John McGillis's face burned red, and many expressions besides laughter crossed it. Like a child detected in fault, he looked sheepishly at Owen and glanced behind his shoulder. The faithful sunset-tinted face of Blackbird, immovable as a fixed star, regarded the battered cobbler as it might have regarded a great manitou when the island was young. “How did you come by this, Owen?” “I come by it from one that had throuble. Has yerself iver seen it before, John McGillis?” “I have.” “Is it a towken that ye're not a widdy?” “It is.” The boats went out, and Blackbird sat in her Irish husband's boat, on his baggage. Oars flashed, and the commandant's boat led the way. Then the life of the Northwest rose like a great wave--the voyageurs' song chanted by a hundred and fifty throats, with a chorus of thousands on the shore: [Illustration: Cobbler in the Devil's Kitchen 076] Dans les chan - tiers nous hi - ver - ne - rons! Dans lea chan - tiers nous hi - ver - ne - rons! When Owen returned to his Kitchen he found a robe of the finest beaver folded and laid on his shoemaker's bench. “Begorra!” observed the cobbler, shaking it out and rubbing it against his cheek, “she has paid me a beaver-shkin and the spalpeen wasn't worrth it. But she can kape him now till she has a moind to turn him out herself. Whin a man marries on a hay then, wid praste or widout praste, let him shtick to his haythen.” End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cobbler In The Devil's Kitchen, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood