Ah, how the bells rang out on Christmas morning! A soft, muffled sound coming through the roofs of white snow that looked like peaked army tents, the old Latin melody that had rejoiced many a heart and carried the good news round the world.

It was still dark when Jeanne heard Pani stirring, and she sprang out of bed.

"I am going to church with you, Pani," she declared in a tone that left no demur.

"Ah, child, if thou hadst listened to the good father and been confirmed, then thou mightst have partaken of the mass."

Jeanne almost wished she had. But the schoolmaster had strengthened her opposition, or rather her dread, a little, quite unknowingly, and yet he had given her more reverence and a longing for real faith.

"But I shall be thinking of the shepherds and the glad tidings. I watched the stars last night, they were so beautiful. 'And they came and stood over the place,' the schoolmaster read it to me. That was way over the other side of the world, Pani."

The Indian woman shook her head. She was afraid of this strange knowledge, and she had a vague idea that it must have happened here in Detroit, since the Christ was born anew every year.

The stars were not all gone out of the sky. The crisp snow crunched under their feet, although the moccasins were soft and warm; and everybody was muffled in furs, even to hoods and pointed caps. Some people were carrying lanterns, but they could find their way, straight along St. Anne's street. The bell kept on until they stood in the church porch.

"Thou wilt sit here, child."

Jeanne made no protest. She rather liked being hidden here in the darkness.

There were the De Bers, then Marie and her lover, then Rose and Pierre. How much did dull Pierre believe and understand? The master's faith seemed simpler to her.

A little later was the regular Christmas service with the altar decked in white and gold and the two fathers in their beautiful robes of rejoicing, the candlesticks that had been sent from France a century before, burnished to their brightest and the candles lighted. Behind the screen the sisters and the children sang hymns, and some in the congregation joined, though the men were much more at home in the music of the violins and in the jollity.

Jeanne felt strangely serious, and half wished she was among the children. It was the fear of having to become a nun that deterred her. She could not understand how BerthÊ Campeau could leave her ailing mother and go to Montreal for religion's sake. Madame Campeau was not able to stand the journey even if she had wanted to go, but she and her sister had had some differences, and, since BerthÊ would go, her son's wife had kindly offered to care for her.

"And what there is left thou shalt have, Catherine," she said to her daughter-in-law. "None of my money shall go to Montreal. It would be only such a little while for BerthÊ to wait. I cannot last long."

So she had said for three years and BerthÊ had grown tired of waiting. Her imagination fed on the life of devotion and exaltation that her aunt wrote about.

At noon Marie De Ber was married. She shivered a little in her white gown, for the church was cold. Her veil fell all over her and no one could see whether her face was joyful or not. Truth to tell, she was sadly frightened, but everybody was merry, and her husband wrapped her in a fur cloak and packed her in his sledge. A procession followed, most of them on foot, for there was to be a great dinner at Tony Beeson's.

Then, although the morning had been so lovely, the sky clouded over with leaden gray and the wind came in great sullen gusts from Lake Huron. You could hear it miles away, a fierce roar such as the droves of bisons made, as if they were breaking in at your very door. Pani hung the bearskin against the door and let down the fur curtains over the windows. There was a bright log fire and Jeanne curled up on one side in a wolfskin, resting her head on a cushion of cedar twigs that gave out a pleasant fragrance. Pani sat quietly on the other side. There was no light but the blaze. Neither was the Indian woman used to the small industries some of the French took up when they had passed girlhood. In a slow, phlegmatic fashion she used to go over her past life, raising up from their graves, as it were, Madame de Longueil, Madame Bellestre, and then Monsieur, though he never came from the shadowy grave, but a garden that bore strange fruit, and where it was summer all the year round. She had the gift of obedient faith, so she was a good Catholic, as far as her own soul was concerned, but her duty toward the child often troubled her.

Jeanne watched the blaze in a strange mood, her heart hot and angry at one moment, proud and indifferent at the next. She said a dozen times a day to herself that she didn't care a dead leaf for Marie, who had grown so consequential and haughty, and Rose, who was full of her own pleasure. It seemed as if other children had dropped out as well, but then in this cold weather she could not run out to the farms or lead a group of eager young people to see her do amazing feats. For she could walk out on the limb of a tree and laugh while it swung up and down with her weight, and then catch the limb of the next tree and fling herself over, amid their shouts. No boy dared climb higher. She had caught little owls who blinked at her with yellow eyes, but she always put them back in the trees again.

"You wouldn't like to be carried away by fierce Indians," she said when the children begged they might keep them. "They like their homes and their mothers."

"As if an owl could tell who its mother was!" laughed a boy disdainfully.

She had hardly known the feeling of loneliness. What did she do last winter, she wondered? O yes, she played with the De Ber children, and there were the Pallents, whom she seldom went to visit now, they seemed so very ignorant. Ah—if it would come summer again!

"For the trees and the flowers and the birds are better than most people," she ruminated. It must be because everybody had gone out of her life that it appeared wide and strange. After all she did not care for the De Bers and yet it seemed as if she had been stabbed to the heart. Pierre and Marie had pretended to care so much for her. Then, in spite of her sadness, she laughed.

"What is it amuses thee so, little one?" asked the Indian woman.

"I am not old enough to have a lover, Pani, am I?" and she looked out of her furry wrap.

"No, child, no. What folly! Marie's wedding has set thee astray."

"And Pierre is a slow, stupid fellow."

"Pierre would be no match for thee, and I doubt if the De Bers would countenance such a thing if he were older. That is nonsense."

"Pierre asked me to be his wife. He said twice that he wanted to marry me—at the raising of the flag, when we were on the water, and one Sunday in the autumn. I am not as old as Rose De Ber, even, so Marie need not feel set upon a pinnacle because Tony Beeson marries her when she is barely fifteen."

"Jeanne!" Pani's tone was horror stricken. "And it will make no end of trouble. Madame De Ber is none too pleasant now."

"It will make no trouble. I said 'no' and 'no' and 'no,' until it was like this mighty wind rushing through the forest, and he was very angry. So I should not go to the De Bers any more. And, Pani, if I had a father who would make me marry him when I was older, I should go and throw myself into the Strait."

"His father sends him up in the fur country in the spring."

"What makes people run crazy when weddings are talked of? But if I wanted to hold my head high and boast—"

"Oh, child, you could not be so silly!"

"No, Pani. And I shall be glad to have him go away. I do not want any lovers."

The woman was utterly amazed, and then consoled herself with the thought that it was merely child's play. They both lapsed into silence again. But Jeanne's thoughts ran on. There was Louis Marsac. What if he returned next summer and tormented her? A perplexing mood, half pride, half disgust, filled her, and a serious elation at her own power which thrills young feminine things when they first discover it; as well as the shrinking into a new self-appropriation that thrusts out all such matters. But she did not laugh over Louis Marsac. She felt afraid of him, and she scrubbed her mouth where he had once kissed it.

There was another kiss on her hand. She held it up in the firelight. Ah, if she had a father like M. St. Armand, and a brother like the young man!

She was seized with an awful pang as if a swift, dark current was bearing her away from every one but Pani. Why had her father and mother been wrenched out of her life? She had seen a plant or a young shrub swept out of its rightful place and tossed to and fro until some stronger wave threw it upon the sandy edge, to droop and die. Was she like that? Where had she been torn from? She had been thrown into Pani's lap. She had never minded the little jeers before when the children had called her a wild Indian. Was she nobody's child?

She had an impulse to jump about and storm around the room, to drag some secret out of Pani, to grasp the world in her small hands and compel it to disclose its knowledge. She looked steadily into the red fire and her heart seemed bursting with the breath that could not find an outlet.

The bells began to ring again. "Come," "come," they said. Had she better not go to the sisters and live with them? The Church would be father and mother.

She bent down her head and cried very softly, for it seemed as if all joy had gone out of her life. Pani fell asleep and snored.

But the next morning the world was lovelier than ever with the new fallen snow. Men were shoveling it away from doorways and stamping it down in the streets with their great boots, the soles being wooden and the legs of fur. And they snowballed each other. The children joined and rolled in the snow. Now and then a daring young fellow caught a demoiselle and rubbed roses into her cheeks.

