her make a winter retreat to some place near the headwaters of the
Penobscot. When the hunters were abroad, it did them no harm to
remember there was a maid in a wilderness cloister praying for the
good of her people; and when they were fortunate, they believed in the
material advantage of her prayers. Nobody thought of searching out her
hidden cell, or of asking the big-legged hunter and his wife to tell
its mysteries. The dealer with invisible spirits commanded respect in
Indian minds before the priest came.

Madockawando's daughter was of a lighter color than most of her tribe,
and finer in her proportions, though they were a well-made people. She
was the highest expression of unadulterated Abenaqui blood. She set
her sap pail down by the trough, and Saint-Castin shifted silently to
watch her while she dipped the juice. Her eyelids were lowered. She
had well-marked brows, and the high cheek-bones were lost in a general
acquiline rosiness. It was a girl's face, modest and sweet, that he
saw; reflecting the society of holier beings than the one behind the
tree. She had no blemish of sunken temples or shrunk features, or the
glaring aspect of a devotee. Saint-Castin was a good Catholic, but he
did not like fanatics. It was as if the choicest tree in the forest
had been flung open, and a perfect woman had stepped out, whom no
other man's eye had seen. Her throat was round, and at the base of it,
in the little hollow where women love to nestle ornaments, hung the
cross of her rosary, which she wore twisted about her neck. The
beads were large and white, and the cross was ivory. Father Petit had
furnished them, blessed for their purpose, to his incipient abbess,
but Saint-Castin noticed how they set off the dark rosiness of her
skin. The collar of her fur dress was pushed back, for the day was
warm, like an autumn day when there is no wind. A luminous smoke which
magnified the light hung between treetops and zenith. The nakedness of