“Let me continue with you, then,” whispered back Claire. “Have you been in this place before?”
“I have been in all the chapels, madame.”
Claire held to Massawippa’s beaver gown and stepped grotesquely in her tracks as the half-breed moved forward with stretched, exploring fingers. When this blind progress brought them to the diminutive altar, they failed not to kneel before it and whisper some tired orisons.
After one round of the chapel they groped back to the altar, assured that no foe lurked with them.
The chancel rail felt like the smooth rind of a tree. Within the rail Massawippa said a wooden platform was built, on which it could be no sin against Heaven for such forlorn beings to sleep.
Their clothes were now nearly dry; but footsore and weak with hunger, Claire sunk upon this refuge, disregarding dust which had settled there in silence and dimness all the days of the past winter. Exhaustion made her first posture the right one. Scarcely breathing, she would have sunk at once to stupor, but Massawippa hissed joyful whispers through the dark.
“Madame!”
“What is it?”
“Madame, I have been feeling the top of the altar.”