but struck up a long shoulder of 
 hill, tracing some course he knew well, though 
 the pine boughs had to be parted out of their 
 way. Henry trod directly behind him. A 
 hint of morning was already abroad, in that 
 thinning of the darkness which is more the 
 wan failure of night than the decided approach 
 of day. Birds were inquiring of one another 
 in their unseen retreats. Uncanny wings went 
 past Henry's face, giving him a shuddering 
 start. 
 
 " Bats," observed Wawatam. 
 
 Moisture in the evergreens and low, broad- 
 leaved oaks rained upon them ; but in all this 
 indistinctness and blind following of his leader, 
 Henry felt the exhilaration of the island. The 
 wet was a sprinkling of balm. Heavenly in 
 cense from thousands of primeval censers filled 
 the woods, and filled his spirit. Two or three 
 times he thought he heard twigs breaking be 
 hind them, and told Wawatam. The chief lis 
 tened with him once, and moved on undisturbed.
 
 FORT MICHILIMACKINAC 33 
 
 They had groped over many levels, through 
 many mazes of juniper and hemlock and acres 
 of thick-studded trees, when Wawatam as 
 cended a little mound of flinty waste, and 
 stood breasting a large rock covered with 
 tangle. 
 
 " Here it is." 
 
 "What is it?" inquired the trader. 
 
 -The Skull Rock." 
 
 " Do we stop here ? " 
 
 " You must creep in." 
 
 He pressed his hands on his brother's 
 shoulders, and made Henry stoop to the low 
 opening. 
 
 " Creep in as far as you can," said Wa 
 watam. 
 
 " Is it a cave? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "A large one?" 
 
 " Not very large. But you can hide there." 
 
 " Will my brother rest in this cave, too ? " 
 
 " No ; the storm is past now. I must go 
 back to Michilimackinac before the sun is up. 
 It will be better if I am there in the morn 
 ing. My tribe will not know how far I have 
 brought you." 
 
 " But you have had no sleep all night,"
 
 34 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 " No matter." 
 
 "And the lake is still covered with white- 
 caps." 
 
 " The paddling will be easier when there is 
 some light." 
 
 " How soon shall I see my brother Wawa- 
 tam again ? " 
 
 " Not soon, unless there is danger. My 
 brother must lie quiet and wait in patience 
 until I can find some chance to send him to 
 his people." 
 
 Henry squeezed the Chippewa's hand. This 
 was no farewell for Wawatam, who took his 
 white brother in his arms. The forest breathed 
 around them, and bits of sky above the trees 
 were translucent with rising light. 
 
 " Bless you, old fellow ! I am not worth 
 half the trouble you have taken for me. I 
 hope I can do something for you some time, 
 and that you '11 never regret you saved my 
 scalp." 
 
 " Good-by, my English brother." 
 
 " Good-by, my Chippewa brother." 
 
 Henry crawled into the cave's mouth. The 
 dank odor repelled him, and he turned his 
 head back to ask Wawatam, who yet stooped 
 watching him :
 
 FORT MICHILIMACK1NAC 3$ 
 
 " No snakes in here, I suppose ? " 
 
 " No ; Skull Rock is a sacred cave. No 
 snakes on the island except two kinds, and 
 they have no poison." 
 
 The trader crept down the cavern's slope. 
 He looked back once more to see the red 
 face at the opening of the rock ; but Wawa- 
 tam's moccasins were silently moving away 
 on their journey to Michilimackinac. 
 
 The place was paved with uneven frag 
 ments, which rolled under Henry's hand as 
 he groped. It was an irregular hollow, turn 
 ing at right angles in the rock, and when he 
 reached the turn he thrust his feet backward 
 into the further mystery, and stretched him 
 self out with his face to the opening. He 
 was stiff from his long paddling, and faint 
 from living such a day. The elixir of the 
 island no longer reached him. The pres 
 ence and restraint of a stoic like Wawatam 
 being taken away, he gave himself up to 
 weakness, and slept like a dead man, un- 
 moving and pale.
 
 
 . 
 
 PART II 
 
 THE GHOST-FLOWER 
 
 "QING again, George." 
 O " George has sung." 
 
 " I say sing again." 
 
 "All good." 
 
 George sang again, if a nasal droning 
 broken by barks and bird-trillings could be 
 called singing. The singer had doubtless 
 learned his music in the school of the Chip- 
 pewas. Henry heard it in the cavern under 
 neath, and knew what figures were sitting on 
 the top of the rock among gnarled pines and 
 tangled growths. 
 
 " That will do, George. That ought to 
 wake the Englishman if he is ever going 
 to wake. I am tired of sending you down 
 to look at him." 
 
 " Pretty man in the cave," observed 
 
 George. 
 
 36
 
 THE GHOST-FLOWER 37 
 
 " The English all look well enough, but 
 they are a bad people. I do not like them." 
 
 "Not like George?" remonstrated her 
 companion, with a whine. " George all Eng 
 lish boy." 
 
 " You great baby, can you not be sure I 
 like you when I am making you a pair of 
 new moccasins ? You belong to the island. 
 But the English they are quite another 
 sort; though I am glad I learned their lan 
 guage in the convent, since you can never 
 speak French." 
 
 The sweet contralto voice, using his mother- 
 tongue with an accentuation which he had 
 often called " frog-eater's brogue," and using 
 it to denounce his nation, made Henry smile 
 in the cave. He was in need of amusement. 
 As he tried to move himself on the uneasy 
 lumps of his rock mattress, a shudder ran 
 through him. Daylight penetrated far enough 
 into the cavern to show him that he was ly 
 ing on human skulls. Bald, narrow frontal 
 bones and eyeless sockets stared through the 
 drift of old leaves. Henry crawled over these 
 specter faces toward the entrance. There he 
 found a roasted bird and some venison on a 
 birch dish. 
 
 3"
 
 38 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 His movement was heard by the two over 
 head, and they scrambled off the rock. The 
 girl's voice hissed a low warning. " Monsieur 
 must not come out of this cave until he is 
 permitted." 
 
 Henry stopped, and the boy, tearing through 
 bushes, appeared in front of him as a guard. 
 He rolled his head at Henry, and enforced 
 the uttered mandate by adding, "All good." 
 
 The look of eternal infancy on his idiot 
 face was most touching by daylight. Stunted 
 to a grotesque broadness and knottiness of 
 figure, he moved like a little bear on its hind 
 feet, and his dress bore out the resemblance. 
 It was all in one piece, a bifurcated apron 
 made of a dark blanket, which fastened at 
 the back, and was drawn by a cord around 
 the neck. His eyebrows and hair were of a 
 sandy tint, and his skin maintained a raw 
 pinkness. His single eye had the penetrating 
 stare, and probably the microscopic power, of 
 a bird's. 
 
 Henry leaned forward, and looked around 
 the edge of the cave for the white islander. 
 She stood hidden among the trees, but 
 promptly repeated : 
 
 " Monsieur must not come out."
 
 THE GHOST-FLOWER 39 
 
 " But, mademoiselle, there are skulls in this 
 rock." 
 
 "They are nothing but the heads of good 
 Indians. Does monsieur find them very bald ?" 
 
 " Quite so, mademoiselle." 
 
 " Monsieur's skull will soon be as bald as 
 they are if he ventures out before it is safe. 
 The chief commanded that he should lie 
 still." 
 
 "When did you see Wawatam?" 
 
 "About dawn he met us as he turned back 
 to Michilimackinac." 
 
 " You came up from the beach behind us, 
 then?" 
 
 " Yes, monsieur. Eat your supper and be 
 quiet." 
 
 "My supper? Is it evening?" 
 
 " Nearly evening. The light yet slants 
 through the woods." 
 
 " Thank you, mademoiselle, for your care 
 of me." 
 
 " It is nothing." 
 
 " But I heard you say you were tired of 
 waiting for me to wake." 
 
 " Because the chief said you must be told 
 to stay in the cave. George and I have 
 waited since noon to tell you."
 
 40 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 " I will obey every word you say," promised 
 Henry. " May I add to the trouble I am 
 giving you, and ask for some water?" 
 
 " George has been three times for water, 
 but we threw it out as it grew tepid. Go 
 again, George, and fill the gourd, and bring 
 it quickly." 
 
 " Thank you, George," said the trader. 
 
 "All good," responded George. He am 
 bled away, in what direction Henry did not 
 notice. Hungry as the Englishman was, he 
 did not begin to eat, but looked at his hands 
 and weather-stained clothes. The instincts 
 of civilization were stronger in him because 
 he thought the white islander yet stood at 
 the cave corner. Her appendage, the boy, 
 was long on his errand. Henry could hear 
 the rustling noises of the woods. He spoke 
 again, having waited in vain for her to speak. 
 
 " Have you lived on this island a great 
 while, mademoiselle?" 
 
 She did not answer. Henry looked cau 
 tiously out, though he knew he could not see 
 her. Having given her message, and sent 
 George for the fresh supply of water, she had 
 gone her own way. When George at length 
 handed in the gourd, he looked uneasily
 
 WAWATAM.
 
 THE GHOST-FLOWER 43 
 
 around instead of at the man who took it. 
 He struck off through the woods as true as 
 a dog on the trail, and Henry ate and drank, 
 hid the food which was left, and crept back 
 among the bones. He thought of himself 
 with contempt, skulking in a hole and giving 
 a woman the care and labor of feeding him. 
 To act and to dare were natural to him, rather 
 than to burrow and to wait. 
 
 He lay a long time thinking what he could 
 do for himself. His goods were confiscated. 
 Supplies which were on the way from Detroit 
 to him would probably be seized, also, and 
 his various clerks robbed as they returned 
 from trading in the interior. There was lit 
 erally no help for him except in the friendship 
 of Wawatam. His only relative in America, 
 Sir William Johnson, was too far away to 
 know of the fort's loss soon, except by guess 
 ing it from commotions among the Indians 
 eastward ; and his friend, Monsieur Cadotte, 
 at Sault Ste. Marie, might be unable to keep 
 the Lake Superior tribes from rising. 
 
 Henry regretted dropping Pani's blanket 
 in the attic. When he dropped it he expected 
 to leave his body also. There had been no 
 urgent need of it until he tried to make a bed
 
 44 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 in the cave. He had slept well on bones 
 before he knew they were there ; but as dark 
 ness filled the woods, and pressed their com 
 pany on him, the pulses of his body made 
 them creep and palpitate under him. Yet he 
 forced himself to lie still in the unendurable 
 place, until a human shape darkened the en 
 trance, whispering to him. 
 
 "What is the matter?" inquired the startled 
 Englishman. 
 
 " Come with us instantly, monsieur, and be 
 as silent as you can." 
 
 Glad that it was necessary to change his 
 place of concealment, he obeyed. His moving 
 hand touched the remnants of his supper. 
 
 " Shall I bring the gourd and dish with 
 me? They may be found here." 
 
 "Bring them? Yes. George will hide them." 
 
 Putting the things past herself, the French 
 girl drew Henry by the arm. He stood up 
 outside the cave, stretching the cramp from 
 his joints. The bushes were shaking where 
 George disappeared. It was not a dark night 
 like the stormy one which followed the mas 
 sacre, but a white one, lacing the ground 
 with every little twig. The moon in her first 
 quarter already rode high. This dense island
 
 THE GHOST-FLOWER 45 
 
 forest was a world of magic. Henry felt its 
 spell as he followed between walls of foliage. 
 There must have been a path, but to him it 
 was a submerged struggle through leaves. 
 His guide parted the way easily, as a fish 
 goes ; a shorter and broader body had passed 
 through before her. The trader did not know 
 who might be following behind. He reveled 
 in this swimming of the wilderness. He had 
 capacities for woodcraft. It gave freedom to 
 a repressed and manly part of him, and in 
 the darkness of the buried path he breathed 
 largely. Sweet pine, bruised by hurried 
 treading, gave out a tea-like fragrance. The 
 rank, loamy breath of moss, that night prayer 
 of wooded lands, made itself stronger than 
 any sensation of danger. Sometimes through 
 a break in the foliage he could see spacious 
 chambers of the woods hung with hemlock 
 tapestry, to which the moon wedged an en 
 trance. A man must cut his way to such a 
 spot, and Henry thought one of them might 
 be his destination. But the French girl led 
 him out of the tangle, and he saw through a 
 great arch of stone the clear surface of the 
 lake. It startled his pulses to come out of 
 the New World's heart facing this old ruin, the
 
 46 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 water-carven mimicry of a gigantic castle 
 gate. 
 
 His leader took him again by the wrist, 
 and drew him away from the stone arch and 
 down into the growths on the cliff. A path 
 descended toward the lake, so narrow that 
 one person had barely foot-room, but partly 
 hedged by trees and bushes along its outer 
 edge. To miss footing here was to tumble 
 into unmeasured depths. Henry followed, 
 steadying himself by a hand on trees, or by 
 clutching roots and the stone ribs of the 
 island. This thread of a path went down to 
 a slab of rock which glaciers had cut out and 
 canopied for a seat. George was already 
 resting in a corner of the niche in the bluff 
 side, and the other two sat down beside him, 
 and waited in silence for what was to happen. 
 The girl leaned forward, watching the path. 
 
 The lake's irregular rush upon its beach 
 could be heard below, and a thousand cries 
 of little living things which make populous 
 the wilderness sounded far and near. No 
 crackle or stealthy swish of steps overhead 
 could be detected. 
 
 Henry contrasted the figure at his left hand 
 and the English boy at his right, the high in 
 telligence and the gentle brute, dependent
 
 THE GHOST-FLOWER 47 
 
 on each other for companionship. It was a 
 satisfaction to sit beside the woman. She 
 whom he was to let alone had unusual influ 
 ence upon him. None of the rawness of girl 
 hood appeared in her face. She was his 
 mother for the time, taking care of him. The 
 trader noticed her dress. It was not the 
 plumage which he thought he had seen in 
 the beach kitchen, but a garment of dark- 
 brown wool, made of a blanket, like George's 
 pinafore. A cap of birch bark, having a ro 
 sette of curly fibers, was tied over her hair. 
 
 The twig and leaf tracery in front of them 
 was as black as ebony against the silver air 
 above the lake. All the world glistened with 
 dew, though their shelter was dry. There 
 was a rift in the trees towering up from the 
 beach through which they could see the 
 moon's track on the water, spread broadly 
 with cloth of gold. 
 
 "Is that your brudder?" George inquired, 
 leaning forward, and touching the French 
 girl to make her look at him. He turned his 
 thumb back at Henry. 
 
 "Yes," answered Henry; "lam her bro 
 ther. I promised Wawatam to treat her 
 as my sister." 
 
 "All good," said George.
 
 48 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 " What is her name, George ? " 
 
 " My name is Marie Paul," she herself an 
 swered, relaxing from her vigilance over the 
 path. She looked at the Englishman. He 
 was distinct enough in that filtered light, and 
 she thought him the best-made man she had 
 ever seen. 
 
 " George and I saw a strange canoe in the 
 bay," she explained, guarding the pitch of her 
 voice. 
 
 "Perhaps Wawatam has come back," said 
 Henry. 
 
 "We know his canoe." 
 
 " Did you see who was in it? " 
 
 "There was one person paddling, but it 
 was not Wawatam." 
 
 " I might have taken my chances with one 
 Indian." 
 
 " Not while you slept. The Skull Rock 
 may be known to all the Chippewas ; but this 
 place is known only to George and me. We 
 made the path to it." 
 
 Henry's heart swelled because she had 
 brought him to a place known only to George 
 and her. 
 
 " Then even Wawatam knows nothing 
 about this cave ? "
 
 THE GHOST-FLOWER 49 
 
 " No," said Marie. 
 
 " Why did you go to the bay in the night?" 
 
 "To watch it." 
 
 " But you were up watching last night." 
 
 " One does n't mind that here on the 
 island." 
 
 " Have you lived on the island long? " 
 
 " It is two years," answered Marie ; " for I 
 was past fifteen the first time I confessed to 
 the priest at L'Arbre Croche." 
 
 " Was the priest at L'Arbre Croche willing 
 for you to live here among Chippewas? Why 
 does n't he send you back to your own 
 people ? " 
 
 " How can he, monsieur, when my family 
 are all dead ? " 
 
 "Then you have no relatives?" 
 
 "Nobody but the old Indian woman that I 
 call grandmother." 
 
 The French predilection for Indians made 
 Henry smile. " Would n't you rather live 
 among whites ? " 
 
 "Monsieur, I could not live away from 
 this island. When you have been here awhile 
 you will understand. It bewitches you. There 
 can be no place like it. The chief took us 
 one winter to St. Ignace, because there was
 
 50 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 once the missionary village, and we could be 
 warmer. I watched the island by night and 
 day across the ice. Its white breast was my 
 mother's breast. In the spring I was thin, 
 and my eyes were hollow with longing for it. 
 You cannot live away from the island, mon 
 sieur, when it has once taken hold of you," 
 
 " You are happy ? " 
 
 " Everything is happy. What is there to 
 make one miserable? George and I have 
 found the place for your lodge, monsieur." 
 
 " I can stay here," said Henry. 
 
 "No, monsieur; this will not do: you must 
 have a lookout as well as a hiding-place. 
 To-morrow, if that canoe is gone, the grand 
 mother will give us mats, and you shall come 
 and help us build it." 
 
 " I shall be glad to," said Henry. His 
 large eyes were watching her with interest. 
 
