A LIGHT rain was blistering the river and thickening an already dark landscape when Dollier de Casson, followed by his man carrying what might be called his religious tool-chest, crossed the clearing with Massawippa.

The child walked before them, her blanket drawn well up over her head and her moccasins taking no print afterwards visible from any soft earth they trod. The laden and much-enduring servant stumbled across roots, but labored on through sleek and treacherous wet spots with the zeal of a missionary servant.

Dollier de Casson gave him breathing periods by carrying the chapel himself. Thus had these two men helped each other in winter when the earth was banked in white, the river a glittering solid, and one’s breath came to him fluid ice and went from him an eruption of steam, as they toiled to parish or distant fort on snow-shoes. Thus did Jesuit and Sulpitian priests keep their religion alive on the St. Lawrence.

Within the first pine covert three Hurons were waiting, evidently Massawippa’s escort. She now walked beside Dollier de Casson and they stalked ahead, threading a silent way through the darkness.

Spruce and white birch were all the trees that stood out distinctly to the senses, others massing anonymously in the void of night and their spring nakedness. The evergreen with prickling fingers brushed the passers’ faces; while the white birches in flecked shrouds crowded rank on rank like many lofty ghosts diverse of girth, and by their whiteness threw a gleam upon the eyeball.

Following the head Huron, Dollier de Casson’s company trod straight over soft logs where the foot sunk in half-rotten moss, and over that rustling, elastic cushion of dead leaves, histories of uncounted summers which padded the floor of the forests. Through roofing limbs the rain found it less easy to pelt them. They wound about rocks and climbed ascents, until Annahotaha’s camp-fire suddenly blinked beneath them and they could stand overlooking it.

He had pitched his bark tent in a small amphitheater sloping down to a tributary of the St. Lawrence. The camp-fire, hissing as slant lines of the shower struck it, threw light over the little river’s stung surface, on low shrubs and rocks, on the oblong lodge,[3] and the figures of some three dozen Indians squatting blanketed beside it, or walking about throwing long shadows over the brightened area.

Étienne Annahotaha sat just within the shelter of his lodge, and here he received the priest, standing almost as tall as Dollier de Casson, who bent his head to avoid the tent.

This shelter was, indeed, altogether for Massawippa; the chief preferred lying on the ground with his braves; but she was child of a mother long used to roofs, and was, besides, a being whom he would set up and guard as a sacred image. There was no woman in the camp.

When Dollier de Casson and Annahotaha sat silently down together, Massawippa crept up behind her father and rested her cheek against his back. He allowed this mute caress and gazed with stern gravity at the fire.

His soul was in labor, and the priest good-humoredly waited until it should bring forth its care. No religious instruction could be imparted to the camp while Annahotaha held his speech unspoken. Rain hissed softly through listening trees, paused to let damp boughs drip, and renewed itself with a rush. Evident vapor arose from the Indians beside the fire.

“The father’s boat was seen upon the river,” began Annahotaha. “I have sent for the father to tell him the thoughts which come up in my breast and give me no peace. I am a tree of rough bark, but I bear a flower branch. I go to the burning and my branch of flowers will not be cut off from me. I am an old bear, but how shall I make the Iroquois feel my claws if my cub be beside me? The lodge of her mother’s people is not fit to hold her. Continually her mother comes to me in dreams saying, ‘What have you done with the child?’ Shall I hang my branch of flowers in the lodges of my people? Behold the remnant of the Hurons!” He leaped to his feet with energetic passion, and flung his pointed finger at the steaming braves by the fire. They gave an instant’s attention to his voice, and went on toasting themselves as before. “We are trodden underfoot like leaves. The French, our white brothers, promise us protection, and our feeble ones are dragged to the stake and scalped before their eyes. We perish from the earth. Soon not a Huron will make the smoke of his lodge go up beside the great river. But before these Iroquois utterly tread our bones under the turf they shall feel the rage of Annahotaha. The last Hurons shall heap them up in destruction!”

He sat down and rested his savage face on his fists.

Massawippa resumed her attitude of satisfied tenderness; and shade by shade his wrath lifted until the father and not the chief again looked through the red of his mask-like face.

