Jeanne watched the blaze in a strange mood, her heart hot and angry at one moment, proud and indifferent at the next. She said a dozen times a day to herself that she didn't care a dead leaf for Marie, who had grown so consequential and haughty, and Rose, who was full of her own pleasure. It seemed as if other children had dropped out as well, but then in this cold weather she could not run out to the farms or lead a group of eager young people to see her do amazing feats. For she could walk out on the limb of a tree and laugh while it swung up and down with her weight, and then catch the limb of the next tree and fling herself over, amid their shouts. No boy dared climb higher. She had caught little owls who blinked at her with yellow eyes, but she always put them back in the trees again. "You wouldn't like to be carried away by fierce Indians," she said when the children begged they might keep them. "They like their homes and their mothers." "As if an owl could tell who its mother was!" laughed a boy disdainfully. She had hardly known the feeling of loneliness. What did she do last winter, she wondered? O yes, she played with the De Ber children, and there were the Pallents, whom she seldom went to visit now, they seemed so very ignorant. Ah--if it would come summer again! "For the trees and the flowers and the birds are better than most people," she ruminated. It must be because everybody had gone out of her life that it appeared wide and strange. After all she did not care for the De Bers and yet it seemed as if she had been stabbed to the heart. Pierre and Marie had pretended to care so much for her. Then, in spite of her sadness, she laughed. "What is it amuses thee so, little one?" asked the Indian woman. "I am not old enough to have a lover, Pani, am I?" and she looked out of her furry wrap. "No, child, no. What folly! Marie's wedding has set thee astray." "And Pierre is a slow, stupid fellow." "Pierre would be no match for thee, and I doubt if the De Bers would countenance such a thing if he were older. That is nonsense." "Pierre asked me to be his wife. He said twice that he wanted to marry me--at the raising of the flag, when we were on the water, and one Sunday in the autumn. I am not as old as Rose De Ber, even, so Marie need not feel set upon a pinnacle because Tony Beeson marries her when she is barely fifteen." "Jeanne!" Pani's tone was horror stricken. "And it will make no end of trouble. Madame De Ber is none too pleasant now." "It will make no trouble. I said 'no' and 'no' and 'no,' until it was like this mighty wind rushing through the forest, and he was very angry. So I should not go to the De Bers any more. And, Pani, if I had a father who would make me marry him when I was older, I should go and throw myself into the Strait." "His father sends him up in the fur country in the spring." "What makes people run crazy when weddings are talked of? But if I wanted to hold my head high and boast--"