 " You are not like the other English I have 
 seen," observed Marie. "You have gentle 
 manners. It is beautiful in a man to be 
 gentle and obedient." 
 
 " The English do not generally obey the 
 French," said Henry, smiling. 
 
 " No ; they love to drive us, to seize what 
 is ours. I have heard it said that is why the
 
 THE GHOST-FLOWER 51 
 
 English have just been killed at Fort Michili- 
 mackinac." 
 
 " Who was there on the island to say 
 that?" 
 
 " It was the Chippewa grandmother." 
 
 " I will not drive the French, nor seize 
 what is theirs," promised Henry. 
 
 She laughed, showing white teeth. The 
 trader wondered how a girl nurtured by the 
 Chippewa grandmother could keep an ex 
 quisite person. 
 
 " You must stay here the rest of the night, 
 and until we come for you." 
 
 " I will." 
 
 George was asleep in his corner, and as 
 Marie passed in front to wake him, the trader 
 turned himself to the same task. 
 
 " You must be very careful; he might make 
 a noise." 
 
 In her anxiety she barred Henry back. 
 The touch of her firm, healthy hand tingled 
 through him. 
 
 "All good," said George, when stood upon 
 his feet and warned to be quiet. He took 
 hold of Marie's wool frock for the ascent. 
 
 Henry also stood, and drew aside some 
 bushes which were in their way. His other
 
 52 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 hand went out solicitous to help her, but 
 was withdrawn with a self-restraint which she 
 keenly admired. 
 
 " I suppose you won't let me go up to the 
 top of the cliff with you ? " 
 
 " No ; stay here. It is after midnight. 
 Good morning, monsieur." 
 
 " Good morning, mademoiselle." 
 
 SUNRISE brought a perfect day. So trans 
 parent was the dazzling air that from the bay 
 one could see distinctly strips of meadow and 
 woods and the white French houses on the 
 mainland, and bars of sand edging the water 
 there. A narrow pink cloud floating in that 
 part of the sky made the lake blush in a long 
 line under it. On the high ridge of the island 
 were open, sun-flecked woods, inhabited by 
 white birches with broad, gray girdles around 
 their waists ; and scattered around their feet 
 lay the parchments they had dropped. Henry 
 climbed these slopes as wilfully as a truant, 
 Marie guarding his horizon, and George 
 traveling sturdily at his heels. They had two 
 loads of mats to carry to his lodge site, as 
 well as his provisions. These goods waited 
 under the bushes while they all loitered. The
 
 THE GHOST-FLOWER 53 
 
 suspension of peril causes a greater rebound 
 than its removal. 
 
 Great blossoms of pink and yellow fungus 
 spotted the ground. Their fleshy beauty was 
 dry to the hand, and, broken, they showed 
 sound hearts. Daisies and blush-colored bell- 
 shaped flowers were thick in grassy stretches; 
 and the maples were uncrumpling their very 
 last web leaves of unripened red. The ever 
 greens were full of small brown-crimson cones 
 like luxuriant bloom, and perfect top tassels 
 snapped thumb and finger at the sky. In 
 the open woods ancient beds of leaves had 
 been beaten down to mold, forming a neutral- 
 tinted background on which delicate etchings 
 of foliage were traced by the sun. Henry 
 looked around this lucent green world, feel 
 ing that he could never forget it its trans 
 parent shadows, the scattered light upon the 
 ground. They followed a deer-path up the 
 ridge, which Marie said was the usual trail to 
 the lodges. 
 
 " Because the strange canoe is gone, we 
 must not think there is no danger at all," she 
 repeated. 
 
 Henry smiled at care for his life, or his 
 goods, or his future. The present was to
 
 54 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 him the prime moment of existence. All his 
 days had led up to this one, the beginning of 
 some golden period unknown to men who 
 lived in anxiety and toil. 
 
 " The island has bewitched me," he said. 
 
 " I knew it would," she answered, looking 
 him through with clear gray eyes, glad that 
 he was made to own its influence. She was 
 always handling the material of life with joy 
 and wonder. 
 
 A distant gleam in the woods, unseen by 
 any one else, startled her from the path. She 
 ran over the quaking and rustling forest pave 
 ment, and dropped upon her knees. 
 
 " Ghost-flower," observed George, halting, 
 and he brought his face about for the con 
 centration of his eye on the distant object. 
 He followed her, tumbling at full length once, 
 and striking the leaf-dust from himself when 
 he arose. 
 
 Marie beckoned to the new inhabitant of 
 the island. She was sure there could be no 
 rapture like the first finding of Indian-pipes. 
 Her breath paused on her lips as she pushed 
 dead leaves aside and showed the bunch. 
 Their glistening white stems, on which the 
 lucent scales were as delicate as gauze, stood
 
 THE GHOST-FLOWER 55 
 
 in a family perhaps fifty strong, closely and 
 affectionately holding their waxen heads to 
 gether. Through some of them flushed a 
 faint pink, but the majority palpitated with 
 a spirit of lustrous whiteness in every part, 
 strangely purified from color. 
 
 "Look at them," said Marie, impressively. 
 "They are my own flower." 
 
 Henry knelt down and looked at them. 
 He looked also at her face in its birch cap, 
 her wide brows, the rounded chin and beau 
 tiful throat, and the braids hanging down 
 over the swell of her young breasts. She 
 lifted her eyelids, and shared the great plea 
 sure of the Indian-pipes with him. 
 
 " You may take these. But as soon as 
 you touch them they will begin to change. 
 Does n't it seem impossible they can turn 
 black ? " 
 
 " Do they turn black ? " 
 
 " Quite black, if they are handled. But left 
 in the woods, they go away like spirits." 
 
 Henry did not touch them. If he had not 
 been there, she would have sat a long time 
 by the ghost-flowers, watching the glistening 
 wonder of their open cups. She broke off a 
 handful of them, and gave them to him as
 
 56 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 a queen confers an order. The trader said 
 within himself that he did n't know what to 
 do with the things, but he readily cumbered 
 one hand with them. Marie then took some 
 for herself, and looked George over to see if 
 he were fit to hold any. The poor fellow 
 began to settle in his clothes, and to seek the 
 pockets which a white boy has a right to find 
 in his trousers, but which Marie would not 
 sew into his since he tore them out with 
 agates and quartz. She had herself tied his 
 drawing-string, but her practised eye caught 
 his neglected points, and she put the flowers 
 behind her. 
 
 " George will have to go to the lake and 
 wash before he can have some. We must all 
 turn back before it grows any later. Mon 
 sieur's lodge is to build. Monsieur," inquired 
 Marie, " what are you called ? " 
 
 The trader answered that his name was 
 Alexander Henry. She heard it without ap 
 proval. 
 
 "That may do for Fort Michilimackinac, 
 and other parts of the world, but here you are 
 Felix and Amedee. In the morning you will 
 be Felix, and in the afternoon you will be 
 Amedee."
 
 THE GHOST-FLOWER 57 
 
 The Englishman accepted this French 
 christening with a flush of satisfaction. " Why 
 not Amedee in the morning, and Felix in the 
 afternoon ? " 
 
 " I do not know, except that it is the other 
 way." 
 
 They moved back through the light woods 
 over delicate traceries of foliage shadow, and 
 scrambled down a steep part of the ridge, 
 holding by mossy hummocks to keep from 
 falling, and came to the bushes where the 
 mats were concealed. Henry and George 
 took the loads, and Marie led on the path 
 she wished them to follow. There was no 
 marked footway, but a parting of the forest 
 led them into a large open space from which 
 could be seen the high plateau of the island. 
 Morning lodge-smoke ascended in blue, ex 
 panding streamers from Wawatam's hidden 
 camp. Marie knew the old grandmother was 
 trotting about those upper woods, engaged in 
 the slave work of an Indian woman. 
 
 Pale-green juniper spread its ropy branches 
 on the ground in every direction, but she 
 piloted her stumbling carriers through the 
 thinner snares. Then they entered once 
 more that world of pines and cedars which
 
 $8 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 guarded the coast, and were long making 
 their way among boughs, though the ground 
 here was as smooth and dean as hard clay to 
 the foot. Everlasting twilight checked the 
 little growths of the woods, and pine-needles 
 made an aromatic soil of their own. 
 
 Henry's blond lace was flushed with the 
 tramp and portage when he pushed through 
 a tangle of Tines and young oaks to where 
 Marie finally waited. George ambled close 
 behind, enjoying die world and his usual oc 
 cupation. It was nothing for George to 
 tramp the length and breadth of the island, 
 only to fish or find agates at certain points. 
 His one eye saw the happy side of life. Had 
 he watched the massacre at Michflimackinac, 
 it must have typified to him some bliss be 
 stowed on the victims. He would have said, 
 "All good." 
 
 "This is the place, is it not, George?" 
 asked Marie. 
 
 They looked down into an amphitheater 
 padded with moss and curtained from the lake 
 by bushes. It was really one amphitheater 
 over another, irregularly broken with cush 
 ioned ledges and hidden rocks. Little trees 
 were massed together around it. A smell of
 
 THE GHOST-FLOWZR 59 
 
 loam as sweet as roses came up from the 
 place. George focused his eye, and nodded. 
 
 "I was sure of it," said Marie, "though we 
 never came through the woods before. Our 
 canoe is hid on the beach down there. You 
 cannot see this cove from the beach. It is 
 surprising that we ever parted the bushes 
 and found it. I see the rock for your table, 
 and the tree for your tent-pole."" 
 
 This world of velvet greenness was different 
 from anything Henry had seen. It was a 
 cascade of moss forever in the act of felling 
 down a mountain -side. The distant horizon 
 could be traced, bounding the lake. Far off 
 the blue water shaded to grass-green stripes 
 betwixt zones of purple. He had a speech 
 less feeling that he was in the hand of some 
 mighty spirit that changed Nature and him 
 from moment to moment. 
 
 "Where are we ?" he inquired. 
 
 "On the eastern side of the island, beyond 
 that arch of stone that you saw in the night."" 
 
 "Then we cannot see the mainland from 
 here?" 
 
 " No; but you can watch the strait," 
 
 They let themselves from rock to rock into 
 the lower amphitheater, and laid down their
 
 60 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 loads. George and Henry cut poles. They 
 varied his dwelling little from the common 
 Chippewa lodge of conical shape, with rain 
 proof mats bound about it for shingles. The 
 forenoon was spent when it was done, and its 
 door-flap curled back, showing the snug in 
 terior. Marie had it closed around the top 
 because its occupant would dare build no fire 
 within. He did not know how far she 
 searched for arm-loads of sweet pine to make 
 him a mattress. They all worked at overlap 
 ping and fastening the mats. The flat rock 
 she called his table stood near his tent en 
 trance. Marie lifted from the cove side a 
 fleece of branched moss which nearly covered 
 her, and spread it over his table. Dry, 
 fragrant bits stuck to her wool gown. Her 
 eyes were happy. She had never felt before 
 in such harmony with all things. You could 
 scarcely hear the water lap the beach. There 
 was no intrusion of sound as it rippled. 
 
 But a pair of eyes which were not happy 
 came stealthily to a rocky buttress, where 
 they could watch as from an upper window 
 the beautiful court below. Their dark and 
 piteous brooding lasted out the afternoon. 
 
 Many of the Indian-pipes had come to
 
 THE GHOST-FLOWER 61 
 
 camp headless, the slim decapitated necks re 
 proaching their bearers. Marie brought wet 
 sand from the lake, and made a mound for 
 the surviving ones to stand in beside the head 
 of Henry's green couch. She took George 
 to the water's edge, and washed his reluctant 
 face and hands. He whined; the fervor of 
 her lodge-building had given him reason to 
 hope she would forget his face and hands all 
 day, and perhaps until the hour of driving 
 him to that hated spot where she made him 
 bathe. 
 
 "Now dry yourself in the sun," said Marie. 
 
 " Poor George ! " complained the English 
 boy. "Why brudder not wash too? " 
 
 "He is older than you," explained Marie. 
 " He knows when to wash without being 
 told." 
 
 " Poor George ! Water so cold." 
 
 His closed eyelid had always a touching 
 expression of trying to help his single eye 
 plead with any persecutor, and Marie stroked 
 him tenderly, picking bark and moss branches 
 off his clothes. 
 
 "I will go with you to fill the gourd," she 
 promised, and all his distressed creases in 
 stantly reversed themselves.
 
 62 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 Henry came out with the gourd. The 
 beach was made of round stones, which rolled 
 under the foot, and turned walking into a toil 
 if not a danger. The high sun beat upon 
 Marie's cap, and her hair clung to her moist 
 forehead, but she drove the Englishman back. 
 
 "Monsieur Amedee, you must not come 
 out here." 
 
 " There is n't a canoe on the lake any 
 where. No one can see me." 
 
 " I won't permit you to come out, Monsieur 
 Amedee." 
 
 "She queen," said George, turning his 
 thumb back at Marie. " Brudder better mind 
 her ; George does. Chief does, too." 
 
 Henry laughed, not at the undisputed auto 
 crat, but at his own squawhood. His pliancy 
 to her wishes was what most pleased Marie 
 in the task she had undertaken. The tall 
 leaning saplings laced themselves undisturbed 
 betwixt him and the outer world. At first he 
 sat down in the abundant moss, wishing for a 
 good pipe of Indian tobacco ; and then he 
 thought of opening his provisions and spread 
 ing out the dinner. The earth was silent, 
 for here he missed even the chirping of 
 insects. It seemed so still one could hear a
 
 THE GHOST-FLOWER 63 
 
 pine-needle fall ; so still the soul's motion 
 could be heard. The sweet, elastic air of the 
 island filled him with vigor. He wondered 
 that this waste of his vigor in a hidden de 
 pression of the cliff did not annoy him more. 
 Henry was on one knee arraying the vivid 
 green tablecloth with his bark dishes, when a 
 gathering rustle of the lake startled him. It 
 was a hiss and a rush like the disturbance 
 made by many canoes, though without the 
 dip of paddles. He parted the bushes, and 
 looked anxiously out. Often from Fort 
 Michilimackinac he had seen white butterfly- 
 wings of sails blowing across the water or 
 making broken glimmers far off; but now not 
 a thing could be discovered on the strait. 
 The round island opposite, wooded to its 
 edge except that spit of sand which stretched 
 a grappling-hook westward, was by all tokens 
 a deserted place. There was no perceptible 
 change or increase of wind. Henry noticed, 
 however, a roller forming in mid-channel, 
 and sweeping as though tipped toward him. 
 It broke hissing on the pebbles, and the little 
 disturbance was over. Once more the lake 
 was a sapphire pavement scarcely crinkled 
 with iridescent spots. This commotion was
 
 64 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 merely its trick in the straits, beginning and 
 ending without apparent cause. 
 
 When Henry had set the table, he climbed 
 the broad track carpeted with ferns, which led 
 up the amphitheater. Half-way up were 
 three trees sheltering a natural chair of rock, 
 amply carved, and high backed. He carried 
 much dry, vivid-colored moss, and padded it, 
 the drapery overflowing to a foot-rest below. 
 Cups and little trees and branching tendrils 
 of the moss were wonders of beauty. Henry 
 enjoyed them as a barbaric embroidery which 
 he could heap on Marie's chair. The rocky 
 balcony was directly over him, and jealous 
 eyes watched this preparation ; watched his 
 neglected golden beard and mustache and 
 clustering hair, and the solicitude and sensi 
 tive motions of his fingers. Dirty buckskin 
 would not have spoiled the Englishman's 
 supple presence. His dress was substantial 
 and rich, and, in spite of hard usage during 
 his escape and hiding, it remained the dress 
 of a gentleman. 
 
 Marie and George came to the broad, thin 
 layer of waterfall which they sought; which 
 ran first over a bed of moss, then threaded 
 downward in inch-wide channels, dripped
 
 THE GHOST-FLOWER 65 
 
 from rocky shelves upon a terrace, and found 
 ways between rifted rocks to the lake. Dense 
 woods stood above it. And here a sucking 
 and gurgling of the water through pot-holes 
 made Marie lift her hand and George wrinkle 
 himself in apprehension. They both knew 
 what this jerky and fantastic booming was ; 
 but she loved the superstition, and the boy 
 frightened himself with it. 
 
 " Giant fairies ! " whispered George. 
 
 "Yes; they'll catch us," said Marie, and 
 he bellowed as she seized him to run. 
 
 Tribute being thus paid to the giant fairies, 
 George straightway forgot them, pulled off 
 his moccasins, and rolled up his trousers, to 
 wade up the steep to the clear tap which he 
 knew Marie preferred. 
 
 She held the brimming gourd while he 
 sought a flat stone for a seat. One mocca 
 sin was tied when her outcry of discovery 
 brought him erect. 
 
 " O George, you are almost sitting on 
 gull's eggs." 
 
 Three pale -green eggs, spotted with brown, 
 lay on the open beach. They both stooped 
 down and handled the pretty things, holding 
 them up to the sun.
 
 66 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 "We will roast them," decided Marie, 
 balancing the gourd. " Take this, George. 
 It is I who will carry the eggs." 
 
 She packed them with leaves in the pouch 
 hanging from her girdle, a brilliant piece of 
 embroidery done in pink and yellow quills 
 by the grandmother. 
 
