I told her of my relation to him; what it meant to me. I told, and to her amazement, of my connection with her of whom both the Doctor and Cale had spoken--and I told it all with a flood of tears, my head on her shoulder, her arms around me. And she thought I was crying for that Past! Those tears saved my brain. When she left me, I had given her my promise that if ever I should need a home, I would make hers mine. "But you will hardly need it, my dear. Mr. Ewart will make this the one spot on earth for you--and it is right that your future should compensate for your past." Jamie whistled all day; it got at last on my nerves. When I begged him to stop, he looked at me reproachfully and said never a word, which was unlike Jamie Macleod who has a Scotch tongue--a long and caustic one on occasion. He steadily refused to say goodby to me, or more than, "I shall see you in Scotland next summer--you and Ewart; give my love to him." He put his hand from the coach window, and said in a low voice: "I made such an ass of myself, Marcia, you know how. Forgive me, won't you?" I forced a smile for answer. There is such a thing as the comedy of irony. When they drove away, I turned to the empty house--empty except for the dogs--with a sigh of relief. It was good to be alone. XXXI The ordering of the house kept me busy the next forenoon, but after dinner I told Cale I was going over to Mère Guillardeau's to tell her about her brother. "I may go as far as the village, Cale. Don't expect me till just before supper." "All right." I told but half of the truth. I determined to carry out a part of what I planned on that voyage down the Saguenay. If there were anything to learn from Mère Guillardeau, that would throw light on that "forest episode" connected with my mother, I wanted to know what it was. I found the old woman alone, at her loom. "Ah, mademoiselle, you are come to tell me of André, my brother? You are more than welcome. And how goes it with André and my nephew? Did he send me a pair of moccasins for my old feet, such as he sent by the seignior last year?" She left her work and, still holding my hand, drew me to the little porch, where we sat down on a bench beneath a mass of wild cucumber vines. I kept her hand in mine--that old hand, which for nearly one hundred years had wrought and toiled, dug, planted, watered, hoed, milked the cow, cut the wood, woven cloth and carpets, harvested her tobacco! That prehensile thing which, in its youth, clasped the hand of her "mate" at the altar, cooked for him, sewed for him, piecing together the skins from the wilds, when he was at home from the trappers' haunts; and, meanwhile, it had found time to rock the cradle for her seven children and sew the shrouds for six of them! To me it was a marvellous thing--that hand!