These rough fellows were safe and trusty in their profession. Fanchon knew them slightly, and felt no fear whatever in seating herself upon the bear skin which carpeted the bottom of their canoe. They pushed off at once from the shore, with scarcely a word of reply to her voluble directions and gesticulations as they went speeding their canoe down the stream. The turning tide bore them lightly on its bosom, and they chanted a wild, monotonous refrain as their paddles flashed and dipped alternately in stream and sunshine; “Ah! ah! Tenaouich tenaga! Tenaouich tenaga, ouich ka!” “They are singing about me, no doubt,” said Fanchon to herself. “I do not care what people say, they cannot be Christians who speak such a heathenish jargon as that: it is enough to sink the canoe; but I will repeat my paternosters and my Ave Marias, seeing they will not converse with me, and I will pray good St. Anne to give me a safe passage to St. Valier.” In which pious occupation, as the boatmen continued their savage song without paying her any attention, Fanchon, with many interruptions of worldly thoughts, spent the rest of the time she was in the Indian canoe. Down past the green hills of the south shore the boatmen steadily plied their paddles, and kept singing their wild Indian chant. The wooded slopes of Orleans basked in sunshine as they overlooked the broad channel through which the canoe sped, and long before meridian the little bark was turned in to shore and pulled up on the beach of St. Valier. Fanchon leaped out without assistance, wetting a foot in so doing, which somewhat discomposed the good humor she had shown during the voyage. Her Indian boatmen offered her no help, considering that women were made to serve men and help themselves, and not to be waited upon by them. “Not that I wanted to touch one of their savage hands,” muttered Fanchon, “but they might have offered one assistance! Look there,” continued she, pulling aside her skirt and showing a very trim foot wet up to the ankle; “they ought to know the difference between their red squaws and the white girls of the city. If they are not worth politeness, WE are. But Indians are only fit to kill Christians or be killed by them; and you might as well courtesy to a bear in the briers as to an Indian anywhere.” The boatmen looked at her foot with supreme indifference, and taking out their pipes, seated themselves on the edge of their canoe, and began to smoke. “You may return to the city,” said she, addressing them sharply; “I pray to the bon Dieu to strike you white;--it is vain to look for manners from an Indian! I shall remain in St. Valier, and not return with you.” “Marry me, be my squaw, Ania?” replied one of the boatmen, with a grim smile; “the bon Dieu will strike out papooses white, and teach them manners like palefaces.”