the chutes in the rapids where a victim could be sucked down to death
in an instant, or about tracing the windigo's secret camp, Archange
hid herself in the attic. She lay upon Michel's bed and wept, or
walked the plank floor. It was no place for her. At noon the bark roof
heated her almost to fever. The dormer windows gave her little air,
and there was dust as well as something like an individual sediment of
the poverty from which the boy had come. Yet she could endure the loft
dungeon better than the face of the Chippewa mother who blamed her,
or the bluff excitement of Monsieur Cadotte. She could hear his voice
from time to time, as he ran in for spirits or provisions for parties
of searchers. And Archange had aversion, like the instinct of a maid,
to betraying fondness for her husband. She was furious with him, also,
for causing her pain. When she thought of the windigo, of the rapids,
of any peril which might be working his limitless absence, she set
clenched hands in her loosened hair and trembled with hysterical
anguish. But the enormity of his behavior if he were alive made her
hiss at the rafters. "Good, monsieur! Next time I will have four
officers. I will have the entire garrison sitting along the gallery!
Yes, and they shall be English, too. And there is one thing you will
never know, besides." She laughed through her weeping. "You will never
know I made eyes at a windigo."

The preenings and posings of a creature whose perfections he once
thought were the result of a happy chance had made Louizon roar. She
remembered all their life together, and moaned, "I will say this:
he was the best husband that any girl ever had. We scarcely had a
disagreement. But to be the widow of a man who is eaten up--O Ste.
Marie!"

In the clear August weather the wide river seemed to bring its