Jouaneaux obeyed her, keeping his punctilious foot far behind the soft rush of her garments.
He dared not wink at the nun, even under cover of dusk and to add zest to his further recital; but he winked at the wall separating him from Massawippa and said slyly on the stairs:
“Afterwards, however, honored Superior, I heard the governor tell Father de Casson that he wrote it down to Dollard to accept or refuse Annahotaha, as he saw fit.”
As soon as the door was closed Claire came running out of her cell and met Massawippa at the hearth, silently clapping her hands in swift rapture as a humming-bird beats its wings.
“Now thou see’st how the Virgin answers prayer, Massawippa!”
“We must cross the arm of the Ottawa and follow their course up that river. Madame, I have troubled my mind much about a boat. For if we got over the Ottawa arm and followed the right-hand shore, have you thought how possible it is that they may fix their camp on the opposite side?”
“Can we not take a boat with us from Montreal?”
“And carry it two or three leagues across the country? For I cannot paddle up the Ste. Anne[7] current. But if we could get one here it would draw suspicion on us and we might be followed. I see but one way. We must depend upon that walking woman above Carillon; and if she be dead, and they camp on the other side, we must raft across the Ottawa. But if we must first make a raft to cross at the mouth, how much time will be lost!”
“Massawippa, we have vowed to follow this expedition, and with such good hap as Heaven sends us we shall follow it. May we not start to-morrow?”
“Madame, before we start there are things to prepare. We must eat on the way.”
“Bread and smoked eels would keep us alive. I can perhaps buy these with my wampum girdle,” suggested Massawippa, who held the noble young dame beside her to be as dowerless as a Huron princess, and thought it no shame so to be.
“Why need you do that?” inquired Claire. “I have two or three gold louis left of the few I brought from France.”
“Gold, madame! Gold is so scarce in this land we might attract too much attention by paying for our supplies with it.”
“I have nothing else, so we must hazard it. And what must we take beside food and raiment?”