All the rest of the week was given over to holiday life. There were great doings at the Citadel and in some of the grand houses. There were dances and dinners, and weddings so brilliant that Marie De Ber's was only a little rushlight in comparison.

The master went down to Marietta for a visit. Jeanne seemed like a pendulum swinging this way and that. She was lonely and miserable. One day the Church seemed a refuge, the next she shrank with a sort of terror and longed for spring, as a drowning man longs for everything that promises succor.

One morning Monsieur Loisel, the notary, came in with a grave and solemn mien.

"I have news for thee, Pani and Mam'selle, a great word of sorrow, and it grieves me to be the bearer of it. Yet the good Lord has a right to his own, for I cannot doubt but that Madame Bellestre's intercession has been of some avail. And Monsieur Bellestre was an upright, honorable, kindly man."

"Monsieur Bellestre is dead," said Pani with the shock of a sudden revelation.

Jeanne stood motionless. Then he could never come back! And, oh, what if Monsieur St. Armand never came back!

"Yes. Heaven rest his soul, say I, and so does the good Father Rameau. For his gift to the Church seems an act of faith."

"And Jeanne?" inquired the woman tremblingly.

"It is about the child I have come to talk. Monsieur Bellestre has made some provision for her, queerly worded, too."

"Oh, he does not take her away from me!" cried the foster mother in anguish.

"No. He had some strange notions not in accord with the Church, we all know, that liberty to follow one's opinion is a good thing. It is not always so in worldly affairs even, but of late years it has come largely in vogue in religious matters. And here is the part of his will that pertains to her. You would not understand the preamble, so I will tell it in plain words. To you, Pani, is given the house and a sum of money each year. To the child is left a yearly portion until she is sixteen, then, if she becomes a Catholic and chooses the lot of a sister, it ceases. Otherwise it is continued until she is married, when she is given a sum for a dowry. And at your death your income reverts to the Bellestre estate."

"Monsieur Bellestre did not want me to become a nun, then?"

Jeanne asked the question gravely as a woman.

"It seems not, Mam'selle. He thinks some one may come to claim you, but that is hardly probable after all these years;" and there was a dryness in the notary's tone. "You are to be educated, but I think the sisters know better what is needful for a girl. There are no restrictions, however. I am to see that the will is carried out, and the new court is to appoint what is called a guardian. The money is to be sent to me every six months. It surely is a great shame Mam'selle has no male relatives."

"Shall we have to change, Monsieur?" asked Pani with a dread in her voice.

"Oh, no; unless Mam'selle should—" he looked questioningly at the girl.

"I shall never leave Pani." She came and stretching up clasped her arms about the woman's neck as she had in her babyhood. "And I like to go to school to the master."

"M. Bellestre counts this way, that you were three years old when you came to Detroit. That was nine years ago. And that you are twelve now. So there are four years—"

"It looks a long while, but the past does not seem so. Why, last winter is like the turn of your hand," and she turned hers over with a smile.

"Many things may happen in four years." No doubt she would have a lover and marry. "Let me go over it again."

They both listened, Jeanne wide-eyed, Pani nodding her head slowly.

"I must tell you that M. Bellestre left fifty pounds to Father Rameau for any purpose he considered best. And now the court will take it in hand, but these new American courts are all in confusion and very slow. Still, as there is to be no change, and the money will come through me as before, why, there will be no trouble."

Pani nodded again but made no comment. She could hardly settle her mind to the fact of Monsieur Bellestre's death.

"Allow me to congratulate you, Mam'selle, on having so sincere a friend." M. Loisel held out his hand.

"If he had but come back! I do not care for the money."

"Still, money is a very good thing. Well, we will have several more talks about this. Adieu, Mam'selle. My business is ended at present."

He bowed politely as he went out; but he thought, "It is a crazy thing leaving her to the care of that old Indian woman. Surely he could not have distrusted Father Rameau? And though the good father is quite sure—well, it does not do for anyone to be too sure in this world."

Father Rameau came that very afternoon and had a long talk with Pani. He did not quite understand why M. Bellestre should be so opposed to the Church taking charge of the child, since she was not in the hands of any relative. But he had promised Pani she should not be separated from her, indeed, no one had a better right to her, he felt.

