where they lay in a pile near the stove, | mine. That she is my daughter is naught ready for the return homeward. The mil- to me save a great blessing. I can love itary trappings of the officers brightened her with a human father's love, and thank the upper benches, the uniforms of the God for her affection. But that is all." common soldiers filled the space behind; on the side benches sat the few Protestants of the village, denominational prejudices unknown or forgotten in this far-away spot in the wilderness. The chaplain, the Reverend James Gaston--a man who lived in peace with all the world, with Père Michaux, the Catholic priest, and William Douglas, the deist-gazed around upon his flock with a benignant air, which brightened into affection as Anne's voice took up the song of the angels, singing, amid the ice and snow of a new world, the strain the shepherds heard on the plains of Palestine. "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men," sang Anne, with all her young heart. And Miss Lois, sitting with folded hands, and head held stiffly erect, saw her wreath in the place of honor over the altar, and was touched first with pride and then with a slight feeling of awe. She did not believe that one part of the church was more sacred than another-she could not; but being a High-Church Episcopalian now, she said to herself that she ought to; she even had appalling visions of herself, sometimes, going as far as Rome. But the old spirit of Calvinism was still on the ground, ready for many a wrestling match yet; and stronger than all else were the old associations connected with the square white meeting-house of her youth, which held their place undisturbed down below all these upper currents of a new faith. William Douglas was also a New-Englander, brought up strictly in the creed of his fathers; but as Miss Lois's change of creed was owing to a change of position, as some Northern birds turn their snow-color to a darker hue when taken away from arctic regions, so his was one purely of mind, owing to nothing but the processes of thought within him. He had drifted away from all creeds, save in one article: he believed in a Creator. To this great Creator's praise, and in worship of Him, he now poured forth his harmonies, the purest homage he could offer, "unless," he thought, "Anne is a living homage as she stands here beside me. But no, she is a soul by herself; she has her own life to live, her own worship to offer; I must not call her So he played his sweetest music, and Miss Lois fervently prayed, and made no mistake in the order of her prayers. She liked to have a vocal part in the service. It was a pleasure to herself to hear her own voice lifted up, even as a miserable sinner; for at home in the old white meeting-house all expression had been denied to her, the small outlet of the Psalms being of little avail to a person who could not sing. This dumbness stifled her, and she had often said to herself that the men would never have endured it either if they had not had the prayer-meetings as a safety-valve. The three boys were penned in at Miss Lois's side, within reach of her tapping finger. They had decided to attend service on account of the evergreens and Anne's singing, although they, as well as Tita, belonged in reality to the flock of Father Michaux. Anne never interfered with this division of the family; she considered it the one tie which bound the children to the memory of their mother; but Miss Lois shook her head over it, and sighed ominously. The boys were, in fact, three little heathen; but Tita was a devout Roman Catholic, and observed all the feast and fast days of the Church, to the not infrequent disturbance of the young mistress of the household, to whom a feast-day was oftentimes an occasion bristling with difficulty. But to-day, in honor of Christmas, the usual frugal dinner had been made a banquet, indeed, by the united efforts of Anne and Miss Lois; and when they took their seats at the table which stood in the sitting-room, all feit that it held an abundance fit even for the old fur-trading days, Miss Lois herself having finally succumbed to that island standard of comparison. After the dinner was over, while they were sitting around the fire sipping coffee-the ambrosia of the Northern gods, who find some difficulty in keeping themselves warm-a tap at the door was heard, and a tall youth entered, a youth who was a vivid personification of early manhood in its brightest form. The warm air was stirred by the little rush of cold that came in with him, and the dreamy and drowsy eyes around the fire awoke as they rested upon him. "The world is alive, then, outside, after all," said Miss Lois, briskly straightening herself in her chair, and taking out her knitting. "How do you do, Erastus?" But her greeting was drowned by the noise of the boys, who had been asleep together on the rug in a tangled knot, like three young bears, but now, broadly awake again, were jumping around the new-comer, displaying their gifts and demanding admiration. Disentangling himself from them with a skill which showed a long experience in their modes of twisting, the young man made his way up to Anne, and, with a smile and bow to Dr. Douglas and Miss Lois, sat down by her side. "You were not at church this morning," said the girl, looking at him rather gravely, but giving him her hand. "No, I was not; but a merry Christmas all the same, Annet," answered the youth, throwing back his golden head with careless grace. At this moment Tita came forward from her furry corner, where she had been lying with her head on her arm, half asleep, and seated herself in the red light of the fire, gazing into the blaze with soft indifference. Her dark woollen dress was brightened by the ribbons which circled her little waist and knotted themselves at the ends of the long braids of her hair. She had a string of yellow beads around her neck, and on her feet