“If Annahotaha is leading a war party against the Iroquois,” began Dollier de Casson—

“Speak not of that. The old bear knows his own track; but no way for the tender feet of his cub.”

—“he will pass through Montreal,” continued the priest. “Now, if Annahotaha wishes to keep his gift of Heaven from contaminations of the world, why should he not lay her on the sacred altar? Place her with the sisters of St. Joseph, those good nuns of the HÔtel-Dieu.”

The chief, expectant and acquiescent, kept yet a wily side-glance on his cassocked guide. Honest Dollier de Casson brought his fist with a gentle spat upon his palm as he proceeded.

“No Indian woman ever hath joined the pious labors of our good nuns. You Hurons clamor without ceasing for protection to white brothers who can scarcely keep their own scalps on their heads, but the burdens and self-denials of our holy religion ye shirk. I speak truth to the chief of the Hurons. You even leave your farms and civilized life on the island of Orleans, and take to the woods.”

“We are dragged scalped from our farms,” interjected Annahotaha’s guttural voice.

“My son, the power of Heaven is over all. We gasp and bleed together; but, see you, we still live. Miracles are continually worked for us. They confound even the dark hearts of the Iroquois.”

Annahotaha smiled, perhaps with some reflection of Quebec distrust in Montreal miracles.

“Hast thou not heard,” insisted Father de Casson with that severe credulity which afflicted the best men of the time, “about Jean Saint-PÈre—slain by the Iroquois and beheaded, and his head carried off—speaking to them in warnings and upbraidings? Yea, the scalped skull ceased not threatening them with the vengeance of Heaven, in plain, well-spoken Iroquois.” Annahotaha sounded some guttural which the priest could not receive as assent.

“Blessed is a country, my son, when such notable miracles are done in it. For, see you, there was Father le MaÎtre, who had his head likewise cut off by these children of evil, but without making the stain of blood on his handkerchief which received it. And there were his features stamped on the cloth so that any one might behold them. This miracle of Father le MaÎtre hath scarcely ceased to ring in Montreal, for it is a late thing. I counsel the chief of the Hurons to give his child to the Church. The saints will then be around her in life, and in death they will gather her to themselves.”

Annahotaha sat as if turning over in his mind this proposal, which he had secretly foreseen and wished.

“The father has spoken,” he finally pronounced; and silence closed this conference, as silence had preceded it.

Afterwards Dollier de Casson set up his chapel beside a sheltering rock and prepared to shrive the Huron camp, beginning with Massawippa. Her he confessed apart, in the inclosure of the lodge, probing as many of her nature’s youthful and tortuous avenues as the wisdom of man could penetrate. She raised no objection to that plan of life her father and her confessor both proposed for her; but the priest could not afterwards distinctly recall that she accepted it.

When Father de Casson called the congregation of Indians to approach his temporary chapel, one of the restless braves who had sauntered from sputtering fire to dripping tree skulked crouching in the shadow of Massawippa’s tent. He had a reason for avoiding the priest as well as one for seeking her.

When the others were taken up with their devotions he crept to the tent-flap, and firelight shone broadly on his dark side-countenance, separating him in race from the Hurons. He was a Frenchman. But his stiff black hair was close shorn except one bristling tuft, his oily skin had been touched with paint, and he wore the full war-dress of his foster tribe.

“Massawippa,” whispered this proselyte, raising the lodge-flap, “I have something here for you.”

The girl was telling her beads with a soft mutter in the little penances her priest had imposed upon her. He could see but her blurred figure in her dim shrine.

“Massawippa! La Mouche brings you a baked fish,” he whispered in the provincial French.

Her undisturbed voice continued its muttered orisons.

“Massawippa!” repeated the youth, speaking this time in Huron, his tone entreating piteously. “La Mouche brings you a baked fish. It comes but now from the fire.”

Her voice ceased with an indrawing of the breath, and she hissed at La Mouche.

“Return it then to the fire and thyself with it, thou French log!” she uttered in a screaming whisper in Huron, and hissed at him again as her humble lover dropped the lodge-flap.

The candles shone mellowly from the sheltered altar upon kneeling Indians, but La Mouche slunk off into the darkness.