SHE stood erect and silent against the closed door until Dollier de Casson, before he had taken his first mouthful, spoke to her.

“Peace be with you, Massawippa.”

“Peace be also with you, father.”

Her voice was contralto without gutturals.

“You come in good time, my daughter. It is long since I examined you in the faith and absolved you.”

“Think of my soul later, father; I come from the chief.”

“Where is the chief?”

“Étienne Annahotaha sends for you,” she replied grandly. “I am to show you the way.”

Dollier de Casson did not ask why Étienne Annahotaha sent for the priest instead of coming to the priest himself. The Huron chief disdained his wife’s relatives with savage frankness.

“Very good, my daughter. In the morning, then, we will set out.”

“Annahotaha begs that you will come at once, father.”

“Hath he such urgent need of a priest?”

“He leaves his present camp early to-morrow, and he himself will tell you his urgent business.”

The girl’s eyes moved slightingly over this huge French family, holding them unfit to hear many words concerning her father.

“Very good, my daughter. As soon as I have finished my repast I shall be ready.”

Pierre muttered objections. His first wife’s grave was blessed, and his second wife was now comfortably his, but he grudged gospel privileges to that interloper Annahotaha, who had married his sister and made a white squaw of her, poor unsettled woman, paddling her from the island of Orleans to the lower Ottawa and back until she died.

All seats being occupied, Massawippa still stood by the entrance. Her uncle Pierre did point her to a place beside the table, but she shook her head.

Father de Casson was placed by himself at the table end, Pierre’s mob of children and step-children thronging below, the little ones standing wedged together, some with chins barely level with the board. Though scarcely more than fourteen years old, Massawippa looked well grown and tall. No civilized awkwardness of limb, or uncertainty of action when she moved, hampered her. Notwithstanding her cheek-bones were high and her mouth wide, she was full of vigorous young beauty. Her temples were round, and clasped as if by jet-black birdwings in hair which divided its weight betwixt two braids and measured half the length of her body.

Scarcely tolerant was the eye she kept on these French habitants her kinsfolks. She was princess; they were merely inferior white stock from whom her mother had sprung.

In personal appointments she was exquisite compared with the French women of the cabin. Her rich and glowing cheeks, her small dark ears and throat and hands, had reached a state of polish through unusual care. Her raiment appeared to be culled from the best fashions of both races. She wore the soft Indian moccasin, stitched with feather-work, and the woolen French stocking. All beaver skins in New France nominally belonged to the government; but this half-breed girl wore a pliant slim gown, chestnut-colored and silky, of beaver skin, reaching nearly to her ankles. It was girdled around the waist and collared around the top by bands of white wampum glittering like scales. A small light blanket of wool dyed a very dull red was twisted around her and hung over one arm.

A bud of a woman though still a child, full of the gentle dignity of the Hurons, who of all the great tribes along the St. Lawrence had lent themselves most kindly to Christian teaching, and undulled by her French peasant blood, Massawippa was comforting to eyes wearied by oily dark faces.

Dollier de Casson, gentleman and soldier before he became priest, always treated her with the deference she was inclined to exact as due her station.

Most Canadian half-breeds were the children of French fathers who had turned coureurs de bois and of Indian women briefly espoused by them. But the Huron chief had wedded Massawippa’s mother by priest and Latin service. The inmates of Pierre’s house regarded this girl as a misfortune that held them in awe. Her patent of nobility was dirt to them, yet by virtue of it she trod on air above their heads; and she was always so strangely clean and strangely handsome, this high young dame of the woods.

Pierre’s new wife, the corners of her mouth settling, regarded Massawippa with disfavor. The families in that cÔte knew well at whose door Jean Ba’ti’s widow laid the defection of her son.

One of Pierre’s little boys, creeping sidewise towards Massawippa, leaned against the door and looked up, courting her smile. He was very dirty, his cheeks new sodden with pork-fat being the most acceptable points of his surface. She did not encourage his advances, but met his look sedately.

“Thou know’st not what I know, Massawippa,” said he. “Thou know’st not who’s married.”

She remained silent, pride magnifying the natural indifference of her time of life to such news.

“The father Pierre is married. Dost guess he married our AngÈle?” tempted the little boy, whose ideas of the extent of intermarriage surpassed even the generous views of his elders in the cÔte. “No! Antonio Brunette married our AngÈle. Four people are married. It made me laugh. The widow of Jean Ba’ti’ Morin, she wedded Father Pierre, and you must tell La Mouche. Are you also married to La Mouche, Massawippa?”

Her aquiline face blazed with instant wrath, and Pierre’s little boy fell back from her as if scorched. Her hiss followed him.

“I do not myself speak to La Mouche!”

La Mouche’s mother was naturally the most interested witness of this falcon-like stoop of Massawippa’s, and as a mother she experienced deeper sense of injury.