Indeed, it was only by a chance that we were not also participants of the feast. During this winter the Captain Aenons, of whom I have spoken before, came to make us a proposal on the part of all the anciens of the country. At that time the boiling of the kettle (chaudiere) was not yet divided. They proposed to us then that we should consent to exhume the remains of the two Frenchmen who had died in this country, to wit, Guillaume Chaudron and Estienne Bruslé, who was killed four years ago, and that their bones might be placed in the common grave of their dead. We replied at first that this could not be done; that it was forbidden; that as they had been baptized, and were, as we hoped, in heaven, we respected their bones too highly to allow them to be mixed with the bones of those who had not been baptized. Besides, it was not our custom to exhume the bodies of those who had been buried. We decided, however, after all, that as they were interred in the wood and since the people desired it so much, we would consent to take up their bones on the condition that they allowed us to put them in a particular grave, with the bones of all that we had baptized in the country. Four reasons especially persuaded us to give them this final answer. First, as it is the greatest expression of friendship and good-will that can be shown in this country, we yielded to them readily in this point that which they wished, and thus showed that we desired to love them as brothers and to live and die with them. Second, we hoped that God would be glorified in it, especially, in that separating by consent of all the nation the bodies of the Christians from those of the unbelievers, it would not be difficult afterwards to obtain special permission that their Christians should be interred in a separate cemetery, which we would bless for that purpose. Third, we claimed to bury them with all the rites of the Church. Fourth, the old men, of their own accord, desired us to raise there a beautiful and magnificent cross, as they showed us afterwards more particularly. Thus the cross would have been established by the authority of the whole country and honored in the midst of this heathenism, and they would have been careful not to impute to it afterwards, as they have done in the past, all the misfortunes that befell them. This captain thought our proposition very reasonable and the old men (anciens) of the country remained very well contented with it. Some time after, the chaudiere was divided, and, as I have said, five villages of our part of the country resolved to hold their feast apart.