"Do stand him in the hall and let him smell the smoke, Waubudone." "No," refused the widow. "But I don't want him in my bedroom. You are not obliged to keep that thing in your sight all the time." "Yes," said the widow. A dialect of mingled French and Chippewa was what they spoke, and Michel knew enough of both tongues to follow the talk. "Are they never going to take him from you? If they don't take him from you soon, I shall go to the lodges and speak to his people about it myself." The Chippewa widow usually passed over this threat in silence; but, threading a lock with the comb, she now said,-- "Best not go to the lodges awhile." "Why?" inquired Archange. "Have the English already arrived? Is the tribe dissatisfied?" "Don't know that." "Then why should I not go to the lodges?" "Windigo at the Sault now." Archange wheeled to look at her face. The widow was unmoved. She was little older than Archange, but her features showed a stoical harshness in the firelight. Michel, who often went to the lodges, widened his mouth and forgot to fill it with plum-leather. There was no sweet which Michel loved as he did this confection of wild plums and maple sugar boiled down and spread on sheets of birch bark. Madame Cadotte made the best pagessanung at the Sault. "Look at the boy," laughed Archange. "He will not want to go to the lodges any more after dark." The widow remarked, noting Michel's fat legs and arms,-- "Windigo like to eat him." "I would kill a windigo," declared Michel, in full revolt. "Not so easy to kill a windigo. Bad spirits help windigos. If man kill windigo and not tear him to pieces, he come to life again." Archange herself shuddered at such a tenacious creature. She was less superstitious than the Chippewa woman, but the Northwest had its human terrors as dark as the shadow of witchcraft.