 Henry heard the voices of his camp-makers 
 approaching, and the crush of revolving peb 
 bles, and the girl's scream. She was sup 
 porting herself on her hands when he ran 
 to her, and George stood fixed, holding the 
 gourd in a trustworthy grip. The boy was 
 trying to see what distress on the lake made 
 Marie weep, and drive to the canoe that very 
 Englishman she had been so anxious to keep 
 under cover. The Englishman found the boat, 
 and flung it unhelped across the beach. A 
 fish-hawk was dragging a robin through the 
 water to drown it. Marie had seen the hawk 
 drop like a stone with its prey, and she stum 
 bled as she ran for the canoe. The fish-hawk, 
 beaten off by the paddle, left the red-breasted 
 bird, and soared away, indignant at killing 
 prey for big unfeathered creatures, yet satis 
 fied that its work was well done. The robin 
 was past fluttering when Henry lifted it out
 
 THE GHOST-FLOWER 67 
 
 of the water. It was drowned, and its neck 
 was broken. He laid it in the canoe, feeling 
 that this was a tragedy which grosser sights 
 had robbed him of the power to mourn as he 
 should. 
 
 And it was a delight to be floating upon 
 liquid air. Sunshine lay on the bottom of the 
 lake. Pebbles were glistening money. The 
 shining bed rose deceitful to the very hand, 
 until you dipped a paddle to touch it, and 
 found it was fathoms below. That pale blue 
 medium clarified these depths which dazzles 
 us in the sun-warmed air overhead. Such 
 transparent, sky-born water could be no kin 
 to the frothy surge through which he had 
 paddled for his life two nights before. When 
 Henry drew the canoe on the beach, he saw 
 that Marie was painfully trying to stand. 
 He hurried with the robin in his hand, and 
 put one arm around her to support her. 
 
 "I can walk," she declared, her face strained 
 by the effort. "Run in, Monsieur Amedee, 
 and leave me alone." 
 
 "You are hurt. I wish I had let the robin 
 go. The fish -hawk drowned it before I could 
 reach it, anyhow." 
 
 "Let me have the poor thing. O little 
 
 TE NORMAL SCI
 
 68 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 bird, how it pained me to see you dragged 
 through the water!" 
 
 She stood on one foot, and held the robin 
 against her shoulder, smoothing its wet dark 
 feathers. 
 
 "You must let me help you," said Henry. 
 
 "I have only bruised my knee. A girl 
 who lives with Chippewas does n't mind that. 
 George has gone for leaves to put on it, and 
 to-morrow it will be well." 
 
 Marie limped a step or two, and physical 
 anguish whitened her lips. Without further 
 parley Henry lifted her in his arms. 
 
 "O Monsieur Amedee, you will break the 
 gull's eggs! We want to roast them for our 
 dinner." 
 
 "Birds and eggs are nothing to me," said 
 the Englishman. 
 
 He blamed the dead robin; but Marie held 
 it and her pocket up, and guarded them from 
 the boughs. He set her down in the lodge, 
 and turned his back upon the little home 
 stead, feeling disturbed as by a catastrophe 
 in his family, until George ran whimpering in 
 with some healing plant, and Marie finished 
 her surgery. She looked out of the lodge 
 when free to announce it, and called:
 
 THE GHOST-FLOWER 69 
 
 "The gull's eggs are safe." 
 
 "Now I breathe," mocked Henry. "I have 
 kicked about a great deal of moss on account 
 of the gull's eggs." 
 
 " Oh, but Monsieur Amedee," Marie laughed, 
 "this is not a serious hurt, indeed. It will 
 heal in a few days. You should have seen 
 George's sprained foot. Father Jonois, the 
 priest from L'Arbre Croche, had it in clay, 
 and made him lie still for a week." 
 
 George stooped down and felt of both his 
 feet. When he identified the one which had 
 been sprained, he crumpled his face with an 
 expression of great suffering, and offered it 
 to Henry to look at. 
 
 "Give it rest, my son," responded Henry, 
 paternally, and the boy sat down in literal 
 obedience, and took it upon his knee until 
 something else attracted his light attention. 
 
 Marie crept out of the lodge. The jealous 
 eyes in the balcony saw her lifted again, 
 laughing and startled, but confident in the 
 gentle strength of her bearer, and put in the 
 mossy chair. Her spirit came and went in 
 her face, eagerly remembering mother-fond 
 lings and mother-care, and wistfully looking 
 forward to some unrealized good. Her little
 
 70 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 ears, the shadings of her skin, and the soft 
 rounding of her features tempted as a child's 
 cheek tempts. The island shyness was in her 
 withdrawal from Henry when he would have 
 placed her more to his satisfaction in her 
 chair. But this day, to which two had come 
 from partial isolation in the wilderness, was 
 more effectual than months of ordinary meet 
 ing and parting. 
 
 "We must now build the oven, George," 
 directed Marie. So George brought pebbles 
 from the beach, and he and Henry scraped a 
 hollow in the moss and lined it with them. 
 The dryest bits of wood from drift washed 
 high, and bleached in the sun, were put into 
 the hollow. George knew how to start a fire 
 by the Indian method, but when the spark 
 answered his efforts, and was sheltered with 
 cedar boughs, both he and Henry were at 
 much trouble to keep the fire clear so that 
 little smoke would rise to betray the spot. 
 Red coals were soon fading to ashes, and the 
 eggs, wrapped in wet leaves, put under them. 
 It was a long meal, as protracted as some cul 
 minating feast, and accompanied by guarded 
 talk and laughter. Trivial things were no 
 longer trivial ; they had become intensified
 
 THE GHOST-FLOWER 71 
 
 life. George, unconscious of his chaperonage, 
 sat picking his egg-shell beside the table. 
 But the Englishman sat near Marie's feet, 
 and told her parts of his experience ; conceal 
 ing, as men do, some of it which direct-gazing 
 eyes like hers might not look at. Yet he had 
 the virginal innocence of young and beauti 
 ful manhood. This day hinted to him pos 
 sible harmonies in the dumb instrument of 
 life which he could not interpret. To make 
 wealth had been his best understanding of 
 living; to brave danger and exchange his 
 youth for money. There might, however, be 
 a perfection of existence for which there was 
 no equivalent. 
 
 A young balsam-fir, small and tough, and 
 as straight as a needle, grew near the table. 
 Marie selected this for a staff, and Henry cut 
 it down and peeled it, carefully removing the 
 branches, which grew in circles around the 
 stem. 
 
 " George and I will have to take the 
 canoe," she said regretfully. " We brought it 
 here for you ; but the trail from the bay will 
 be easier for me." 
 
 "Let me help you to the lodges," urged 
 Henry.
 
 72 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 " No; George will help me. The chief left 
 word that you must not risk being- seen about 
 the lodges." 
 
 " When is Wawatam coming back ? " 
 
 " I do not know. We will feed you with 
 the best we have. George and I have a gar 
 den in the open land at the other side of the 
 island. There may soon be vegetables for 
 you. My salad was out from the ground 
 last week, and I have a bed of little herbs." 
 
 Henry pictured the boy and girl working 
 in their garden, and felt a homesick desire to 
 follow them to the spot, and see again the 
 plants which answer civilized culture. 
 
 " I wish I could dig." 
 
 " Perhaps you may if that strange canoe is 
 really gone, and no other comes." 
 
 George gathered the fragments of black 
 ened egg-shell and put them into the oven, 
 and covered the pit of ashes with fir twigs. 
 The day was nearly spent when he held the 
 canoe to the beach and the other two came 
 halting toward it, Marie looking abroad on 
 the lakes and feeling the influence of late 
 afternoon. Accustomed as she was to their 
 changes and misty effects, they gave her 
 beauty at this gazing which they had before
 
 THE GHOST-FLOWER 73 
 
 withheld. She stood still between her staff 
 and Henry, and loved them anew. The sun 
 was already behind cliffs, but not swallowed 
 by the water. His warning" was bringing 
 stray island birds home. The evening col 
 ors were not yet created; only a fore-glow 
 hinted what they might be when sunset was 
 complete. 
 
 The Englishman owned no hat to take off, 
 but he raised his hand to uncover his head as 
 the boat moved away. He and the French 
 girl both smiled, and she admonished him 
 afresh, so he went back through the curtain 
 into the loneliness of his little world. The 
 day spent in the Skull Rock seemed an ex 
 perience at the beginning of life. He felt 
 sure Wawatam could not send him to Detroit. 
 Savage living meant irregular meals and wild 
 diet, and animal wariness in going about; 
 yet he wondered if he would be domesticated 
 at the lodges when Wawatam came back, and 
 if they should pass the winter on the island. 
 
 His camp was becoming a pit of gloom, 
 and he thought of putting his provisions in 
 the lodge where he could keep them from 
 small night prowlers. He found rolled up 
 in the pack a deerskin bag holding an en- 
 
 4)
 
 74 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 tire set of dressing- tools which he had once 
 given his brother Wawatam, who hung them 
 up unused. The joy of a civilized man in 
 brushes overbalanced all Henry's losses. He 
 stood with the bag in his hand, blessing the 
 fraternal impulse which had made him at 
 tempt to groom his brother, when the top of 
 the green amphitheater populated itself to 
 his dilating sight. Pani, the Indian girl who 
 had concealed him in Langlade's attic, stood 
 up from creeping on her hands and knees. 
 She had appeared as silently in the time of 
 Henry's peril at the fort, and he glanced 
 sharply in every direction, his blood leaping 
 at that peculiar swell and gush of the lake 
 which he knew must be only a ripple. 
 
 Pani stepped as deftly as a cat down the 
 irregular slope, keeping her eyes on the 
 ground she trod. Nor did she look up when 
 the Englishman met her, asking in haste : 
 
 "Are the Chippewas coming, Pani ? " 
 
 The Indian girl shook her head. Her arms 
 hung humbly by her sides. 
 
 " Do you bring news from Michilimacki- 
 nac ? " 
 
 She again shook her head.
 
 THE GHOST-FLOWER 75 
 
 " Did you come here by yourself? " 
 
 Pani nodded. The toe of her right moc 
 casin worked back and forth in the moss. 
 
 "Then it was your canoe they saw. in the 
 bay. And you paddled over alone from the 
 mainland ? That 's not an easy task, and you 
 took many risks. What made you do such a 
 thing?" 
 
 She lifted her eyes, and gave him a look 
 which confused his speech. He felt ashamed 
 that his strongest conscious desire was to have 
 this squaw, who saved his scalp, back in Fort 
 Michilimackinac. 
 
 " I have wished for your blanket, Pani, 
 the one I dropped in the attic, more than 
 once since I came to the island." 
 
 " I brought it," spoke Pani in imperfect 
 French. 
 
 " You are a good girl. But I don't need 
 it now. Wawatam's family have built me a 
 lodge, and made me very comfortable." 
 
 Henry noticed the bronze of her arms in 
 their trinkets of whiter metal, and the coarse, 
 strong threads of her hair. The language of 
 her attitude embarrassed him. He swung the 
 deerskin sack in an uncertain hand, and turned
 
 76 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 partly away from her, wondering what he 
 should do. Pani spoke again, and the guttural 
 fact which she uttered made him color. 
 
 " The ghost-flower girl, Wawatam's." 
 
 " I understand all that, Pani," said the 
 Englishman. " Sit down, will you ? You 
 must be tired." No heart could feel more 
 gratitude than his felt ; but the droll dismay 
 of a man who unexpectedly finds himself too 
 attractive appeared in his face ; and Marie 
 saw it. 
 
 The wash of her returning canoe he had 
 taken for the ripple. Henry understood why 
 the white children came back in such haste 
 and silence. Behind Marie's face was George's. 
 Her lips were parted to give warning. 
 
 She was not conscious of spying on the 
 other woman, but studied Pani's errand in 
 tently, leaning her head sidewise to get a 
 better view betwixt the bushes. This barbaric 
 figure, though coming from the settlement, 
 bore the stamp of the wilderness ; as Marie, 
 though inhabiting a wild island, had still the 
 undescribed air of the women of France. The 
 difference between them was more than a dif 
 ference of race ; it was a difference of spirit. 
 But the white girl took no thought of herself
 
 THE GHOST-FLOWER 77 
 
 in contrast with this new comer. The cruel 
 amusement of youth appeared in her eyes and 
 at the corners of her mouth. She resented 
 vaguely as in her own person the drooping 
 humility of the Indian girl. 
 
 Henry exclaimed with too much eagerness 
 when he met her eye : 
 
 " Mademoiselle, Pani has come over from 
 the fort. This is Pani, the only friend I had 
 when the garrison was killed. She hid me 
 in Langlade's attic." 
 
 " Does she bring word that any Chippewas 
 are coming ? " inquired Marie. 
 
 " No ; she knows of none." 
 
 " Did the chief send her with any mes 
 sage ? " 
 
 " Did he, Pani ? " said the Englishman, 
 passing the inquiry on. But the reticent en 
 voy made no reply. 
 
 " I am afraid she has been about the island 
 hungry since yesterday, for it must have been 
 her canoe you saw." 
 
 " That is true, monsieur, for we have just 
 found it again." 
 
 " Can't you take her to the lodges with 
 you ? " asked Henry, feeling his brain emit 
 the proposition in a flash.
 
 78 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 " Certainly," answered Marie, with sincere 
 readiness. "The grandmother will make her 
 very welcome." 
 
 " Go, then, with mademoiselle, Pani. It was 
 good of you to remember me, and come so 
 far to see if I were safe." 
 
 " Let us go, Pani," said the French girl's 
 persuasive contralto. " The sun is setting. It 
 will soon be dark in the woods." 
 
 Pani gave her a slighting glance. The 
 southern Indian's shape rose, the shoulders 
 drawing backward and the aboriginal features 
 rearing themselves ; and turning her head 
 toward Henry, she scorned his tame care 
 with the bitterest look he ever encountered. 
 
 The three Europeans watched her supple 
 back as she mounted the ascent of rocks and 
 ferns. Even George dumbly felt her hurt, 
 and would have restrained her. His one eye 
 remained focused on the pines which closed 
 after Pani until Marie pulled him to the canoe. 
 Reluctantly handling his paddle, he sent the 
 boat out on a pink sheen, reflecting sunset. 
 Rose-colored air softened near cliffs and dis 
 tant islands. Eastward there was no horizon 
 line, but a concave hemisphere with little par 
 allel lines of pink vapor drawn across it. A
 
 THE GHOST-FLOWER 79 
 
 triangular ripple was broken in the motionless 
 lake by the canoe. Already the arch of rock 
 with its avalanche of waste below was a 
 savage ruin, framing darkness. 
 
 Henry called once after the boat, but got 
 no reply. He thought of the night woods 
 and an Indian's skulking ; and then he felt 
 ashamed of himself for imagining that a 
 gentle and merciful creature like Pani could 
 do harm to any other woman. 
 
 He sat down in the lodge door, his aimless 
 hand encountering the drowned robin, which 
 Marie had left there. He took it up and 
 stroked the wet feathers, for its little plumes 
 still lay penciled close against its breast ; and 
 while he stroked it, his own breast rose and 
 fell with the strong sigh of a man who suffers 
 unconfessed pain.
 
 PART III 
 
 THE RIFT IN THE ISLAND 
 
 A SHES as soft as down and as fine as the 
 JTV. motes which swim unseen in the air 
 blew from a pine fire toward the lodges. 
 There were two of these conical houses, 
 standing near together and facing the west. 
 The space of fairly level grassy land was 
 surrounded by oaks and beeches, which arose 
 in strength, stretching their limbs abroad and 
 making shady arcades all around it. 
 
 Marie Paul sat on a bench in one of these 
 shadows, her quill-work in her lap, watching 
 the Indian grandmother drag fuel up from 
 the forest. In times past she had put her 
 self heartily to such tasks when George was 
 not at hand, sparing the aged back which 
 bent to so much labor. But now her gaze 
 at the old woman saw nothing ; it was indif 
 ferent to the outer signs of life. Her languid 
 
 so
 
 THE RIFT IN THE ISLAND 81 
 
 head rested against the tree behind her; lace- 
 work of the pine- ashes formed upon her knee 
 without being distorted by a movement. She 
 was conscious of a stifling breath or two as 
 the blue veil was curled around her by the 
 wind. This was the second day Marie had 
 crept to the bench that her Latin prejudices 
 long before caused to be built in the camp. 
 As for Wawatam and his grandmother, they 
 preferred a mat on the ground, and George 
 sat anywhere, with adaptability unusual in 
 his race. But Marie must have a raised seat 
 in the shadow of jutting trees. 
 
 She listened for George's return. She had 
 trusted him twice with the Englishman's food. 
 The first day George did not find Henry in 
 his camp, and she sent the boy back in the 
 afternoon. Henry had then returned from 
 tramping through the woods. 
 
 "Br udder lonesome," declared George. 
 "B rudder can't keep still." 
 
 The squaw pushed her fagot under the pot, 
 and squatted on the windward side of the 
 fire. Her coarse hair hung down her back. 
 A toothless smile opened the puckers in her 
 face as she met the girl's eye. Marie won 
 dered if her own neck would ever fall into
 
 82 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 such leather creases, and the underlying 
 bloom fade and blacken in her skin. A 
 week ago she had looked forward to age 
 as some indifferent change to which she 
 must come with rocks and trees, expecting 
 dignity from hoariness; but now she dreaded 
 the remote robber with unaccountable terror. 
 It was a wicked thing to value her tinted, 
 supple flesh with such passion; Father Jonois 
 would lay penance on her if he discovered 
 this state of mind. 
 
