Saint-Castin walked after her.

"Go back," commanded Madockawando's daughter, turning.

The officer of the Carignan-Salières regiment halted, but did not
retreat.

"You must not follow me, sagamore," she remonstrated, as with a child.
"I cannot talk to you."

"You must let me talk to you," said Saint-Castin. "I want you for my
wife."

She looked at him in a way that made his face scorch. He remembered
the year wife, the half-year wife, and the two-months wife at
Pentegoet. These three squaws whom he had allowed to form his
household, and had taught to boil the pot au feu, came to him from
many previous experimental marriages. They were externals of his life,
much as hounds, boats, or guns. He could give them all rich dowers,
and divorce them easily any day to a succeeding line of legal Abenaqui
husbands. The lax code of the wilderness was irresistible to a
Frenchman; but he was near enough in age and in texture of soul
to this noble pagan to see at once, with her eyesight, how he had
degraded the very vices of her people.

"Before the sun goes down," vowed Saint-Castin, "there shall be nobody
in my house but the two Etchemin slave men that your father gave me."

The girl heard of his promised reformation without any kindling of the
spirit.