The woman and I stood alone while the men jerked their way like automatons from bush to tree.  The chaos of their minds had numbed their muscles, and they stripped the young boughs clumsily like a herd of browsing moose.  I did not look at the woman.  I knew that she needed all my courtesy, but it was hard to speak to her just then.

The men wandered for perhaps five minutes, then ranged themselves before me.  They bore a curious collection of grasses, mutilated tamarack boughs, and crushed brakes.  They eyed my sword hilt, and looked ready for flight.  Yet I was master, and they remembered it.  Had I ordered them to eat the fodder that they bore, they would not have spoken, and I think that they would have endeavored to obey.

I pointed to the canoe where the woman was accustomed to sit.  “Place the greens there,” I said.  “Make a carpet of them where the red blanket is lying.  Work quickly,—­then come here.  No talking.”

They obeyed.  They dressed the canoe like a river barge on a fete day, and again they lined themselves before me.  I took the woman by the hand.

“You have decked the canoe for my wedding journey,” I said, and all my perverse inner merriment suddenly died.  “This traveler, whom you have known as a man, is Mademoiselle Marie Starling and my promised wife.  We are to be married when we reach the Pottawatamie Islands.  She is your future mistress, and you may come and touch her hand and swear to serve her as faithfully as you have served me.  Pierre, you may come first.”

A man who has seen battle knows that the pang of a bullet can clear even a peasant’s clogged brain.  The churls took this blow in silence and tried to make something out of it.  What they made I could not fathom, but it lifted them out of themselves, for after a moment they raised their eyes and came forward like men.  I had never seen them in an equal guise; I could have grasped them by the hand had it been wise.

The woman extended her palm to them, and gave them each a word as they passed in review.  She was gracious, she was smiling, yet somehow she was negligent.  I was not prepared that she should be used to homage.  Perhaps I had thought that this bit of vassalage would give her pleasure.  She treated it like an old tale.

“Enough,” I ordered.  “Pierre, you may draw a portion of brandy all around and drink to the health of your mistress.  Then we shall get under way.”

Pierre’s portions were always ample, and the western red was dulling by the time we were again afloat.  I did not paddle, but seated myself beside the woman on the crushed leaves and watched in inactivity and silence while the starlight came.  As the dusk deepened we slipped by strange islands, but I held the canoes straight in advance till a limestone headland rose white out of the blurred, violet water.  The star shine showed a deep bay and wavering lights among the trees.  I touched the woman’s shoulder.