To borrow a sail-boat would be easy enough while sympathy lasted for his penitent. He remembered also that Lucy could help sail it, and it would be best to take her to Mackinac for the parting with her husband.
The cross was stretching its afternoon shadow, and wind sweet with the moisture of many tossing blue miles flowed across the bluff. There never had been a fairer day for the yearly dances. Under his trouble the priest was conscious of trivial self-reproach that he had not told the passers it was fête day. But he reflected that few could love this remote little aboriginal world as he loved it, in joy or tragedy. The glamour of the North was over it through every season. At bleak January-end, in wastes of snow, the small houses were sealed and glowing with fires, and sledges creaked on the crust, while the shout of Indian children could be heard. Then the ice-boat shot out on the closed strait above and veered like a spirit from point to point, almost silent and terribly swift. On mornings after there had been a dry mist from the lake, this whole world was bridal-white, every twig loaded with frost blooms, until the far-reaching glory gave it a tropical beauty and lavishness and the frost fell like showers of flower petals.
His people stood respectfully out of his way as he entered the grove. The “throb, throb” and “pat, pat” of drum and feet were farther off, where young men were dancing in a ring. He could see their lithe bodies sway between tree boles. Old squaws sat with knees up to their chins, and old men smoked, pressing close to the spectacle. The priest was sensitive enough to feel a stir of uneasiness at his invasion of the aboriginal temple, and he was not long in having a boat put at his disposal.
The next thing was to induce Moses and Lucy to accompany him quietly down to the dock. He spoke to Lucy at her door. She sat in dull dejection, her basket-work and supply of sweet grass on the floor beside her.
“Come, Lucy! I have business in Mackinac, and Moses and you must take me there.”
“Did that schooner bring you news, father?”
“Yes.”
“But it is late.”
“We may remain there to-night. Take such things with you as your husband might need for a week.”
Lucy obediently put her basket-work away and prepared for the journey. She was conscious of triumph over Catharine, from whom the priest was about to rescue Moses. She put on her best sweet-grass hat and made up her bundle.