“Wrap yourselves,” said Captain Saucier to Peggy and Angelique.  “The other boat is quite ready for you.”

“But, papa, are Monsieur Reece and his sister going alone with the rowers?”

“I am myself going with them.”

“Papa,” urged Angelique, “Mademoiselle Zhone was a young girl.  If I were in her place, would you not like to have some young girl sit by my head?”

“But you cannot go.”

“No, but Peggy can.”

“Peggy would rather go with you.”

“I am sure she will do it.”

“Will you, Peggy?”

“Yes, I will.”

So Angelique wrapped Peggy first, and went with her as far as the window.  It was the window through which Dr. Dunlap had stepped.

“Good-by, dear Peggy,” whispered Angelique; for the other seemed starting on the main journey of her life.

“Good-by, dear Angelique.”

Peggy’s eyes were tearless still, but she looked and looked at Angelique, and looked back mutely again when she sat at Rice’s head in the boat.  She had him to herself.  Between the water and the sky, and within the dim horizon band, she could be alone with him.  He was her own while the boat felt its way across the waste.  The rowers sat on a bench over the foot of the pallet.  Captain Saucier was obliged to steer.  Peggy sat in the prow, and while they struggled against the rivers, she looked with the proud courage of a Morrison at her dead whom she must never claim again.

The colonel put Angelique first into the waiting boat.  Wachique was set in front of her, to receive tante-gra’mere when the potentate’s chrysalid should be lowered.  For the first time in her life Angelique leaned back, letting slip from herself all responsibility.  Colonel Menard could bring her great-grand-aunt out.  The sense of moving in a picture, of not feeling what she handled, and of being cut off from the realities of life followed Angelique into the boat.  She was worn to exhaustion.  Her torpid pulses owned the chill upon the waters.

There was room in which a few of the little blacks might be stowed without annoying tante-gra’mere, but their mothers begged to keep them until all could go together.

“Now, my children,” said Colonel Menard, “have patience for another hour or two, when the boats shall return and bring you all off.  The house is safe; there is no longer a strong wind driving waves over it.  A few people in Kaskaskia have had to sit on their roofs since the water rose.”

Achille promised to take charge of his master’s household.  But one of the women pointed to the stain on the floor.  The lantern yet burned at the head of Rice’s deserted pillows.  Superstition began to rise from that spot.  They no longer had Angelique among them, with her atmosphere of invisible angels.

“That is the blood of the best man in the Territory,” said Colonel Menard.  “I would give much more of my own to bring back the man who spilled it.  Are you afraid of a mere blood-spot in the gray of the morning?  Go into the other room and fasten the door, then.  Achille will show you that he can stay here alone.”