As a mother pounces upon her child in idolatrous abandon, so Claire fell upon that chill spot and encircled it with her arms, sobbing: “Doubt not that I shall find you again, my Dollard, my Dollard! Once before I prayed mightily to Heaven for a blessing, and I got my blessing.” While she lay there, cheer after cheer rose from the river-landing, wild enthusiasm bursting out again as soon as the last round had died away. The canoes had put out on their expedition. Those who watched them with the longest watching would finally turn aside to other things. But the woman on the chapel floor lay stretched there for twenty-four hours. XIV. MASSAWIPPA. ALL that pleasant afternoon, while a spring sun warmed seeds in the ground and trees visibly unfurled green pennons, Montrealists stood in groups looking solemnly up-river where the expedition canoes had disappeared, or flinging their hands in excited talk. “They talked too much,” says one of their chroniclers. For the expedition was to be kept secret, particularly from all passing Indians. There was no wind to cut away tremulous heat simmering at the base of the mountain. Grass could be smelled, with the delicious odor of the earth in which it was quickening. On such a day the soul of man accomplishes its yearly metempsychosis, and finds itself in a body beating with new life. Jouaneaux carried his happy countenance from group to group along the single street of Montreal, standing with respectful attention when his superiors talked, or chiming in with authority when his equals held parley instead of pushing their business. Before night a small fleet of Indian canoes came up the river and landed on the wharf of Montreal forty warriors and a very young girl. The chief, leading the girl by the hand, stalked proudly westward along the street, his feathers dancing, his muscular legs and moccasined feet having the flying step of Mercury. His braves trod in line behind him. “All Hurons,” remarked Jouaneaux to his crony, a lime-burner. “And should be seeding their island of Orleans at this season,” said the lime-burner, “if Quebec set them any example but to quarrel and take to the woods.” “That chief can be nobody but Annahotaha,” said Jouaneaux. “Now where dost thou say he stole that brown beauty of a little Sister?” “He stole her,” responded the lime-burner, “from a full-blooded French girl below Three Rivers, that some Quebec Jesuit mixed up with him in marriage. My cousin lives in the same côte, and little liking hath she for this half-breed who scorns her mother’s people and calls herself a princess.” “Good hater art thou of Quebec Jesuits,” said Jouaneaux, spreading his approving smile beyond dots of white teeth around large margins of pink gums. “But Quebec Jesuits have done worse work than mixing the blood of this princess. What a little Sister of St. Joseph she would make!” he exclaimed, stretching his neck after the girl and disclosing the healthy depths of his mouth.