At the summit of the mountain, starlight made indistinctly visible a number of low stone structures, each having a rough cross above its door. These were the seven chapels Massawippa had told about. Whether they stood in regular design or were dotted about on the plateau, Claire scarcely used her heavy eyes to discern. She was comforted by Massawippa’s whisper that they must sleep in the first chapel, and by the sound of heavy hinges grating, as if the door yielded unwillingly an entrance to such benighted pilgrims. The tomb-like inclosure was quite as chill as the mountain air outside. They stood on uneven stone flooring, and listened for any breathing beside their own. “Let me feel all around the walls and about the altar, madame,” whispered Massawippa. “Let me continue with you, then,” whispered back Claire. “Have you been in this place before?” “I have been in all the chapels, madame.” Claire held to Massawippa’s beaver gown and stepped grotesquely in her tracks as the half-breed moved forward with stretched, exploring fingers. When this blind progress brought them to the diminutive altar, they failed not to kneel before it and whisper some tired orisons. After one round of the chapel they groped back to the altar, assured that no foe lurked with them. The chancel rail felt like the smooth rind of a tree. Within the rail Massawippa said a wooden platform was built, on which it could be no sin against Heaven for such forlorn beings to sleep. Their clothes were now nearly dry; but footsore and weak with hunger, Claire sunk upon this refuge, disregarding dust which had settled there in silence and dimness all the days of the past winter. Exhaustion made her first posture the right one. Scarcely breathing, she would have sunk at once to stupor, but Massawippa hissed joyful whispers through the dark. “Madame!” “What is it?” “Madame, I have been feeling the top of the altar.” “Do no sacrilege, Massawippa.” “But last summer the walking woman put bread and roasted birds on the altars for an offering. She has put some here to-day. Take this.” Claire encountered a groping hand full of something which touch received as food. Without further parley she sat up and ate. The very gentle sounds of mastication which even dainty women may make when crisp morsels tempt the hound of starvation that is within them could be heard in the dark. Claire’s less active animal nature was first silenced, and in compunction she spoke. “If the hermit put these things on the altar for an offering, we are robbing a shrine.” “She was willing for any pilgrim to carry them away, madame. The coureurs de bois visit these chapels and eat her birds. She is alive, madame! She is not dead! We shall find her at Carillon and get our canoe of her; and the saints be praised for so helping us!”