 " Noko," spoke Marie, using the familiar 
 abbreviation for grandmother, " are you very 
 old ? " 
 
 The Chippewa woman turned her head from 
 side to side mournfully the universal sign- 
 language of barbarian women when expres 
 sion fails them. " Old as the summer-maker, 
 my child." 
 
 Marie no longer cared eagerly for the sum 
 mer-maker and his kindred myths. 
 
 " Do you like to be old ? " 
 
 " It cannot be helped. You bear children, 
 you draw wood and dress meat, and the sea 
 sons pass. It cannot be helped." 
 
 The fate of aboriginal woman stared Marie 
 in the face. Her black lashes made narrow
 
 THE RIFT IN THE ISLAND 83 
 
 lines of her gray eyes as she pondered the 
 sight. By some way she arrived at the 
 inquiry : 
 
 " Noko, what is your opinion of men ? " 
 
 "They are all the same, on island or main 
 land, my child. When you are beautiful they 
 kill one another for you ; when you are ugly 
 they sneer at you. Two chiefs once fought 
 over me." The squaw laid her arms on her 
 knees and laughed in them at the recollection. 
 
 " But white men they are not like red 
 men." 
 
 " Yes ; all the same. Men are men. The 
 more they come soft, humble, creeping the 
 ground like the panther, the more they will 
 eat you up and laugh at you." 
 
 " Then, Noko, why did the good God make 
 women to believe in them ? " 
 
 " Because the good God knows they can't 
 get along without women." 
 
 " But there must be some good men, very 
 high above panthers and such things. Is your 
 own grandson a panther ? " 
 
 " No ; my grandson he is a good man," an 
 swered Noko, with tribal jealousy. " Much 
 better than the French or English." 
 
 "I should like to ask the priest about it;
 
 84 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 but there are some things I cannot ask him, 
 no matter how they perplex me. We ought 
 to be old first, Noko, and when we have wis 
 dom enough, grow young." 
 
 " Would n't do," said the grandmother, 
 rising to stir the pot. " Never would marry 
 any man at all, then." 
 
 The savage cast of her copper face, with 
 its prominent nose-arch and cheek-bones, 
 was not repellent. Since coming to the 
 island Marie had made the best of Noko's 
 company. It was scarcely improving; she 
 went to the woods and the saints for society; 
 but it was comforting. The primitive woman 
 is a human hen; such wings as she has are 
 spread to shelter her brood. Noko cooked 
 choice bits for the growing girl, and on sum 
 mer evenings often sat chanting for her the 
 folk-songs and stories of the Chippewas. 
 Noko's knotted red hands were spared many 
 a hard task by skilful younger ones. The 
 grim but wholesome old heart had indeed 
 but one fondness in its age, and that was not 
 for Wawatam. The grandmother was only 
 proud of him. 
 
 A phcebe-bird darted calling across the 
 open space, its speck of shadow moving like
 
 THE RIFT IN THE ISLAND 85 
 
 a flash. Some comer startled it from the 
 lower boughs. Marie turned her head, and 
 saw the extended body of a deer rising up 
 the slope, and George's face under it. Henry 
 and Wawatam were behind him, coming to 
 the lodges together. 
 
 Wawatam called in Chippewa to Noko, 
 who answered him; and George threw the 
 deer down before her. The chief turned 
 toward Marie. From a stalking, stalwart 
 Indian he changed suddenly to an apolo 
 getic figure in dejected buckskins. She had 
 climbed upon the bench, and held to the tree 
 for support. Her back was toward him and 
 the Englishman. Every soft curve of waist 
 and shoulder was followed by the close gown ; 
 half-curls powdered her neck in a short, 
 raveled plume, the hair parting above them in 
 a white track from nape to crown. Immature 
 as it was, this girlish figure had enthralling 
 force which made it a central presence. 
 
 Henry did not understand why she hid her 
 face. His voice had a piercing appeal as he 
 asked: 
 
 " What is the matter, mademoiselle ? " 
 
 " The chief knows," answered Marie. "Ask 
 him."
 
 86 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 " War- kettles boiling at the fort," explained 
 Wawatam in guarded Chippewa to his bro 
 ther. He put his hand on his mouth. To 
 have the hated feast detected the moment of 
 his return was confusing. 
 
 "His face looks like a wolfs," said Marie. 
 
 " But I did not want to taste it," pleaded 
 the enforced cannibal. He cast a glance of 
 wrath at his grandmother, who had revealed 
 that such feasts were held after every Indian 
 victory. It was very unpleasant to have 
 women meddle in tribal politics. Noko and 
 George were in consultation about the deer. 
 
 " Consider what a poor lot we were at 
 Michilimackinac, mademoiselle," said Henry, 
 recklessly. " If Wawatam has eaten a bite 
 of the garrison to save the trader, he has 
 afflicted himself to little purpose, and is to be 
 pitied." 
 
 Wawatam's eyes were uneasy, and his 
 usual placid benevolence was driven out of 
 his countenance. He knew that Father Jonois 
 would exact penance from him as a Christian 
 Indian ; but what was a Chippewa chief to do 
 when his people boiled the English and made 
 him dip his hand in the kettle as a test of 
 good faith?
 
 THE RIFT IN THE ISLAND 87 
 
 Marie's trifling with his dignity was the 
 amusement of his life. When she was a year 
 younger she had beaten his shoulders with a 
 balsam stick for presuming to slight some 
 command of hers, and Wawatam had doubled 
 himself over and taken this squaw-drubbing 
 with silent delight. Yet she depended on 
 him as a father, and spoke of him as the 
 chief, never using his name in the careless 
 English fashion. The relations between the 
 Christianized savage and his French foster- 
 child were so natural and guileless that in 
 all her imaginings she had never pictured 
 Wawatam as her lover. There was in her 
 blood no instinct against him except the in 
 stinct of rating him with George simply as 
 one of her good creatures. Wawatam knew 
 how to fight, how to hunt, and how to manage 
 his fraction of the Chippewas. He could 
 command any unmarried squaw of the tribe 
 to his lodge. And he had thought it would 
 be easy, when the convenient time came, to 
 mention to Marie that they would take the 
 sacrament of marriage together at L'Arbre 
 Croche. Father Jonois did not discourage 
 this plan. 
 
 "Tell him to go away," said Marie.
 
 88 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 Wawatam did not understand her English. 
 In camp his entire family spoke Chippewa. 
 He turned for interpretation to Henry, the 
 wrinkles at his eye-corners drawn down by a 
 sinister look. Henry felt it was a climax in 
 his experience when he was forced to mediate 
 between an elected bride and a cannibal hus 
 band from whom she hid her face. He had 
 seen her moving like a bird through the wil 
 derness, a part of it and its free life. Disgust 
 for all the conditions which hamper existence 
 here filled him with sudden desire for death. 
 He wondered at his hiding and his pains to 
 prolong such contemptible misery. 
 
 " She says she wants you to go away." 
 
 Wawatam spoke angrily to Marie in Chip 
 pewa: 
 
 Why must I go away ? Is it because the 
 Pani woman has been here and brought me 
 a message?" 
 
 " Do you mean the Pani woman who came 
 to monsieur's camp ? She did not take a mes 
 sage. And if I had sent you one, would you 
 have heeded it any more than you did the 
 priest, who must be at Michilimackinac now ? " 
 
 The abjectness of a smitten conscience re 
 turned upon Wawatam. He said in gutturals
 
 THE RIFT IN THE ISLAND 89 
 
 under his breath, "The Pani woman was a 
 fool ! " 
 
 " I am a very bad man," he acknowledged, 
 taking Henry into new confidence with twin 
 kles of the eye. 
 
 " You are so bad that I cannot endure to 
 look at you. You are so bad I am afraid no 
 saint will intercede for you. Go into the 
 woods and fast." 
 
 " But if the chief begins a fast now he will 
 leave his brother in danger." 
 
 " Why did you bring him here if there is 
 danger ? " 
 
 " My brother is safest where I am." 
 
 " But why have you come ? " 
 
 " The best trail leads past the lodges." 
 
 " What is the danger ? " 
 
 " A band of warriors have come from De 
 troit. He is the only Englishman left. They 
 told me they must have him." 
 
 There was silence in camp. George lolled 
 on the ground at a distance, watching the 
 grandmother's skilful knife as she skinned the 
 deer. The sun was warm on his back, and 
 his hair showed glints like gold-stone. He 
 would never be lashed by the mysterious 
 tides of his own spirit
 
 90 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 "What are you going to do?" asked 
 Marie. She had not yet turned her face from 
 the tree. 
 
 " Going to put him in a canoe to go to 
 Sault Ste. Marie." 
 
 " When ? " 
 
 " Now." 
 
 " Does the chief go with him ? " 
 
 " No ; it is in Madame Cadotte's boat that 
 he will go." 
 
 " Where is it now ? " 
 
 " Coming from Michilimackinac to take 
 him off on the west side of the island." 
 
 Marie knew without explanation that this 
 would be the safest place for Henry to em 
 bark. There was a sandy, level beach where 
 the water was deep enough to allow the 
 approach of even a sailing vessel, which could 
 then move on unobserved around the north 
 ern shore toward the Sault. She had once 
 seen Madame Cadotte, the Indian wife of the 
 Frenchman who was called chief of all the 
 Indians around the Sault. 
 
 Rapid Chippewa questions and answers 
 escaped Henry, anxious as he was to under 
 stand them. 
 
 " But if other canoes meet them, will he 
 not be seen ? "
 
 THE RIFT IN THE ISLAND 91 
 
 " No matter," answered Wawatam ; "he is 
 a Canadian now, like the Canadians that row 
 for Madame Cadotte." 
 
 Marie half turned herself and looked at 
 Henry. He was so changed that she won 
 dered how she had been sure of his pres 
 ence when he and Wawatam were ascending 
 the slope together. Some of his own gar 
 ments were discarded, and he wore in their 
 place the blanket coat of ordinary Canadians, 
 and like them had a handkerchief knotted 
 around his head. His face was clean shaven, 
 and it gave her through every revealed line, 
 and through fixed eyes, the silent passion and 
 longing which had already grown mighty 
 under repression. That chemistry of the 
 spirit which draws two irresistibly together, 
 through space, through obstacles, through 
 time, which may work anguish to both, but 
 must work because they exist, kept these 
 young creatures an instant conscious of 
 nothing but each other. Marie resisted it. 
 She sometimes had such intimations of happi 
 ness when lying in the woods with her head 
 beside a bunch of Indian-pipes, or when a 
 height was hooded with thunder-clouds while 
 the beaches flashed in the sun. The joy 
 was like a recollection of heaven; blessed-
 
 92 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 ness came near ; you could not account for 
 it. She thought it had come oftener when 
 she was a child. But her capacity for it 
 grew. Every atom of her body glowed 
 with intense life. She hid her face against 
 the tree. 
 
 Wawatam's features hardened. Any man 
 but his English brother might have died for 
 such a look. His natural hatred of Anglo- 
 Saxon stock urged him to feel for the scalp- 
 lock on that golden head. But he was bound 
 by visions and traditions stronger in his spirit 
 than the Christian religion to keep in safety 
 the man of his adoption. He said to himself 
 in Chippewa, " It is the chief and not the 
 Pani woman that was a fool." 
 
 " Come on," he said curtly to Henry. 
 
 The trader, conscious of the offense he had 
 given, yet drew a long, reluctant breath. 
 
 " Good-by, mademoiselle." 
 
 " Good-by, Monsieur Felix." 
 
 "Heavens! Felix!" Henry drew another 
 deep breath. 
 
 " It will not be Amedee until afternoon." 
 
 " In the afternoon I shall be far from the 
 island." 
 
 " Poor Monsieur Felix ! "
 
 THE RIFT IN THE ISLAND 93 
 
 " Thank you, mademoiselle, for your thou 
 sand kindnesses to me. I blame myself for 
 the hurt you got on the beach." 
 
 "What a tender conscience you have, 
 monsieur ! " She was no longer his careful 
 mother, but a mocking creature, giving him 
 one laughing look over her shoulder. " It 
 was the fish-hawk." 
 
 " I hope your lameness is cured." 
 
 " The only thing that hurts me now, mon 
 sieur, is that the chief killed gulls to make my 
 feather dress, instead of fish-hawks." 
 
 " Then you have a dress of gull-feathers?" 
 
 " Yes ; it turns rain." 
 
 " You wore it by the fireplace on the beach 
 the night I came to the island ? " 
 
 " Yes, monsieur. The chief was a long 
 time collecting breasts. And when he brought 
 them to me I cried that so many birds 
 should die to cover me. If I but had a cap 
 to match it now," added Marie, drolly. 
 
 "The French have tender hearts," mocked 
 Henry. 
 
 " It is true, Monsieur Felix. They never 
 desire the death of any one. It is not neces 
 sary for them to recite from their prayer- 
 books as the English do, when the priest
 
 94 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 says, ' Thou shalt do no murder ' ' Lord, 
 have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts 
 to keep this law.' " 
 
 She mimicked the congregational chant, 
 and Henry laughed aloud. Wawatam was in 
 the tense attitude of his forefathers watching 
 an enemy from ambush. When her voice 
 mocked and Henry laughed the chief's face 
 relaxed. He picked up Marie's quill-work from 
 the ground, and, before laying it beside her, 
 passed his fingers along the shining stitches, 
 as one might try some chord which would not 
 vibrate. Living two years under the thumb 
 of a French islander had bred softer practices 
 in him than he cared to have his braves see. 
 
 " I wish I could do some service for you, 
 mademoiselle," said Henry. 
 
 They were parting forever. And why 
 should they not part forever who had seen 
 each other less than a brief week ? Lakes, 
 and land, and perils, time and silence, would 
 crowd between them. The summer day was 
 perfect around them, the sun turning shadows 
 black on a vividly lighted earth. 
 
 " Good-by, mademoiselle," repeated Henry. 
 
 " Good-by, Monsieur Felix," she answered, 
 keeping her back to him.
 
 THE RIFT IN THE ISLAND 95 
 
 "Will you give me your hand?" 
 
 Marie extended a hand behind her. 
 
 "That is the left one." 
 
 She gave him the other, and it lay unre 
 sponsive in his while he wrung it. 
 
 "Are you angry with me?" 
 
 " Oh, no, Monsieur Felix." 
 
 " I have missed you these two days. I 'm 
 very glad I found you on the island," blun 
 dered the man. " It has been a pleasure ; I 
 hope you will be happy." 
 
 " No more time," said Wawatam. 
 
 Henry kissed the round and childish hand. 
 He was permitted by the usage of the times 
 to do that. Wawatam had seen officers at 
 the fort kiss Madame Cadotte's hand, for she 
 was a woman greatly respected. Marie felt 
 the touch of lips. She let her hand fall as he 
 turned away, and stood still with her face 
 toward the tree. 
 
 Bushes stirred as Henry and Wawatam 
 brushed through them on the direct trail to 
 the western landing. Wawatam bade George, 
 as he passed that happy boy, go back through 
 the woods and watch for Indians from the 
 fort. 
 
 " What do with them ? "
 
 96 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 " Nothing. Bring word back to the 
 lodges." 
 
 Reluctant to leave the deer, George's back 
 ward looks dwelt with it, and not with the 
 men. But Noko lifted herself from the quar 
 tering, and watched the Englishman out of 
 sight. The trees soon received him, and she 
 was not sorry. He had a handsome white face, 
 and eyes which looked through you with an in 
 fluence like the moon. Marie had relieved her 
 old bones from tramping to his haunts with 
 his food, and she hoped her grandson was 
 now taking him off for a long hunt. The less 
 one saw even of adopted Englishmen the 
 better. 
 
 "Watch Indians," said George, making a 
 half circuit of the bench to face Marie, and 
 intimating that he waited for his usual com 
 panionship. 
 
 Marie gave him a smile of the lips, and 
 picked bark from the tree, letting it fall on 
 fungus that spread a pink umbrella between 
 the oak's roots : many bits glanced off, but 
 one balanced itself and resisted efforts to dis 
 place it. 
 
 " Chief says watch Indians," repeated 
 George.
 
 THE RIFT IN THE ISLAND 97 
 
 " Bring my stick and cap from the lodge," 
 said Marie. 
 
 George brought them, and stood like a 
 young bear on his hind feet while she let her 
 self down from the bench. He would have 
 dropped on all fours and made himself a step 
 ping-stone, had any other mind given him 
 the impetus. The two went down the trail 
 toward the beach. As soon as they were 
 below the level of the grandmother's vision, 
 Marie paused in her limp, and said : 
 
 ''You watch the bay while I watch the 
 woods." 
 
 George's face fell into creases of distress. 
 " George all alone," he complained. "George 
 all alone twice." 
 
 " But I cannot run with you now. I am a 
 hundred years old, like Noko." 
 
 George still squirmed, his red face having 
 the blank yet wrathful expression of a wilful 
 baby's. 
 
 "Very good. Take me with you then. 
 But you must carry me," said Marie. 
 
 George had carried her up from the bay 
 the night of her accident. He remembered 
 the strain, their long rests, Marie's vain 
 efforts to help herself, and his exhaustion
 
 98 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 when they reached the lodges. His loose 
 and fleshy body had not the muscular 
 compactness of Wawatam's or the mature 
 strength of Henry's. He yielded, and went 
 on alone with his rolling gait, looking back 
 as long as he could see her. 
 
