“He said to me, my wife: ‘Antoine, will you stay and watch the mine until I come with the birds northward, again?’ and I said: ‘I will stay, and Angelique will stay; I will watch the mine.’”
“This is for his riches, but for our peril, Antoine.”
“Who can say whither a woman’s fancy goes? It is full of guessing. It is clouds and darkness to-day, and sunshine—so much—to-morrow. I cannot answer.”
“I have a fear; if my husband loved me—”
“There is the mine,” he interrupted firmly.
“When my heart aches so—”
“Angelique, there is the mine.”
“Ah, my Antoine!”
And so these two stayed on the island of St. Jean, in Lake Superior, through the purple haze of autumn, into the white brilliancy of winter, guarding the Rose Tree Mine, which Falding the Englishman and his companions had prospected and declared to be their Ophir.
But St. Jean was far from the ways of settlement, and there was little food and only one hut, and many things must be done for the Rose Tree Mine in the places where men sell their souls for money; and Antoine and Angelique, French peasants from the parish of Ste. Irene in Quebec, were left to guard the place of treasure, until, to the sound of the laughing spring, there should come many men and much machinery, and the sinking of shafts in the earth, and the making, of riches.