“Be my purse-bearer still,” said Claire, pushing it back. “If there be things we need to buy in the wilderness, you will know how to select them.”
“We will keep it for the walking woman above Carillon,” said the half-breed girl, sagely; and she put it in the careful bank of her tinder-box, bestowing this in the safest part of her dress.
They ate a hearty supper of eels and bread, and breaking the sugar in bits nibbled it afterwards, talking and looking at the coals on Jouaneaux’s hearth.
Massawippa put their candle out. Their low voices echoed from the sides of the underground house and made a booming in their heads, but all sound of the river’s wash so near them, or of the organ murmur of the forest trees, was shut away.
They cast stealthy occasional looks up at the trapdoor, but neither said to the other that she dreaded to see a painted face peering there, or even apprehended the nuns’ man.
While night and day were yet blended they turned the canoe over, and propped it in a secure position with the help of the paddle. Claire brought her cloak out of her packet, and this they made their cushion in the canoe.
The half-breed took the European’s head upon her childish shoulder, wrapping the older dependent well with her own blanket. Of all her experiences Claire thought this the strangest—that she should be resting like a sister on the breast of a little Indian maid in an underground chamber of the wilderness.
“If it were not for you, madame,” spoke Massawippa, “I would put this canoe to soak in the water to-night. We must lose time to do it to-morrow. It has lain so long out of water it will scarcely be safe for us to venture across in.”
“Massawippa, I thought we could take this boat and go directly up the Ottawa in it.”