 Marie turned around the base of the camp, 
 and put her halting limb to reckless use. She 
 knew short cuts among the pines, and ven 
 tured many before untried. She flung herself 
 through mats of juniper in the open places as 
 a Highlandman crosses streams. In times 
 past Marie had loved to test her endurance 
 by long journeys afoot, and labors about the 
 camp. It was sweet to work to the point of 
 exhaustion, and then throw herself on her 
 bed of hemlock and blankets, and sleep as 
 the rocks sleep. Her vitality was so full that 
 every awakening from sleep became a new 
 birth. She ran out as rosy as Aurora under 
 the morning sky, her flesh tingling with the 
 delight of being alive. But this haste she 
 was making to cross the island had none of 
 the laughter of youth in it. The regular 
 sweep of the muscles which becomes a silent 
 music, and makes of walking a graceful and 
 glorious function, was lost to her as she panted
 
 THE RIFT IN THE ISLAND 99 
 
 along. Last week a goddess moved from 
 beach to headland as freely as the light ; 
 to-day a limping girl, pallid with the effort, 
 tried to reach the north shore before Madame 
 Cadotte's boat should pass by. She had no 
 reason for wishing to see Madame Cadotte's 
 boat ; but when one has sat still awhile, it 
 becomes impossible for one to sit still any 
 longer. 
 
 The high land sloped gradually to alluvial 
 stretches in the direction which Henry and 
 Wawatam had taken, but Marie climbed di 
 rectly down a hillside so steep that she was 
 obliged to hold to trees and the knotty earth 
 itself. She missed her hold, and slid danger 
 ously, but the scratching and bruising did not 
 detain her an instant. Near the bottom she 
 noticed that her balsam staff was no longer 
 in her hand. It was not worth the hard 
 ascent, yet she climbed back in panting haste, 
 and found it lodged in a bunch of fern. A 
 stout stick could have been broken below with 
 half the pains. 
 
 The sun stood overhead as she hurried 
 through the lower forest. Her course was as 
 nearly straight as the eye could direct it, and 
 she came to the lake in time to see a boat
 
 100 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 with sails set getting beyond the eastern 
 shore of the island. Flecks of red like the 
 kerchief-bound heads of Canadians glimmered 
 against the white. No other visible thing 
 moved on Lake Huron. 
 
 It might not be Madame Cadotte's boat. 
 Marie sat on the rocks, watching eastward 
 and westward until she lost it, and nothing 
 else appeared on the void. A wind which she 
 had not noticed in her rapid journey made 
 indigo stripes across the water. There was a 
 low roar as of little falls. Though white- 
 fringed rollers ran before the wind, some 
 clouds made flat, moving islands of their 
 shadows. Overhead the light dazzled. 
 
 Moving from rock to rock, Marie waited 
 along the beach. Jaded, and dragging her 
 limb, she came to a remembered bluff. 
 Some impulse of the wild things among 
 which she had lived drove her to a hole 
 under the bluff. It was necessary to descend 
 among fragments of rock, and to stoop down 
 to find it. She carried with her such moss as 
 offered, and crept through a tunnel which led 
 her into a high cavern. Water trickled from 
 above through the place. She made herself 
 a divan of the moss in the driest spot, lying
 
 THE RIFT IN THE ISLAND 101 
 
 recklessly at length, her head on her arm, 
 hidden from the light of day. 
 
 The life of the woods and the hissing of 
 the lake were shut out. Her consciousness 
 extended only as far as the water trickling 
 down her cell. Scarcely a glimmer of light 
 came through the tunnel, for its mouth was 
 sunk below the beach. Marie turned once in 
 the afternoon, and changed the arm on which 
 she lay. Time's divisions were lost ; she had 
 come upon the eternal now. Yet so much is 
 the spirit in the body's keeping that her 
 stupor passed to sleep, and she lay in that 
 sweet death until forced to a numb resurrec 
 tion. " Nothing matters," said Marie when 
 she roused. 
 
 The lake was a sea of glass and fire, and 
 the hush of summer night was already in the 
 woods. The Detroit Indians might have 
 crossed from Michilimackinac and scattered 
 themselves in search over the island. Dew 
 dampened her hair and the soles of her moc 
 casins. The rapid fluttering of scarcely seen 
 bats grazed her cheek. She kept repeating 
 with dull conviction, " Nothing matters now." 
 
 Wawatam was not at the lodges when this 
 limping figure arrived about moonrise. Noko 
 
 7*
 
 102 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 and George were squatted in amiable silence 
 by the kettle, watching a fragrant yellow fire 
 lick its sides. Odors of venison and herbs 
 came to Marie's nostrils. She had not eaten 
 since morning, and, creeping to the outdoor 
 hearth, she sat down with her family, laying 
 her staff beside her. 
 
 This was the hour when Noko told Chip- 
 pewa legends ; but she did not speak a word. 
 Some older story-teller was busy with Marie. 
 George waited only for his supper. When 
 Marie sat down in the night camp she never 
 had the degraded feeling of herding with bar 
 barians. These good creatures were her 
 household. She often dipped out the mess 
 for Noko, and restrained George's animal 
 greediness. Clean birch platters were kept 
 in readiness, and she had for herself a knife 
 and spoon which Wawatam bought at the 
 fort. The others preferred to use their 
 fingers. To-night the grandmother filled 
 Marie's bowl from the general dish and 
 brought her knife and spoon. George was 
 left to gulp unrestrained except when Noko 
 hit him on the back to keep him from chok 
 ing. Marie sat and looked at the fire, where 
 beautiful embers crumbled, and ate her food
 
 THE RIFT IN THE ISLAND 103 
 
 without tasting it. The moon was white and 
 large. It threw shadows of the Indian wo 
 man and George, and the dish between them, 
 and a fainter shadow of Marie, across the 
 smoldering log. 
 
 Those usual inmates of northern lodges, 
 the silent dogs, were lacking in Wawatam's 
 camp. None of them were running about 
 the island, on account of Marie's abhorrence. 
 They were not like the bluff, loud-mouthed 
 mastiffs with which French children played, 
 but uncanny, wolfish things, never seeking a 
 caress, and springing voiceless out of thick 
 ets. Wawatam kept his dogs in another 
 camp. They could find their wild living in 
 the woods, whether led by a master or their 
 instincts. 
 
 Marie crept into her lodge and dropped its 
 flap. She took off her blanket gown, and put 
 on another in which she slept, and combed 
 and freshly plaited her hair. She had a pil 
 low on her bed, a thing Noko despised. It 
 was made, though, only of the dried needles 
 of sweet pine sewn into a piece of coarse 
 linen. Beside the high mattress was spread 
 a skin on which she stood. Noko's bed was 
 at the opposite arc of the lodge. No moon-
 
 104 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 light came through the mats, but a glim 
 mer from the hole at the top rested on her 
 head. Marie took her crucifix, which hung 
 from a rib in the sloping wall, and lay down 
 in her bed, holding it, and uttering no 
 prayer but the dumb one of misery. She 
 watched the poles intersecting the fragment 
 of dark blue sky at the top of the lodge, 
 tilting her head back on its pillow. Her 
 knee felt stiff. 
 
 " This must be what the priest calls 
 immortality," whispered Marie. "You can 
 not die." 
 
 She turned on her hard mattress, and re 
 solved: "I will bathe in the lake early, while 
 the water is cold. That will drive this strange 
 feeling away." 
 
 She heard Wawatam in the camp, giving 
 a string of fish to his grandmother. He had 
 been out all the afternoon in his canoe. His 
 returning without Indian followers was a 
 dull satisfaction to her. Yet when a whiter 
 pallor than the moon's showed between the 
 lodge-poles, she put on her moccasins in 
 haste to escape from camp, took her clothes 
 and the thick linen towel which was kept for 
 her use alone, and limped off toward the
 
 THE RIFT IN THE ISLAND 105 
 
 natural arch of rock. The dewy tents still 
 swam in uncertain darkness. The sweet- 
 scented earth gave back the old joy of morn 
 ing to Marie. Crumpled mist arose, floating, 
 and letting itself be wound slowly aloft. 
 There was a steep descent to the lake under 
 neath the stone arch, where a long avalanche 
 had once fallen. Marie let herself down this 
 rough stair to her bath. The limpid ex 
 panse of water increased the light. She 
 could see as far as the well-known trees in 
 front of Henry's deserted camp ; but she 
 turned her back on that place, and stripped 
 for the plunge. Nothing was abroad to see 
 her but the morning star. Her feet shud 
 dered in the shallow water. She waded out 
 and knelt, throwing herself forward and turn 
 ing with a splash. The blue drippings of a 
 glacier could be no colder. Streaming from 
 crown to heel, her body the color of a rose, 
 she ran behind a rock covered with pine 
 shrubs, and polished her flesh to marble firm 
 ness. It was a delight to feel the blood pal 
 pitate against her very garments when she 
 was clothed, and to climb the height like a 
 giantess. The bruise on her knee felt this 
 revival.
 
 io6 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 " Nothing ails me," exulted Marie aloud 
 to the stirring- birds ; " I can plunge where 
 Indian women dare not." 
 
 A family of mushrooms, their white, fleshy 
 umbrellas half furled, waited beside her path, 
 and she gathered every one. They would 
 have to be skinned and salted, and soaked 
 all day; but by night they could be wrapped 
 in deer-meat with a husk of clay over that, 
 and put under the coals to gather all the 
 venison's juices. She was proud to feel an 
 interest in the food-supply of the camp. 
 "But if I had found them when monsieur was 
 here," said Marie; and she stood still, her 
 face changing. 
 
 The camp-fire lifted its delicate blue shaft 
 straight to the zenith. George was helping 
 Noko broil fish on some stones, and a bowl 
 of sagamite was set out for the morning 
 meal. 
 
 Wawatam had put on his best dress. The 
 beaver robe which he wore only at councils 
 was gathered around him and thrown over 
 one arm like a Roman toga, showing the 
 feather- work of his leggings and the rich em 
 broidery of his tunic. He paraded himself 
 across the plateau as Marie entered the camp,
 
 THE RIFT IN THE ISLAND 107 
 
 though through all his dignity the childlike 
 savage betrayed a gauntness and anxiety of 
 visage. She busied herself with the mush 
 rooms. The amenities of civilized life he 
 never imitated; but Marie usually said good 
 day to him, and he stopped beside her aggres 
 sively. Wawatam despised mushrooms as food 
 for men. The red lines in his face expressed 
 disdain of such employment as he said: 
 "Put on your best dress." 
 Marie was startled. 
 
 "Do you hold a council on the island?" 
 " No. Go to L'Arbre Croche." 
 "I do not want to go to L'Arbre Croche 
 to-day. It was only last month that I went 
 to confession." 
 
 "Father Jonois will marry you." 
 "Father Jonois marry me? He cannot." 
 "He will." 
 
 "But no priest can be a husband." 
 "Myself," said Wawatam, slapping his 
 breast; "I am the husband." 
 
 Marie threw her braids behind her shoul 
 ders, and restrained him by a sidewise turn 
 of the eye. 
 
 "I will not go to L'Arbre Croche with the 
 chief."
 
 io8 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 Her barbaric guardian did not know what 
 abhorrence maids lavish on imdesired suitors. 
 In one instant he changed from her friend on 
 whom she depended, and to whom she de 
 ferred, into a detestable pursuer. More than 
 that, he robbed her of what he was before ; 
 and there was no other man on earth to take 
 care of her. Wawatam, like the wolf-boy, 
 saw his new shape himself, and he accused 
 her in a guttural snarl. 
 
 " You would go with my English brother 
 to L'Arbre Croche. You would be wife to 
 him." 
 
 " I would not ! " Her whole body flashed 
 at Wawatam. " I would not be a wife at all. 
 And you who have neither fasted nor prayed 
 since eating man's flesh do you think that 
 Father Jonois would give the sacrament of 
 marriage to you ? " 
 
 Frontier priests were obliged to make the 
 conditions of religion as easy as they dared 
 for their wild flock ; but he knew she was 
 right. Father Jonois would not give him the 
 sacrament of marriage until he had done pen 
 ance for that sin detested in the committing. 
 It was very hard to be a Chippewa chief 
 and a baptized Christian, the brother, more-

 
 THE RIFT IN THE ISLAND in 
 
 over, of an adopted Englishman, when that 
 Englishman was doubtless his supplanter. 
 
 Wawatam said nothing more, and after his 
 breakfast went into his lodge. At the un- 
 trammeled Chippewa breakfast the chief sat 
 on a mat outside his family circle. When 
 Marie was hanging the blankets of her lodge 
 to air, she saw him in his hunting-buckskins 
 going down toward the bay. The subdued 
 determination of his stride denoted that he 
 was seeking his spiritual counselor. 
 
 George hesitated between Marie and the 
 chief, his dull mind apprehending some 
 change in his playmate, as well as an altered 
 temper in Wawatam. He followed his 
 adopted father at a distance, hoping to share 
 the voyage to L'Arbre Croche, yet loath to 
 give up his daily haunts on the island. Wa 
 watam saw him and beckoned to him. The 
 weak one of the household, making this dumb 
 plea for companionship, was a comfort under 
 the circumstances. 
 
 Marie brought wood for the grandmother. 
 When Noko had no heavy labor she sat cross- 
 legged on a mat, busying herself with the 
 needlework of Indian women. Sometimes she 
 trudged to the edge of the island, digging
 
 ii2 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 roots in the woods. Usually, however, she 
 spent her leisure soaking in the sunlight 
 while she sang in a monotonous whine, with 
 the rising and falling abruptness of barbaric 
 music, the songs of the Chippewas. When 
 one touched Noko from without she re 
 sponded shrewdly ; but she knew the dignity 
 of reticence and solitude. Marie was not 
 afraid of being questioned by her. 
 
 When enough sticks were accumulated 
 near the log which made their chimney-back, 
 Marie went farther into the woods. Early 
 morning was gone when she stood beside the 
 rift in the island, though here it was twilight 
 at noon. A drift of aged leaves had blown 
 from the north for many a winter, and partly 
 filled this crack in the island's surface. Its 
 scar extended as far as the eye could follow, 
 and its moss-clothed sides went mysteriously 
 down into earth's darkness. Marie once 
 descended within the gap, and caught her 
 foot in an angle of the rocks below. Such 
 gigantic lips in the ground's face were a 
 strange spectacle. They threatened to yawn 
 and snap a curious gazer in. 
 
 Marie walked along the verge to a place 
 narrow enough for her to leap across. Not
 
 THE RIFT IN THE ISLAND 113 
 
 far beyond the rift stood a white birch like a 
 marble temple. Its central pillar was massive, 
 and delicate arches spread a drapery of 
 foliage far and wide. There was not such 
 another birch-tree on the island. The high 
 ground on which it stood fell abruptly to a 
 hollow at one side. Marie descended into 
 this little valley, and knelt before the vision 
 under the roots of the tree : a cavern of rock 
 tufted with fern and velvet lichen ; the most 
 beautiful grotto that ever enshrined an image. 
 It struck the sight like a miracle. The 
 mighty birch flourished overhead, its bank of 
 turf roofing this glittering cell. Nor was the 
 image lacking. It stood on a shelf of the 
 rock, a small plaster Virgin, which had been 
 given to her by the priest for her chapel in 
 the wilderness. Marie's last offering, some 
 withered flowers in a basket of scented grass, 
 stood on the cavern floor. The pitiful image, 
 weather-stained by its western exposure, lost 
 its immobility and swam before her eyes as 
 she remembered the roving child who put that 
 basket there. Her own hands, clasped upon 
 her beads, were strange and far-away mem 
 bers the hands of a girl that lived last week 
 without any knowledge of pain, and vanished.
 
 ii4 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 Her features took a wan tint from the dim 
 ness of that holy place, and her mouth trem 
 bled at beginning a personal invocation. 
 
 "O Mother of God, take this feeling away 
 from me. Why has it come upon me ? I have 
 tried to be a good girl. Here is my dear 
 staff, that I lay down as an offering to thee. 
 Ever-blessed, I have such sinful love for this 
 staff that I slept with it laid across my breast." 
 
 Marie covered her face with both hands, 
 the rosary dangling from her fingers, and 
 leaned forward until her braided hair lay 
 upon the ground. " I will say that he is a 
 heretic, he is a heretic, he is a heretic but, 
 
 Mother Immaculate, he is the gentlest man 
 
 1 ever saw in my life ! I shall never see him 
 again but give him to me " she threw 
 herself backward, breaking through media 
 tion, and tearing at heaven itself with uplifted 
 hands and a cry as strong as the throes of 
 birth, " O God, give him to me you must 
 I shall die ! " 
 
 The tiny image on the shelf, the rustling 
 birch, and the woods around her, were gone, 
 and she was in infinite space wrestling with 
 the master passion of the world, and learn 
 ing that invisible things only are of account
 
 THE RIFT IN THE ISLAND 115 
 
 in this life. The human instinct of hiding 
 passion kept her terrible weeping silent. And 
 presently, exhausted by this prayer of an 
 guish, and daring to look no more at the im 
 maculate image, she fled limping from her 
 chapel and lay down beside the rift. 
 
 On the opposite bank of the chasm a 
 phcebe-bird alighted, turning its head in 
 quisitively and considering her limp figure. 
 It took its joy on the island untouched by 
 any human anguish. 
 
