"That is well thought of," he answered, and struck a half circle
under the boards. Whether in this flourish he slashed anything he only
learned by the stain on the knife, when the sloop was dropping down
the bay. But the Abenaqui girl knew what he had done, before the
footsteps ceased. She sat beside Saint-Castin on the platform, their
feet resting on the ground within the boards. No groan betrayed him,
but her arms went jealously around his body, and her searching fingers
found the cut in the buckskin. She drew her blanket about him with a
strength of compression that made it a ligature, and tied the corners
in a knot.

"Is it deep, sagamore?"

"Not deep enough," said Saint-Castin. "It will glue me to my buckskins
with a little blood, but it will not let me out of my troubles. I
wonder why I ran such a race from the English? They might have had me,
since they want me, and no one else does."

"I will kiss you now, sagamore," whispered the Abenaqui girl,
trembling and weeping in the chaos of her broken reserve. "I cannot
any longer hold out against being your wife."

She gave him her first kiss in the sacred darkness of the chapel, and
under the picture of the pierced heart. And it has since been recorded
of her that the Baroness de Saint-Castin was, during her entire
lifetime, the best worshiped wife in Acadia.