And some way he felt in part responsible. He had risked his life to save Destournier's property.
There were sad days in the fort. The weather came off comparatively pleasant, and the half-ruined huts were repaired, the wounded healed, the losses made good, as far as possible. The dead Iroquois were put in a trench, but better sepulture was provided for the colonists, and the services over the body of M. Giffard were in a degree military. The two Récollet priests were kindness and devotion personified, and they said prayers every hour in their rude little chapel, where a candle was kept burning before the altar.
They frowned severely on what they termed the mummeries of Madawando. Even the Indian converts, and they were few enough, lapsed into charms and incantations in times of trouble. They willingly had their children baptized, as if this was one of the charms to ward off danger. But the priests labored with unabated courage.
Miladi seemed to hover a long while between the two worlds, it was thought, but the real spring was coming on, and all nature was reviving. She had never quite wanted to die, so at the lowest ebb she seemed to will herself back to life by some occult power.
Rose meanwhile had run quite wild, but she had been Destournier's companion in his walks, in his canoe journeys; sometimes with Marie Gaudrion, she was in and out of the settlement, and as she understood a little of the several Indian languages, she was quite a favorite; but Destournier felt troubled about her at times. She was very fearless, very upright, and detected the subterfuges of the children of the wilderness, condemning them most severely. But they never seemed angry with her.
Sometimes he thought he would send her to France and begin her education in a convent. But could the wild little thing who skipped and danced and sung, climbed rocks and trees, managed a canoe, tamed birds that came and sang on her shoulder, endure the dull routine of convent life? She could read French quite fluently. She had taken an immense fancy to Latin, and caught the lines so easily when Destournier read them from musical Horace, or the stirring scenes of the Odyssey, the only two Latin books he owned. And her head was stuffed full of wild Indian tales.
"I wonder," she said one day, as she sat on the rocks, leaning against Destournier's knee, the soft wind playing through the silken tendrils of her hair—"I wonder if you should die whether I could be like miladi, and want the room dark and have every one go in the softest moccasins, and have headaches and the sound of any one's voice pierce through you like a knife. It would be terrible."
"Why do you think of that?"
"Because I love you best of everybody. The Governor is very nice, but he is in France so much and you are here. Then we can climb rocks together and sit in the forests and hear the trees talk. I go to M. Giffard's grave and say over the spells Madawando taught me, to bring him back, but he does not come. If he could, miladi would be bright and gay again, and we would dance and sing, and have merry times. If you died I should want to die, too."
He was touched by the child's simple devotion.