 " I used to be like that," thought Marie, as 
 the bird darted away. She felt deserted by 
 companions, who found her no longer of their 
 kind. 
 
 Her denial of love, her panting journeys, 
 and manual labor to get rid of it, were ended 
 as soon as that prayer to Almighty God burst 
 from her soul. He knew what had happened 
 to her. The saints and her mother knew. 
 There was no use fighting it any longer. She 
 was to live or die by this unconquerable force. 
 Once Marie had wanted to be a saint, but 
 now she greedily desired to be a happy wo 
 man. And this was a strange thing : that 
 one should come, and look, and possess. She 
 had seen officers from the fort in their scarlet
 
 ii6 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 coats without giving them a second glance. 
 They were objects on a landscape. 
 
 Marie stared across the rift as if her eyes 
 could penetrate woods and water-mists to the 
 Sault. That light which falls on the spot 
 where one's beloved stands, leaving the rest 
 of the world in twilight, and hallows his coun 
 try, giving it the sanctity of a shrine, now 
 rested there. She did not know the world 
 had come to her until it went away. To be 
 where he was seemed the only good. With 
 rapture she saw again the hopeless passion 
 in Henry's eyes when he left her. 
 
 " You are mine," whispered Marie through 
 space to the secret ear of that other soul who 
 must harken. Her hands and feet were cold, 
 her muscles were knotted, her face was white 
 with the stress of this secret cry, "Come back 
 to me ! You must come back. My life is 
 gone out of me. There is something the 
 matter with the island. It has changed. You 
 are the island to me now." 
 
 She let her face slip over the edge of the 
 rift, where cool, dark moss could send up its 
 breath to her, and the rock give her palpitat 
 ing temple a reminding touch. The woods 
 calmed her, their grays and greens and inter-
 
 THE RIFT IN THE ISLAND 117 
 
 lacing density of stems, and their whisper of 
 a secret which has lasted from the founda 
 tion of the world, replacing her fever with a 
 kind of beatitude. Power to project herself 
 into the future was gone. Love is itself eter 
 nity. She took no interest in what might 
 happen. The one fact of the universe was 
 present with her. That primal instinct of 
 young creatures to believe in and make a 
 religion of the human being they love is one 
 of the best and saddest traits of humanity. 
 
 A chill grew in the air. Marie felt it, but 
 she no longer resisted the warfare made 
 against us by inanimate things. 
 
 " Why did I hide myself from him the last 
 day he spent on the island ? " she asked her 
 self, finding no answer. " And why did I 
 laugh at that poor Pani woman ? It is her 
 turn to laugh at me now. But I would rather 
 die by fire than let it be seen in my face." 
 
 Days and months must pass, and a mes 
 sage for which she could not help looking 
 might never come from him. She would go 
 to confession with concealment in her soul. 
 " I cannot endure it," said Marie, sitting up 
 in the darkening twilight. Then she remem 
 bered the chief's sudden proposal to marry
 
 n8 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 her at L'Arbre Croche that morning. Father 
 Jonois could forbid it ; but who would teach 
 her how to bear her invisible bereavement? 
 She felt sorry for the chief with a tenderness 
 which was not in her before she came to her 
 knees at the tree. 
 
 A drop of rain fell on Marie's forehead. 
 The white birch showed its marble limbs 
 against gathering blackness. The east wind 
 came on with a roar, bending little trees, and 
 Marie knew that the lake looked as she had 
 often seen it in a rainstorm, a dark yellow 
 green, seeming to have sulphur in its depths; 
 and that the sky above it descended in ver 
 tical strata, becoming one with it. In other 
 times she would have run the intervening 
 distance to see the lake during this distur 
 bance, dashing out to a cliff, wet and bright- 
 eyed. 
 
 The woods grew dark with a steady down 
 pour, and on the churning strait zigzag tracks 
 and curvings, such as currents leave on an 
 ice-field, could be seen, changing as flaws of 
 wind veered here and there. The air was 
 raw ; and when night came, autumn descended 
 on the midsummer island. It was so chill 
 that the eye suspected frozen spray upon the
 
 THE RIFT IN THE ISLAND 119 
 
 pebbles, and the white cliffs had a wintry look 
 under beating rain. At midnight the blast 
 was roaring against all the leaves in the up 
 lands, and the pines tuned themselves to that 
 high song they sing when the wind blows 
 ice-laden from Labrador. It seemed impos 
 sible that summer could return, and incred 
 ible that she was there, huddling her million 
 blooms, and cowering under this whip of the 
 northeast. The change in the weather was a 
 period set to life which had gone before it. 
 Nothing could be again exactly as it had 
 been before this chill came on the world. 
 The icy breath was pure, but it blew the 
 glamour off the island. 
 
 Nearly a week of squaw-winter crowded it 
 self into the heart of June. All day a drizzle 
 fell, and gray clouds dragged on the water, 
 or tore themselves against headlands. The 
 strait was a flume, hissing toward the head 
 of Lake Michigan. Discomfited birds sat in 
 shelter, calling sometimes to one another 
 with a note like the cricket's. In the night 
 the complaints of wild things could be heard. 
 
 Wawatam and George stayed at the fort, 
 leaving the women of the camp to live on such 
 food as had been accumulated. On the sixth
 
 120 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 day a slate-colored sky, cold and smooth, 
 spread over the Great Turtle, unable to dull 
 the new tints he had acquired. For the frost 
 spirit had breathed fire, and hints of splendor 
 appeared on masses of trees. Life warmed 
 itself gradually, coming out of eclipse. East 
 ern islands, miles distant, showed their blue 
 bars. In one place a boat's hull appeared, 
 masts and sails lost in falling mist. In an 
 other a spot like a sun-dog shone on the 
 water in the midst of opaque dullness, or it 
 became a plate of copper moving across the 
 lake. The clouds broke about sunset, and a 
 mountain stood one third the height of the 
 eastern sky. At the top a volcano of color 
 burst out. The crater was a wide lap of fire. 
 Rosy fog, changing its tints and pallors every 
 minute, glorified all the northern world. 
 
 Across the iridescent pink water, and mag 
 nified by luminous air, came a procession of 
 Indian canoes, avoiding the opposite sand- 
 spit, and beaching themselves in the bay. 
 Always superstitious of life on the island, the 
 ascending savages saw, though they said 
 nothing to one another about, those brands 
 of autumn color on a summer world. Noko's 
 fire blazed, but she was somewhere in the
 
 THE RIFT IN THE ISLAND 121 
 
 woods, having felt the vigor of breaking up a 
 winter camp revive within her after the east 
 storm. 
 
 Marie sat alone in the lodge in her dress 
 of gull-feathers. She had worn it during the 
 wet days. Her braids hung over her bosom, 
 touching the dejected face on each side, a 
 fuzz of curling ends following their outlines 
 with the distending effect of light. She was 
 changed and deep-eyed. The winter week 
 had ripened her. Marie had looked into that 
 abyss of unaccomplished evil which some 
 times appals saints in themselves. She who 
 had laughed at the prayer against murder 
 wished the chief would die. After prayers, 
 and in her sleep, and at waking, that recur 
 ring potentiality still thrust itself into her 
 mind " Something may happen to the chief 
 to-day." During the wet week there was 
 nothing to do. She sat and moved the 
 search-light of thought over her relations to 
 the two men, Englishman and Chippewa. It 
 was not hard for Marie to divine the chief's 
 claiming her to Henry. She was Wawatam's 
 squaw, whom gratitude forbade Henry ever 
 to see again. She could appeal to Father 
 Jonois ; but the chief had fraternal claims
 
 122 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 upon her which must trouble her as long as 
 he lived. It really seemed best that he should 
 die. His dying would not bring her love 
 back to her, but it would lift from her the 
 responsibility for his unhappiness. Noko and 
 George would be readily enough adopted by 
 other members of the tribe. Then she could 
 enter some sisterhood, and one of her pen 
 ances would be for wishing that this very 
 convenient thing would happen. Yet as often 
 as it recurred to her she was full of terror at 
 herself. The chief had made her the queen 
 of his island world. No lonesomest and lof 
 tiest soul has kept itself from lapping edges 
 with and being worked upon by the power 
 or weakness of fleshly housed neighbors. In 
 visible lines mesh and restrain, or draw and 
 distort, every one of us. The selfish and 
 brutal break through, but fine and tender na 
 tures own the responsibility and endure the 
 bondage as their part in the redemption of 
 the world. 
 
 Once during the storm Marie had gone to 
 the height above Henry's camp. She could 
 not bring herself to descend into the amphi 
 theater. The darkness of winter was lapped 
 up in its glacial greenness. She saw her
 
 THE RIFT IN THE ISLAND 123 
 
 chair of rock ; the wind had torn the moss 
 cushions away, and heaped them on the place 
 where he had sat at her feet. There was a 
 story in the tribe of an Indian girl who had 
 flung herself from a rock on the south cliff 
 because her lover went away and never re 
 turned. Marie had laughed at that story. 
 " I did not then know," she muttered, look 
 ing at the deserted lodge. Its mats dripped 
 with slow, creeping rain. The seasons would 
 pass over it, dropping it piecemeal. " I will 
 never come here again," she gasped, and 
 ran through the pine woods. 
 
 While this mysterious force worked in her 
 she lay on her bed of nights in a waking 
 trance, silent and nerveless, yet calling with 
 compelling might to the man who had left 
 her. The blood of her French ancestry 
 wine and fire which have sparkled and burned 
 through centuries among the slower nations 
 made her swiftly a woman. She was the 
 ghost-flower, sprung tall and lucent, a white 
 flame of passion, in a night. " I would rather 
 die because I cannot have him," thought 
 Marie, " than never to have seen him at all." 
 
 The arriving multitude of Indians swarmed 
 upon the plateau before Marie knew they
 
 124 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 were on the island. Strange warriors ap 
 peared among the Chippewas. The aborigi 
 nal visage, evasive and demon-like, was mul 
 tiplied many times in the crowd. Totems 
 unknown to her were tattooed on naked 
 breasts and arms, while nearly all the digni 
 taries of the tribe stalked into view. Squaws 
 carrying children on their backs, and hav 
 ing in their faces either the hopelessness of 
 drudgery or the' broad-cheeked look of hon 
 est beasts, defiled in silent rows behind their 
 masters. 
 
 The hideous medicine-man was there, with 
 moose-horns bound on his head, and his skin 
 glistening with decorations as the moving 
 body of a snake glistens. Marie looked away 
 from him, and saw Wawatam coming to the 
 lodges. She hid herself at the head of her 
 bed, pulling one of her blanket gowns over 
 her. He called to her in Chippewa, and also 
 to his grandmother; but after stooping a 
 moment at the lodge door, went away, evi 
 dently satisfied that the lodge was vacant. 
 When Marie ventured to look out again, 
 George crossed that triangle of the plateau 
 which the opened flap described. He had 
 the jocund leer of a tipsy faun, or any soul-
 
 THE RIFT IN THE ISLAND 125 
 
 less animal made to take brandy in its food 
 with astonishing and uplifting results. The 
 pink of his skin was inflamed to higher color. 
 Little hairs, long grown about his masculine 
 chops, showed themselves with a new ten 
 dency to bristle. His hair stood in separate 
 shocks. His pinafore trousers were greatly 
 damaged, and it was evident that no one had 
 driven George to water during the entire 
 week. 
 
 " Father Jonois will hold the chief to ac 
 count for this," thought Marie. She noticed 
 the chief's changed look. Wawatam had been 
 the most human convert of Father Jonois's 
 flock. The cunning of barbarism was return 
 ing to his face. An unhappy Indian had not 
 the resources of an unhappy European. Marie 
 felt responsible for it. So mixed are our good 
 and evil that she closed her eyes and made 
 speechless appeal to heaven for the Chippewa 
 she had been wishing dead. Wawatam was 
 wary and expectant ; he watched the borders 
 of the camp. "He is afraid the priest will 
 come and find him dealing with the medicine 
 man," whispered Marie. 
 
 She had never witnessed any of her Chip 
 pewa family's heathen rites. Like her, they
 
 126 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 knelt before the chancel rail in L'Arbre 
 Croche, or bore the discipline of the mission 
 ary when he made his round of the islands. 
 One solemn council she had seen, after the 
 great chief Pontiac's war-token was first sent 
 through the Northwest. Appeals of orators 
 then rang among the trees. The sun shone 
 on burnished bodies and arm-bands, and 
 robes of beaver trailed the grass as majestic 
 fellows trod back and forth in the passion of 
 eloquence. This was to be a very different 
 rite. The medicine-man stood with a wand 
 in his hand, and his assistants measured and 
 marked ground. Young Indians ran to cut 
 saplings. Marie crept to the lodge door and 
 drew the flap down, lest prying little Indian 
 boys should seek her out, or their mothers 
 try to make the lodge their refuge ; and 
 watched the whole plateau in front of her 
 while she held the mat. Directly across that 
 space walked Henry, with three Canadian 
 boatmen at his heels. He was in the midst 
 of the busy tribe before they saw him. Then 
 their yell of exultation reverberated from 
 island to island, and shook itself to silence 
 far away in the east.
 
 PART IV 
 
 THE HIGH PLATEAU 
 
 A HATCHET whizzed over the fire, mak- 
 JT\. ing one revolution, and striking Henry's 
 shoulder with the handle instead of the blade. 
 A dozen mouths derided the marksman, and 
 other hatchets were poised, when a huge old 
 chief turned on his young men and stopped 
 their sport. He had a stern aspect suited to 
 the leader of the massacre at Fort Michili- 
 mackinac, and he was known to hate the 
 English with a hatred scarcely less than Pon- 
 tiac's. Henry remembered him as the Grand 
 Sautor : the French called the Chippewa na 
 tion Sautors. He was an able political second 
 to the master Indian mind of his day, and he 
 would not now permit any action taken in his 
 presence without first consulting the envoys 
 from Detroit. 
 
 Henry stood in the midst of the savages, 
 unconsciously affecting them by his presence. 
 
 127
 
 128 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 They admired him. He had not dodged the 
 hatchet. His shorn hair crisped in a gold 
 fleece over his head. The flame in his eyes, 
 they afterward said, burned holes in them. 
 
 When Marie saw him she sprang up in the 
 closed lodge, but as the hatchet-handle struck 
 him she dropped to her knees. He was not 
 hurt. He stood alive among his enemies, and 
 near her. Marie's body bloomed all over, the 
 living smoothness of flower-petals enveloping 
 her. The sun and summer, the world, and the 
 meaning of life, returned, and she lived infi 
 nitely. Her blood buzzed in her ears. Whether 
 we shall exist hereafter in a happier state, or 
 run, shivering souls, a long gantlet of woes, 
 there are instants here which compensate us 
 for everything. 
 
 " to give myself up," she heard Henry 
 saying, as soon as she could hear anything. 
 
 One of his Frenchmen interpreted, turning 
 from Henry to the Grand Sautor and from 
 the Grand Sautor back to Henry as the talk 
 proceeded. Masses of wrinkles around the old 
 chief's eyes contracted in ironical scrutiny. 
 
 "Why is the Englishman such a fool as to 
 come back and give himself up when he had 
 escaped ? "
 
 THE HIGH PLATEAU 129 
 
 " You know why," said Henry. " Because 
 I cannot have any harm done to the chief 
 Wawatam and his family." 
 
 "There stands the chief Wawatam. Who 
 has threatened to do him or his family any 
 harm ? " 
 
 Wawatam stood with his shoulder toward 
 Henry, lax and sullen in attitude. 
 
 " A message was sent to me that the tribe 
 had disagreed about the present he made on 
 my account, and if I escaped entirely they in 
 tended to burn him and his whole family." 
 
 "Who told you that?" 
 
 " The chief himself told it to a Pani woman 
 that Mme. Cadotte bought at the fort." 
 
 "The chief lied." 
 
 Henry looked at Wawatam, a confused red 
 ness mounting in his face. " The chief never 
 lied to me in his life." 
 
 There was silence among the Chippewas. 
 The Detroit Indians had made use of the arts 
 of war, and were at Michilimackinac to stir up 
 recruits, but none of them answered Wawa- 
 tam's grin as he raised his head. They knew 
 that Henry was his adopted brother. It was 
 a kind of betrayal which most nearly touched 
 their religious natures.
 
 I 3 o THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 " The Pani woman went with Mme. Cadotte 
 in her boat, with the Englishman," said the 
 Grand Sautor, examining evidence. " How 
 could the Pani woman carry a message from 
 the chief when she did not see him after the 
 Englishman did ? " 
 
 " She said he told her when I got into 
 the boat, but forbade her to tell me before 
 it was done, that if he did not give me up 
 at the end of a week, the tribe would come 
 over to the island and burn him and his 
 family. As soon as we landed I persuaded 
 Mme. Cadotte to let me take the canoe and 
 some men and come back. The weather was 
 against us. You have all come to the island 
 as he said you would. What are you going 
 to do?" 
 
 " It is none of the Englishman's business ; 
 but we came to consult the Great Turtle." 
 
 Henry saw the medicine-man and young 
 Indians bringing a load of heavy poles for the 
 mystic Turtle lodge. The evening fire burned 
 harmlessly, little bead-eyed fellows huddling 
 in copper nakedness between the blaze and 
 their mothers' knees. Neither stake nor scaf 
 fold of torment appeared to have been thought 
 of by the gathered multitude.
 
