willing to be at the river?"

Paul and Jacques Le Page said they would undertake the boat. They were
steady and trusty fellows and good river men; not so keen at riding
and hunting as the others, but in better favor with the priest on
account of their behavior.

So the scheme was very well laid out, and the wedding day came,
clear and bright, as promising as any bride's day that ever was seen.
Claudis Beauvois and a few of his friends galloped off to Prairie du
Pont to bring the bride to church. The road from Caho' to Prairie du
Pont was packed on both sides with dense thickets of black oak, honey
locust, and red haws. Here and there a habitant had cut out a patch
and built his cabin; or a path broken by hunters trailed towards the
Mississippi. You ride the same track to-day, my child, only it is not
as shaggy and savage as the course then lay.

And as soon as Claudis Beauvois was out of sight, Gabriel Chartrant
followed with his dozen French Puants, in feathers and buckskin, all
smeared with red and yellow ochre, well mounted and well armed. They
rode along until they reached the last path which turns off to the
river. At the end of that path, a mile away through the underbrush,
Paul and Jacques Le Page were stationed with a boat. The young men
with Gabriel dismounted and led their horses into the thicket to wait
for his signal.

The birds had begun to sing just after three o'clock that clear
morning, for Celeste lying awake heard them; and they were keeping
it up in the bushes. Gabriel leaned his feathered head over the road,
listening for hoof-falls and watching for the first puff of dust in