M. Bellestre's family were strong Huguenots, and had been made to suffer severely for their faith in Old France, and not a little in the new country. He had not cordially loved the English, but he felt that the larger liberty had been better for the settlement, and that education was the foe to superstition and bigotry, as well as ignorance. While he admitted to himself, and frankly to the town, the many excellencies of the priest, it was the system, that held the people in bondage and denied enlightenment, that he protested against. It was with great pain that he had discovered his wife's gradual absorption, but knowing death was at hand he could not deny her last request. But the child should choose for herself, and, if under Pani's influence she should become a Catholic, he would not demur. From time to time he had accounts from M. Loisel, and he had been pleased with the desire of the child for education. She should have that satisfaction.

And now spring was coming again. The sense of freedom and rejoicing broke out anew in Jeanne, but she found herself restrained by some curious power that was finer than mere propriety. She was growing older and knowledge enlarged her thoughts and feelings, stirred a strange something within her that was ambition, though she knew it not; she had not grown accustomed to the names of qualities.

The master was taking great pride in her, and gave her the few advantages within his reach. Detroit was being slowly remodeled, but it was discouraging work, since the French settlers were satisfied with their own ways, and looked with suspicion on improvements even in many simple devices for farming.

With the fur season the town was in wild confusion and holiday jollity prevailed. There were Indians with packs; and the old race of the coureurs des bois, who were still picturesque with their red sashes and jaunty habiliments. They were wild men of the woods, who had thrown off the restraints of civilized life and who hunted as much for the pleasure as the profit. They could live in a wigwam, they could join Indian dances, they were brave, hardy, but in some instances savage as the Indians themselves and quite as lawless. A century ago they had been the pioneers of the fur hunters, with many a courageous explorer among them. The newer organizations of the fur companies had curtailed their power and their numbers had dwindled, but they kept up their wild habits, and this was the carouse of the whole year.

It was a busy season. There was great chaffering, disputing, and not a few fights, though guards were detailed along the river front to keep the peace as far as was possible. Boats were being loaded for Montreal, cargoes to be shipped down the Hudson and from thence abroad, with mink and otter and beaver, beautiful fox furs, white wolf and occasionally a white bear skin that dealers would quarrel about.

Then the stores of provisions to be sent back to the trappers and hunters, the clothes and blankets and trinkets for the Indians, kept shopkeepers busy day and night, and poured money into their coffers. New men were going out,—to an adventurous young fellow this seemed the great opportunity of his life.

Jeanne Angelot's fortune had been noised abroad somewhat, though she paid little attention to it even in her thoughts. But she was a girl with a dowry now, and she was not only growing tall but strangely pretty as well. Her skin was fairer, her hair, which still fell in loose curls, was kept in better order. Coif she would not wear, but sometimes she tied a bright kerchief under her chin and looked bewitching.

French mothers of sons were never averse to a dowry, although men were so in want of wives that few went begging for husbands. Women paused to chat with Pani and make kindly inquiries about her charge. Even Madame De Ber softened. She was opposed to Pierre's going north with the hunters, but he was so eager and his father considered it a good thing. And now he was a strapping big fellow, taller than his father, slowly shaping up into manhood.

"Thou hast not been to visit Marie?" she said one day on meeting Jeanne face to face. "She has spoken of it. Last year you were such a child, but now you have quite grown and will be companionable. All the girls have visited her. Her husband is most excellent."

"I have been busy with lessons," said Jeanne with some embarrassment. Then, with a little pride—"Marie dropped me, and if I were not to be welcome—"

"Chut! chut! Marie had to put on a little dignity. A child like you should bear no malice."

"But—she sent me no invitation."

"Then I must chide her. And it will be pleasant down there in the summer. Do you know that Pierre goes back with the hunters?"

"I have heard—yes."

"It is not my wish, but if he can make money in his youth so much the better. And the others are growing up to fill his place. Good day to thee, Jeanne."

That noon Madame De Ber said to her husband, "Jeanne Angelot improves greatly. Perhaps the school will do her no harm. She is rather sharp with her replies, but she always had a saucy tongue. A girl needs a mother to correct her, and Pani spoils her."