 THE HIGH PLATEAU 131 
 
 " My brother could have killed me while I 
 was here," said Henry. "Why did he set a 
 trap to bring me back ? " 
 
 " Perhaps the Pani woman lied," suggested 
 the Grand Sautor. 
 
 "The Pani woman did not lie," declared 
 Wawatam, and he turned with a fierce stare 
 at his English brother, the corners of his 
 mouth drawn down, and the youthfulness of 
 his face pitiably aged by deep creases. One 
 week's debauchery had destroyed in him the 
 civilization of two years. Race superiority 
 in the other man still bore him down, and 
 overrode his Indian weapon of treachery. 
 He felt one of nature's wrongs. Henry lis 
 tened in silence to what he had to say. 
 
 "My English brother's blood and mine were 
 one. I hid him here, and gave him food ; and 
 he took what was mine away from me. I let 
 him go out of my hand, but I fastened a cord 
 to him. When he was gone, and I went to 
 the black gown with my complaint, even the 
 black gown was turned against me by Eng 
 lish witchcraft, and would not let me have 
 the wife promised to me. The black gown 
 said : * I will look into the matter. Perhaps 
 it is best that no marriage take place between
 
 132 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 you and the French girl nourished in your 
 grandmother's lodge.' If this man had not 
 come back on account of the Pani woman's 
 words, I would have followed him." 
 
 A deep breath was drawn by the listeners. 
 They said, "Ho!" in admiration. Every 
 English-hating breast acquitted Wawatam, 
 and exulted in his craft. 
 
 " I did not take what he says was his," 
 denied Henry, sternly. " That white islander 
 who lives in his grandmother's lodge scarcely 
 looked at me when I went away. If a priest 
 would not marry her to him, neither would 
 a priest marry her to me. She is too good 
 for either of us." 
 
 " How many times did you see this French 
 girl ? " inquired the Grand Sautor. 
 
 " Only three times, when she came with a 
 boy to bring my food, and helped build my 
 lodge." 
 
 " Did Wawatam send her with food to the 
 Englishman ? " 
 
 Wawatam answered, " There was no one 
 else to send, except the boy, who would for- 
 get" 
 
 The old chief looked at the young one with 
 a grunt of contempt.
 
 THE HIGH PLATEAU 133 
 
 " Wawatam is a young man ; he has learned 
 nothing. And the black gown does not live 
 among us to give or take away our women. 
 Where is she now ? " 
 
 Wawatam replied that she was probably 
 in the woods with his grandmother, getting 
 fuel ; the lodge was empty. 
 
 " Did you not tell us that the Englishman 
 took her from you ? " 
 
 " He bewitched her. She would not go 
 with me to L'Arbre Croche." 
 
 Squaws, watching the ivory whiteness and 
 muscular beauty of the Anglo-Saxon, won 
 dered how any woman could refuse to look 
 at him. The Canadians were rabbits beside 
 him, broad, brown-faced fellows, lacking that 
 which comes and goes in power through the 
 countenance. 
 
 "The English trader has come back and 
 put himself in our hands," said the Grand 
 Sautor, summing up facts. " What shall be 
 done with him ? " 
 
 Wawatam took a knife from his belt, but 
 the old chief gave him a look which no young 
 Chippewa ever disregarded. So deadly was 
 the silent threat of the Grand Sautor that a 
 European has set it down in letters "The 
 
 9*
 
 134 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 most undaunted person could not behold him 
 without some degree of terror." 
 
 One of the Detroit envoys stepped be 
 tween Henry and the Grand Sautor, and 
 spoke against letting any Englishman live. 
 Pontiac was strong enough, if all the tribes 
 united with him, to sweep the English from 
 the country. Wawatam's experience was 
 common : wherever an Englishman went, he 
 took everything, and pushed his red bro 
 ther out of his way. 
 
 When this speech was interpreted to Henry 
 he understood why the Great Turtle was to 
 be consulted. That esteemed and truthful 
 spirit would tell the tribe whether a war 
 against the English would be successful or 
 not. The Chippewa nation hesitated after 
 striking their first blow. 
 
 The impulse which brought Henry back to 
 face these savages had not turned to indigna 
 tion when he found himself made a fool of. 
 He listened callously to gutturals on which 
 his life hung, numb in the instinct of self- 
 preservation. In the midst of the interpreting 
 he was alert for a step or a rustle of leaves 
 at the edge of the woods. Yet he did not 
 own to himself what was working like mad
 
 THE HIGH PLATEAU 135 
 
 ness in his cool English blood that long 
 ing for the one beloved, which men laugh at, 
 and die of, calling it by some other name. 
 One or two happily nested birds cheeped from 
 the oaks around the plateau, and the low call 
 of an awakening owl came from the woods. 
 The medicine-man, a disgusted practitioner, 
 balked of his own importance, sat with his 
 chin on his knees, waiting until the English 
 man should be despatched. It was not for 
 him to take the word out of the Grand 
 Sautor's mouth, but when there was oppor 
 tunity he hazarded the opinion that one 
 Englishman less would neither gain nor lose 
 the war; and popular conviction was with 
 him. 
 
 "What have you to say for yourself?" in 
 quired the Grand Sautor of Henry. " The 
 English are no good, but we do not close 
 their mouths." 
 
 Henry looked as relentlessly at his old 
 enemy as that enemy looked at him. 
 
 "Why should I say anything? I felt 
 obliged to come back, and I am here. You 
 can do what you please with me now, though 
 no Indian seemed able to kill me until trick 
 ery was used. But it is going to cost you
 
 136 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 dearly when you come to settle with the 
 English, particularly Sir William Johnson." 
 
 At that name a wave of uneasiness passed 
 through the camp. Sir William Johnson's in 
 fluence extended from the valley of the Mo 
 hawk to the extreme northwest. He was the 
 enemy of the French, but the manipulator 
 and virtual lord of many eastern tribes. The 
 Chippewas wished to be at peace with Sir 
 William Johnson, at least until Pontiac's con 
 spiracy was ripe enough for a successful sweep 
 of the continent. But at Henry's implied 
 threat the Grand Sautor rose up in defiance, 
 and passed sentence. 
 
 " The Englishman came back to save his 
 adopted brother from dying by fire. Even 
 he saw that we had a right to burn somebody ; 
 and we will now use that right. The English 
 man shall die by fire, that none of my people 
 be disappointed." 
 
 Directly the camp was let loose. Ready 
 braves seized Henry and pinioned his arms, 
 while others tied his feet together. He felt 
 grim amusement at being made so tame a 
 victim in front of the wrinkled old idol, 
 though escape or defense was impossible 
 from the instant of his surrender.
 
 THE HIGH PLATEAU 137 
 
 " You fellows who have had my goods, and 
 paid me no beaver, can pay me now," he re 
 marked coolly. 
 
 The delinquents shouted when they under 
 stood him. They would pay him, indeed, with 
 firebrands thrust into his ears, his eyes, and 
 even down his parching throat. They would 
 pay the whole English nation in him. Henry 
 kept his feet, and looked at his adopted Chip- 
 pewa brother. 
 
 Wawatam worked fiercely, digging the hole 
 for the stake, driving in with his moccasined 
 foot a spade which Henry had given him. 
 Plenty of trees offered their trunks on every 
 hand, but there must be space for the full 
 enjoyment of roasting an Englishman, and 
 the center of the open plateau, in front of 
 the lodges, was the spot chosen. A pole 
 intended for the Great Turtle's lodge was 
 held by other Indians ready to be packed 
 into its earthen socket. The world was 
 then a deliberate world in all its corners ; 
 but the intoxication of haste which this 
 continent produces worked even in aboriginal 
 natures. It was not long before Wawatam 
 withdrew his spade, and sullenly watched 
 the muscles on bare backs crowding around
 
 138 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 the post, and many hands packing the dirt 
 in. This was the only kind of planting to 
 which an ambitious young Indian would 
 degrade himself, 
 
 ^> 
 
 When Wawatam had walked through the 
 woods guiding Henry to M me. Cadotte's boat, 
 he began to regret planning the Englishman's 
 complete escape. He scarcely knew what he 
 desired; but every step in their silent march 
 was a step toward the end of friendship. At 
 one moment the savage felt prompted to kill 
 Henry in the woods, but the spiritual tie of 
 Indian adoption still held. It was monstrous 
 to hurt the person given to him by supernat 
 ural signs. If Marie would go to L'Arbre 
 Croche and be married, it would be clear that 
 Henry had done him no harm. If she would 
 not, the story the Pani woman had told him, 
 and the look he had himself seen, demanded 
 revenge. They had reached the landing, and 
 Wawatam saw the Pani woman in the boat 
 with Mme. Cadotte before he hit on a scheme 
 to bring the Englishman back. Henry might 
 not respond to the test, or he might have to 
 be concealed about the island again. Wa 
 watam took all chances. 
 
 The young chief had told his hurt briefly
 
 THE HIGH PLATEAU 139 
 
 to his tribe. His own tongue failed to show 
 all the change which had come over him. 
 Little red tongues of fire springing from fat 
 pine- wood should talk for him. And what 
 ever counsel the Great Turtle might give, 
 Wawatam was already decided ; he had gone 
 beyond his people in hostility to the English. 
 The most trivial incidents accompany the 
 progress of death. Henry felt his sense of 
 humor turn abnormally keen. The ludicrous 
 side of the life he was about to leave affected 
 him as a stimulant might have done. He saw 
 George lying tipsy on Marie's bench, open- 
 mouthed like a dead fish ; and an old, hawk- 
 faced Indian woman contentedly chewing her 
 tongue while she rocked a child in the con 
 cave of her lap. He noticed a curious boy 
 who tried to peep under the elbows of the 
 earth-packers kicked end over end by the 
 backward drive of a moccasin. Children as 
 red as hairless puppies tumbled in a heap by 
 the glowing log. The amenities of Indian life 
 were being practised around Henry, and he 
 fancied morsels of himself passed from hand 
 to hand on a stick. It flashed across his mind 
 like a vision that there are larger ways of 
 doing things than any we know; that an
 
 HO THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 archangel, for instance, might have managed 
 this affair with honor, and without having 
 a feather singed. 
 
 Henry's Canadian boatmen sat down by 
 the fire, and took the chance to prepare them 
 selves a little supper before camping else 
 where. They could not interfere with the 
 political or personal revenges of a tribe, 
 though their master would be sorry to hear 
 that the Englishman was burned. Having 
 brought him to the island, according to orders, 
 they would rest a night before taking the 
 boat back ; but nobody could expect them to 
 meddle with what happened in the Chippewa 
 camp. 
 
 Sounds of chopping in the dusky woods 
 seemed to reverberate along the edge of the 
 sky. While some of the Indians cut fuel, 
 others ran with arm-loads of it to build around 
 the stake, which towered ten feet high, having 
 the festive air of a May-pole. More than one 
 knife would be stuck by cunning marksmen 
 in the bark over the victim's head, and great 
 sport it would be if every feint at throwing 
 made him dodge. And when the hot air 
 should rush upward as through a funnel, and 
 the top of the pole begin to wave its little
 
 THE HIGH PLATEAU 141 
 
 pennon of smoke, there would be no need of 
 other light on the high level. The sky over 
 head was a delicate apple-green, one of those 
 illusive tints which the crimson and orange of 
 sunset leave in high northern air. Swarming 
 figures became less and less distinct in outline, 
 and darkness encroached from the woods, 
 bringing sweet odors with it. Henry smelt 
 the pine, and remembered his first night's 
 plunge through the thickets of the island 
 the enchanted island, to which a man must 
 come back though he come to his death. 
 
 As soon as their preparations were finished, 
 the Chippewas dragged Henry to the stake 
 and tied him. His bright head came up out 
 of their buffeting, and steadied itself against 
 the bark of the young tree. Through all his 
 sensations he hoped that the presence of the 
 Chippewas had driven Marie to some other 
 part of the island for the night. 
 
 The wood was piled around Henry. Young 
 Indians who had never seen a man burned 
 stood by and learned cunning lessons in tor 
 ture. The circle was not built as high as his 
 knees ; for a slow fire, steadily increased, 
 would prolong the enjoyment of the camp far 
 into the night.
 
 142 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 Wawatam himself carried a brand from his 
 outdoor hearth to light the pile. His eye and 
 Henry's met as he knelt with the blazing 
 pine. The Englishman's face was more dis 
 tinct than Wawatam's. Not a word passed 
 between them, and the barrier of flame began 
 to rise, and separated them forever. 
 
 Some Indians who thought the spectacle 
 needed illumination at its beginning were 
 heaping wood on the camp-fire, and the 
 crackle of the resinous fuel could be heard 
 almost as far as its light could be seen. That 
 shapeless black which we cannot call mere 
 shadow, but people from childhood with mon 
 sters, drew away beyond the outermost trees. 
 The ruby tinting of flame at night extended 
 along the trampled sward, and up to oak 
 twigs, seeming to edge the notchings of each 
 leaf. The skins of naked babies grew ro 
 seate under this magic brush ; and stilt-like 
 shadows lay along the ground, mingling, and 
 passing one another in constant caricature. 
 Night was now overhead as well as around 
 the little plane to which man's stature raises 
 him ; and stars were suddenly in their places, 
 filmed with the light incense of burning 
 wood.
 
 THE HIGH PLATEAU 143 
 
 The lodges, opaque and weather-beaten, 
 were least responsive of any objects on the 
 plateau. Stolidly they witnessed the threads 
 of fire climbing around Henry's feet. The 
 nearest lodge kept its secret of a French girl 
 who had lain all of a summer night with his 
 staff across her breast. It was silent and 
 empty, the flap closing on its vacant hollow. 
 For when the Indians seized Henry, Marie 
 had snatched the blanket-gown at her bed 
 head, and torn an opening between mats at 
 the back of the lodge. Her desperate rend 
 ing shook the heavy structure. Any Chip- 
 pewa beholder might have fancied the Great 
 Turtle spirit already invoked, and in the throes 
 of possessing the medicine-man. But the 
 camp was in such an uproar that no one saw 
 it, or Marie herself, when she broke through 
 the hole and ran with her wool garment over 
 her head to the nearest cover of trees. 
 
 She was leaving the open space behind, fly 
 ing through the dead leaves, half bent to shoot 
 under low-swung boughs, when she heard the 
 Chippewa yell, and her flight became a deer's. 
 Then a sound of chopping mingled with In 
 dian exultation, and she knew there was no 
 pursuit ; the chief's young men were merely
 
 144 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 scattering to cut wood. Marie held both 
 hands on her bursting heart, letting the 
 blanket dress fall around her neck, and then 
 around her waist, as her blood glowed and 
 moisture broke through every pore. 
 
 A path made by prayerward feet to the rift 
 in the island stretched its thread through the 
 labyrinth of trees. She could not see far 
 ahead in the darkness to which twilight 
 sunk there, and the swish of leaves filled her 
 ears. Headlong she ran against a man in a 
 cassock, who caught her, and held her pant 
 ing at arm's length. His white, benignant 
 face was dimly visible. Brushing the twigs 
 at a respectful distance behind him, other feet 
 were coming, and Marie knew they were 
 Noko's ; she had counted on meeting the 
 priest and the Indian grandmother in this path 
 from the grotto chapel. 
 
 Marie leaned against a tree, dragging his 
 hands. " Run, Father Jonois, to the lodges, 
 and stop the Chippewas forbid them to burn 
 him ! " 
 
 " To burn whom ? " 
 
 " The Englishman, father. I broke through 
 the back of the lodge. They are cutting the 
 wood I cannot speak!"
 
 THE HIGH PLATEAU 145 
 
 Her suffocating pulses hammered audibly, 
 and the priest braced her against the tree 
 with a grip which calmed. She tried to con 
 trol her breath. Father Jonois spoke quietly. 
 
 " I saw canoes on the lake, and suspected 
 mischief. I was coming to the lodges. The 
 English trader escaped last week in Mme. 
 Cadotte's boat. Why is he back on the 
 island ? " 
 
 " Because the chief sent him a message 
 that we were all to be killed on his account. 
 He gave himself up." 
 
 The wail in her voice told the priest all that 
 he had vainly tried to learn concerning this 
 Englishman while examining her conscience 
 in the afternoon. She was reticent then, look 
 ing down, or at the sacred image in the niche, 
 and speaking indifferently of all human be 
 ings. Father Jonois had made a trip to the 
 island as soon as the straits were safe for his 
 canoe-man, to satisfy his conscience in the 
 matter of disposing of this young French 
 girl. 
 
 " I will do what I can, my daughter. Are 
 many of the Chippewas there ? " 
 
 "Yes, father." 
 
 " Is the old chief with them ? "
 
 146 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 "Yes, father." 
 
 Father Jonois slightly shook his head. 
 " Since this craze for war took them, they 
 pay little attention to the priest." 
 
 He went swiftly forward on his new errand. 
 Whether Father Jonois picked up his cassock 
 and ran, or attendant spirits drew the bushes 
 from his path, he was so excellent a. footer of 
 the wilderness that Marie could scarcely keep 
 the darker blackness of his figure in sight. 
 They left the Indian grandmother far behind, 
 trudging under a load of bark and forest 
 plunder. When the priest obliged Noko 
 to go as far as the Virgin's chapel with 
 Marie, and to receive religious prodding her 
 self, she combined pleasure with discipline, 
 and stole time from her prayers to forage 
 among things which she better loved. It 
 was hard to keep an old Indian woman fa 
 cing toward an image on a rocky shelf while 
 the rain-freshened woods invited her, and 
 Father Jonois often let her drop her beads to 
 go digging. She stopped many times to rest 
 as night sifted on her in the thickets, chew 
 ing a cud of tender beech-mast or sassafras 
 leaves, her nose and chin approaching and 
 retreating, and her sighs of content stirring
 
 THE HIGH PLATEAU 147 
 
 the silence which inclosed her. Chippewa 
 yells, which shook echoes abroad from the 
 open place where they were uttered, came to 
 her muffled through much leafage. If she 
 had seen the glare growing at the top of the 
 island, it could have given no alarm to a 
 householder with nothing to lose. Past the 
 anguish of loving, of despairing, past the 
 keen and useless cares of life, the happy old 
 woman sat down in the woods and went to 
 sleep. 
 
 No man was wiser in his day than a fron 
 tier missionary. He knew when to interfere, 
 and when the tide of returning heathenism 
 was too strong for him. Many a border family 
 owed its safety to the restraining priest; and 
 many another perished because even the con 
 fessional failed to give him all the clues to the 
 dark hearts he labored for. Father Jonois 
 had not been able to prevent the massacre at 
 Michilimackinac, and the misery of that ex 
 perience returned upon him as he mounted 
 the plateau and saw the tall stake and its sur 
 rounding swarms. Wawatam was kneeling 
 with his torch, and flames crept up the lattice 
 of wood. Marksmen, bow in hand, were 
 gathering at long range from the stake, and
 
 148 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 snaky eyes resented the black gown's appear 
 ance there. Wawatam shook the priest's hand 
 from his wrist. 
 
 " You are lighting a fire to burn your own 
 soul eternally," warned Father Jonois. " Put 
 it out" 
 
 Wawatam stuck the brand into another 
 place. Father Jonois began to tear down the 
 pile with his naked fingers, and as many Chip- 
 pewas as could seize him dragged him back 
 from it. A few years earlier they might have 
 killed him. But the religion of the black 
 gown, even when it was disregarded, had 
 now its established power. 
 
 Henry ground his teeth, the sweat of phys 
 ical anguish and faintness moving in drops 
 down his forehead. His face could be dis 
 tinctly seen in the bold light. His arms 
 were bound down against the smoking blan 
 ket-coat, but he had thrown it back from 
 his neck before the Indians seized him, so 
 that the beating pulses showed in the white 
 brawn. 
 
 " It is not worth while to think of me," he 
 called in French through the shimmering me 
 dium which separated him from the priest. 
 "Think of the white islander, Monsieur Jonois,
 
 THE HIGH PLATEAU 149 
 
 and take her away from this wretched tribe 
 of savages." 
 
 He called Marie by the name he had given 
 her instead of her own, which Wawatam might 
 comprehend. This French girl, who never 
 mingled with the tribe, but lived her secluded, 
 happy life on the island, had been an object 
 of unacknowledged superstition to the Chip- 
 pewas. Not one of them laid a hand on her 
 now as she flew from the woods and leaped 
 into the circle of fire. 
 
 Her electrical muscles seemed to act with 
 out volition. She did not know what she was 
 doing, but did it from foregone necessity, as a 
 mother comes to the help of her child. The 
 flower-like skin of her face was as stiff as a 
 mask with the expressionless look of one meet 
 ing sudden death. The smoke swept sidewise, 
 an inverted curtain, showing her dress of gull- 
 breasts crisping to her body through every 
 darkening plume, the ends of her braids and 
 the little hairs edging them curling up. She 
 had a woolen garment in her hand, and she 
 wrapped it with her arms around Henry, and 
 as she tried to protect him her face flamed 
 with sweet helplessness and shame. The ter 
 rible weeping aloud of a hopeless woman
 
 150 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 pierced the roaring crackle of the fire. Father 
 Jonois heard it with pangs which the mas 
 sacre at the fort had not caused him. 
 
 But the sound, and Marie's touch with her 
 poor little muffler, made Henry resplendent. 
 All the beauty and strength of the man, all 
 his physical endurance, and every endow 
 ment of tenderness, came upon him visibly as 
 the power came upon Samson. He might 
 have submitted alone to the torture of the 
 Chippewas, and he knew there was no hope 
 of escape; but he struggled until the cords 
 of his arms cracked. The stake shook. He 
 tore first one forearm and then the other 
 from his thongs, and lifted Marie, shielding 
 her face and head from the fire. 
 
 " Take her, Monsieur Jonois ! " he shouted 
 in French, and then in Chippewa to the In 
 dians, " Let the priest go ! " 
 
 But Marie herself held to the stake behind 
 his head. Though she did not speak a word, 
 he knew she was anchoring her fate to his, 
 and would not be cast into safety. 
 
 " Then marry us ! " Henry cried, and rap 
 ture deadened physical pain. In that de 
 lirium of heat and smoke he and the girl on 
 his breast saw as a vision the life they might
 
 THE HIGH PLATEAU 151 
 
 have had together their common hearth 
 and table, their days and nights of unbroken 
 companionship. Marie needed no mother to 
 tell her these things : the supplanter of 
 mothers is swift in teaching. Every part of 
 her which touched him said, " I love you." 
 She thought it like a prayer, " I love you." 
 Her breath came and went, a divine ether, 
 instead of the stifling fumes of burning wood, 
 carrying the one speechless fact which made 
 it worth the breathing " I love you I love 
 you." 
 
 The instant of Henry's breaking partly 
 loose was a breathless instant among the 
 Chippewas. But when he lifted Marie, and 
 flung his commands to priest and Indians, 
 Wawatam raised a yell. The quicksilver na 
 tures around the young chief responded. 
 They knew it meant instant and cruel death 
 to the Englishman and the French girl who 
 took up his cause. No time for torture, or 
 tickling a victim's ear, or stirring his hair 
 with well-planted arrows. The marksmen 
 dropped their bows, and ran to a carnival of 
 fire. Young braves stooped with Wawatam 
 to snatch brands or scoop live coals with 
 spade or bark platter or anything at hand
 
 152 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 which would carry them from the camp- 
 fire to heap on the two at the stake; and 
 Father Jonois was beginning the marriage 
 service. 
 
 A missionary adapted all his offices to the 
 emergencies of life in the wilderness. These 
 two asking marriage were of alien races, 
 each knowing little of the other's past. He 
 sincerely believed that one was doomed to 
 perdition and the other required absolution 
 instead of wedlock. Yet the Latin words 
 rolled over his lips as at the command of 
 heaven, for that cry out of the fire was a 
 force as strong as religion. 
 
 The Chippewas holding the priest let him 
 go, and ran after Wawatam. The nightmare 
 which had lasted so long measured by pulse- 
 beats, and so mere a point of time measured 
 by the march of stars, was over before Father 
 Jonois could further interfere. A man run 
 ning across the open place with twenty 
 strange Indians at his heels kicked the blaz 
 ing wood from the stake, and scattered it 
 with hands and feet as far as he could throw 
 it. His deerskin boots smoked, and his face 
 flamed with exertion. He cut Henry loose, 
 two or three strokes of a knife dropping the
 
 FATHER JONO1S WAS BEGINNING THE MARRIAGE SERVICE. 
 
 STATE NORM A
 
 THE HIGH PLATEAU 155 
 
 thongs around the base of the post, and his 
 men continued to tread out brands. 
 
 "Fools of Chippewas," he shouted, "what 
 are you doing ? " 
 
 Indians who had already lifted blazing 
 pieces from the camp-fire, stood in a cluster 
 like upright glow-worms ; and others, shield 
 ing their faces and plucking, were startled in 
 the act. They would have risen knife in 
 hand against any other white man in the 
 Northwest who assumed such authority over 
 them ; but M. Cadotte was not only their 
 friend, he had married into their tribe, 
 he was also the lord of all the red villages 
 around Sault Ste. Marie. They knew his in 
 fluence had kept the Lake Superior Indians 
 from joining Pontiac, and their own pause 
 since lifting the hatchet had resulted from 
 that knowledge. 
 
 As the blaze around the stake was 
 quenched, darkness again encroached upon 
 the plateau from the woods, though one by 
 one brands were dropped back on the camp- 
 fire. Patches of creeping redness, where 
 smoke was just breaking into sullen flame, 
 showed on Henry's woolen clothes. M. 
 Cadotte pulled off his coat and the priest
 
 156 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 took his cassock skirts to smother them, and 
 Marie was stripped of her heated blanket- 
 cloth, from which the sewed feathers dropped 
 like burnt gum. Sudden terror of herself as 
 an inflammable material made her submit 
 to have the smoldering dress torn off by 
 Father Jonois, and he shoved her through 
 the half darkness into her lodge. 
 
 The night wind, flowing from the lakes 
 across mossy forests cooled by a week's rain 
 and moist with freshly condensed dew, was 
 sweet after that hot breath of torment. It 
 came to Marie through the hole she had 
 made between the mats, and she threw her 
 self on the ground as she had often thrown 
 herself in the lake water, prostrate before the 
 good God who drenched her with such joy. 
 
 The Chippewas drew together at the 
 camp-fire, red light shining between their 
 moving legs. Their brutal carnival died out 
 as quickly at M. Cadotte's shout as it had 
 arisen with Wawatam's yell. He noticed 
 when he approached them that the young 
 chief Wawatam was gone. M. Cadotte was 
 too well skilled in treating with Indians to 
 look around the dark edges of the camp ap 
 prehensively, but the fact that Wawatam
 
 THE HIGH PLATEAU 157 
 
 might be skulking made him say briefly what 
 he had to say. The crimson stack of reviv 
 ing brands gave him a ruddier hue than was 
 natural, though he was a hale, well-built 
 Frenchman, dark-haired, and very animated 
 in gesture. 
 
 " And have you been sitting here, Grand 
 Sautor, and allowing your young men to de 
 stroy their nation ? " he inquired, confronting 
 the old image. 
 
 The Grand Sautor made no reply, but 
 waited to hear what had happened at the 
 Sault to make M. Cadotte take all this 
 trouble for an Englishman. Some little sat 
 isfaction embedded itself in his wrinkles 
 that the Englishman was at least well 
 scorched before being turned loose. The 
 medicine-man, resting his horns against a 
 tree, relaxed in weary disgust. He knew 
 the Great Turtle spirit would not be con 
 sulted that night. 
 
 " As many burns as there are on that 
 young Englishman's body, that many Chip- 
 pewas will Sir William Johnson have for 
 them. What ! Do you not know that this 
 man is his relative ? I would not have let 
 the young Englishman come back if I had
 
 158 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 been at the Sault when he arrived. But I 
 was away, meeting messengers sent from 
 Fort Niagara, from Sir William Johnson. 
 He sent for his young relative. And he has 
 come as far as Fort Niagara to meet the 
 tribes of the Northwest. His kettles are 
 hung, full of meat. The messengers said he 
 intended to load your canoes with powder 
 and shot and blankets, and more presents 
 than you can carry away. Are you so fond 
 of your old bows and arrows for hunting 
 when you can have firearms ? What will he 
 say when I am obliged to tell him, ' Mon 
 sieur, these fools of Chippewas have listened 
 to evil birds from Detroit and other places, 
 and have put your young relative into the 
 fire ? ' " 
 
 M. Cadotte turned abruptly on the sullen 
 Detroit envoys sitting with their knees up to 
 their chins. 
 
 " Did these fellows tell you that Detroit 
 is taken ? Detroit is not taken. It never 
 can be taken. The St. Lawrence River is 
 black with canoes, and the canoes are full 
 of English soldiers. Pontiac cannot stand 
 against such power. And here are you 
 laying up crimes against the lives of your
 
 THE HIGH PLATEAU 159 
 
 women and children ! Will you go to this 
 council at Fort Niagara, and make peace 
 with a people who have you in their hands ? 
 I am of your tribe, and I see nothing else 
 for us to do. Or will you refuse ? The 
 messengers wait at the Sault, and you 
 must come and tell them yourselves what 
 you will do." 
 
 Marie had not finished changing her moc 
 casins and girding on one of her blanket- 
 gowns when Father Tonois called her. She 
 
 o J 
 
 hung her beads in her girdle, and tied her 
 birch-bark cap under her chin. There was 
 nothing else for her to take. She looked 
 back at her wilderness nest. Noko's vacant 
 bed gave her a pang. She had forgotten the 
 old grandmother. Noko must be dozing 
 somewhere on the path, under a load of bark 
 and roots. What would she do when she 
 trudged home to the lodges and found no 
 French girl ready to take off her load and 
 ladle her belated supper out for her? 
 
 " O dear Noko ! " said Marie. 
 
 But the sweet necessity of going where 
 her love went hurried her out of the little 
 home, and she dropped the flap forever be 
 hind her.
 
 160 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 The camp-fire, coaxed by the squaws, was 
 lifting candle-flames and making the plateau 
 flicker. Those faces which had always been 
 strange to Marie, distantly watched her now, 
 half sinister in their wordless scrutiny. M. 
 Cadotte had his Canadians and Indians mus 
 tered, and he surrounded the Englishman 
 with them. It was necessary to hurry to the 
 boats. The fluctuating aboriginal temper 
 which he had turned toward peace might 
 turn back toward war the next minute, reck 
 less of consequences. And the young chief 
 Wawatam, who had separated himself from 
 the savage bivouac, might work harm with 
 arrows in the darkness which the follow 
 ing council would never be able to mend. 
 M. Cadotte was sincerely attached to his 
 Chippewa relatives. 
 
 "But where is George?" said Marie. 
 "Can we not take him along?" 
 
 " No, no ; it would not do," objected M. 
 Cadotte. The Frenchman had no mind to 
 make a further breach with Wawatam by 
 abducting his adopted son. 
 
 Marie paused at the bench where George 
 lay, and put her hand on his unconscious 
 head.
 
 THE HIGH PLATEAU 161 
 
 " O poor George ! Who will take care of 
 him ? " 
 
 " Make your mind easy, my child," said 
 Father Jonois. " I will look after George." 
 
 " But some one must drive him to bathe, 
 Father Jonois, or he would not wash himself 
 once a year." 
 
 " I will lay it upon him as penance," 
 promised Father Jonois ; " as indeed it is to 
 most of my flock." 
 
 " O George, the saints also watch over 
 you," whispered Marie; and George stirred 
 in his heavy sleep, bubbling half articulately : 
 
 "All good." 
 
 Then, understanding what she risked by 
 pausing, Marie hurried down the familiar 
 path to the bay through the moist, sweet 
 woods. Indian-pipes were perhaps spring 
 ing about her, parting dead leaves as they 
 shot like rising souls above the earth. 
 Would there fail a girl to search them out 
 and love them while the island stood on the 
 waters ? 
 
 Her island her dear island ! 
 
 And then she remembered the chief who 
 had been kind to her two years. But Henry 
 held her hand against his breast as they
 
 162 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 walked. She felt the pang of all his burns, 
 and knew that every eye kept watch on 
 thickets ahead ; and it puzzled her that our 
 good and evil are so mixed in this world that 
 we cannot separate them. 
 
 " For what could I not have done to the 
 Pani woman," flashed through Marie's mind, 
 " if the Pani woman had this hand which now 
 holds mine ? The poor chief cannot know it 
 was impossible for me ever to go to L'Arbre 
 Croche with him." 
 
 SOUTH of the Cheneaux islands there was 
 a redness in the east which surprised the eye 
 like dawn at night, until a disk appeared, in 
 flamed and pushing upward. It was the old 
 moon, diminished in figure, but grand, as the 
 lady of the sky forever is. As the flush died 
 away, woods, islands, and immense stretches 
 of water sprung to distinctness in her mystic 
 day, and she unrolled her web of tapestry 
 along the rippling pavement below. There 
 was no more than a ripple on the straits. 
 
 Father Jonois's canoe moved away from 
 the little fleet heading toward the Sault. He 
 had just finished the sacrament of marriage 
 and his admonitions to the bridegroom, while
 
 THE HIGH PLATEAU 163 
 
 the Canadians held the boats together in 
 mid-channel. A problem that had troubled 
 him two years was now solved, and his con 
 science acquitted him of the French girl whom 
 her husband called the white islander. In 
 winter he used to cross the ice on a sledge to 
 make sure she was well and happy with her 
 Chippewa household, and he guarded her at 
 all seasons in the semi-savage lot from which 
 she sprung into beauty. She loved him with 
 veneration ; yet she had just kissed his hand 
 and turned away to the uttermost parts of 
 the earth with a stranger she had never seen 
 when that moon was new. 
 
 "There are women," thought the priest, 
 " who have a vocation for loving as plain as 
 others have for the holy life." 
 
 His expert canoe-man, who had ventured 
 on more than one perilous journey with him, 
 looked forward to an easy night crossing. 
 Widening triangles of light showed behind 
 the eastward-moving boats as they clove the 
 water. An auroral play of camp-fire could 
 be seen on the summit of Mackinac above 
 the white cliffs and foliage dome. Night had 
 never seemed less savage on that coast. 
 Father Jonois, turning his back on accom-
 
 164 THE WHITE ISLANDER 
 
 plished duty and visible things, began to 
 whisper prayers. Still a glamourous in 
 fluence, as resistless as music, stole out from 
 that island, and followed the canoe while it 
 pushed its breastplate of foam toward sparks 
 of French windows at Fort Michilimackinac.
 
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