"She will have quite a dowry, I have heard," remarked her husband.

Pierre flushed a little at this pleasant mention of her name. If Jeanne only walked down in the town like some of the girls! If Rose might ask her to go!

But Rose did not dare, and then there was Martin ready to waylay her. Three were awkward when you liked best to have a young man to yourself.

How many times Pierre had watched her unseen, her lithe figure that seemed always atilt even when wrapped in furs, and her starry eyes gleaming out of her fur hood. Not even Rose could compare with her in that curious daintiness, though Pierre would have been at loss to describe it, since his vocabulary was limited, but he felt it in every slow beating pulse. He had resolved to speak, but she never gave him the opportunity. She flashed by him as if she had never known him.

But he must say good-by to her. There was Madelon Dace, who had quarreled with her lover and gone to a dance with some one else and held her head high, never looking to the right or the left, and then as suddenly melted into sweetness and they would be married. Yet Madelon had said to his sister Marie, "I will never speak to him, never!" What had he done to offend Jeanne so deeply? Girls were not usually angered at a man falling in love with them.

So Pierre's pack was made up. In the autumn they could send again. He took tea the last time with Marie. The boats were all ready to start up the Huron.

He went boldly to the little cottage and said courageously to Pani, though his heart seemed to quake almost down to his feet, "I am going away at noon. I have come to say good-by to Jeanne—and to you," put in as an afterthought.

"What a great fellow you are, Pierre! I wish you good luck. Jeanne—"

Jeanne had almost forgotten her childish anger, and the love making was silly, even in remembrance.

"Surely I wish thee good luck, Pierre," she said formally, with a smile not too warm about her rosy lips. "And a fortunate hunting and trading."

"A safe return, Mam'selle, put that in," he pleaded.

"A safe return."

Then they shook hands and he went his way, thinking with great comfort that she had not flouted him.

It was quite a great thing to see the boats go out. Sweethearts and wives congregated on the wharves. Some few brave women went with their husbands. Other ships were setting out for Montreal well loaded, and one or two were carrying a gay lot of passengers.

After a few weeks, quiet returned, the streets were no longer crowded and the noisy reveling was over for a while. The farmers were busy out of doors, cattle were lowing, chanticleer rang out his call to work in the early morn, and busy hens were caroling in cheerful if unmusical voices. Trees budded into a beautiful haze and then sprang into leaf, into bloom. The rough social hilarity was over for a while.

A few of the emigrant farmers laughed at the clumsy, wasteful French methods and tried their own, which were laughed at in turn, but there was little disputing.

Easter had fallen early and it had been cold, but Whitsuntide made amends, and was, if anything, a greater festival. For a procession formed at St. Anne's, young girls in gala attire, smart, middle-aged women with new caps and kerchiefs, husbands and sons, and not a few children, and marched out of the Pontiac gate, as it was called in remembrance of the long siege. Forty years before Jacques Campeau had built the first little outside chapel on his farm, which had a great stretch of ground. The air was full of the fragrance of fruit blossoms and hardly needed incense. Ah, how beautiful it was in a sort of pastoral simplicity! And after saying mass, Father Frechette blessed and prayed for fertile fields and good crops and generous hearts that tithes might not be withheld, and the faithful rewarded. Then they went to the Fulcher farm, where, in a chapel not much more than a shrine, the service was again said with the people kneeling around in the grass. The farmers and good housewives placed more faith in this than in the methods of the newcomers with their American wisdom. But it was a pleasing service. The procession changed about a little,—the young men walking with the demoiselles and whispering in their listening ears.

Jeanne was with them. Madame De Ber was quite gracious, and Marie Beeson singled her out. It had been a cold winter and a backward spring and Marie had not gone anywhere. Tony was so exigent, and she laughed and bridled. It was a very happy thing to be married and have some one care for you. And soon she would give a tea drinking and she would send for Jeanne, who must be sure to come.

But Jeanne had a strange, dreary feeling. She seemed between everything, no longer a child and not a woman, not a part of the Church, not a part of anything. She felt afraid of the future. Oh, what was her share of the bright, beautiful world?