the little slippers which Anne had fashioned for her with so much care. Her brown hands lay crossed on her lap, and her small but bold-featured profile looked more delicate than usual, outlined in relief like a little cameo against the flame. The visitor's eyes rested upon her for a moment, and then turned back to Anne. "There is to be a dance to-night down in one of the old warehouses," he said, "and I want you to go." 66 A dance!" cried the boys; "then we are going too. It is Christmas night, and we know how to dance. See here." And they sprang out into the centre of the room, and began a figure, not without a certain wild grace of its own, keeping time to the shrill whistling of Gabriel, who was the fifer and leader of the band. Miss Lois put down her knitting, and disapproved, for the old training was still strong in her; then she remembered that these were things of the past, shook her head at herself, sighed, and resumed it again. "Of course you will go," said the visitor. "I do not know that I can go, Rast," replied Anne, turning toward her father, as if to see what he thought. "Yes, go,” said Douglas-"go, Annet." He hardly ever used this name, which the children had given to their elder sister-a name that was not the French "Annette, but, like the rest of the island patois, a mispronunciation-"An'net," with the accent on the first syllable. "It is Christmas night," said Douglas, with a faint interest on his faded face; "I should like it to be a pleasant recollection for you, Annet." The young girl went to him; he kissed her, and then rose to go to his study; but Tita's eyes held him, and he paused. "Will you go, Miss Lois ?" said Anne. "Oh no, child," replied the old maid, primly, adjusting her spectacles. "But you must go, Miss Lois, and dance with me," said Rast, springing up and seizing her hands. "Fie, Erastus! for shame! Let me go," said Miss Lois, as he tried to draw her to her feet. He still bent over her, but she tapped his cheek with her knitting-needles, and told him to sit down and behave himself. "I won't, unless you promise to go with us," he said. 66 'Why, doctor, imagine me at a dancing party!" said Miss Lois, the peach-like color rising in her thin cheeks again. "It is different here, Lois; everybody goes." "Yes; even old Mrs. Kendig," said Tita, softly. Miss Lois looked sharply at her; old Mrs. Kendig was fat, toothless, and seventy, and the active, spare New England woman felt a sudden wrath at the implied comparison. Griselda was not tried upon the subject of her age, or we might have had a different legend. But Tita looked as idly calm as a summer morning, and Miss Lois turned away, as she had turned a hundred times before, uncertain between intention and simple chance. him away. But any one could see that that stand erect," said Rast. she did like him. "Of course I may go, father?" said Tita, without stirring, but looking at him steadily. "I suppose so," he answered, slowly; "that is, if Erastus will take care of you. "Will you take care of me, Erastus ?" asked the soft voice. "Don't be absurd, Tita; of course he will," said Miss Lois, shortly. "He will see to you as well as to the other children." And then Douglas turned and left the room. Erastus, or Rast, as he was called, went back to his place beside Anne. He was a remarkably handsome youth of seventeen, with bright blue eyes, golden hair, a fine spirited outline, laughing mouth, and impetuous, quick movements; tall as a young sapling, his figure was almost too slender for its height, but so light and elastic that one forgave the fault, and forgot it in one look at the mobile face, still boyish in spite of the maturity given by the hard cold life of the North. "Why have we not heard of this dance before, Erastus?" asked Miss Lois, ever mindful and tenacious of a dignity of position which no one disputed, but which was none the less to her a subject of constant and belligerent watchfulness-one by which she gauged the bow of the shopkeeper, the nod of the passing islander, the salute of the little half-breed boys who had fish to sell, and even the guttural ejaculations of the Chippewas who came to her door offering potatoes and Indian sugar. "Because it was suggested only a few hours ago, up at the fort. I was dining with Dr. Gaston, and Walters came across from the commandant's cottage and told me. Since then I have been hard at work with them, decorating and lighting the ball-room." "Which one of the old shells have you taken?" asked Miss Lois. "I hope the roof will not come down on our heads." "We have Larrabee's; that has the best floor. And as to coming down on our heads, those old warehouses are stronger than you imagine, Miss Lois. Have you never noticed their great beams?" "I have noticed their toppling fronts and their slanting sides, their bulgings out and their leanings in," replied Miss Lois, nodding her head emphatically. "The leaning tower of Pisa, you know, is pronounced stronger than other towers "That old brown shell of Larrabee's is jointed together so strongly that I venture to predict it will outlive us all. We might be glad of such joints ourselves, Miss Lois." "If it will only not come down on our heads to-night, that is all I ask of its joints," replied Miss Lois. Soon after seven o'clock the ball opened: darkness had already lain over the island for nearly three hours, and the evening seemed well advanced. "Oh, Tita!" said Anne, as the child stepped out of her long cloak and stood revealed, clad in a fantastic short skirt of black cloth barred with scarlet, and a little scarlet bodice, “that dress is too thin, and besides-" "She looks like a circus-rider," said Miss Lois, in dismay. "Why did you allow it, Anne?" "I knew nothing of it," replied the elder sister, with a distressed expression on her face, but, as usual, not reproving Tita. "It is the little fancy dress the fort ladies made for her last summer when they had tableaux. It is too late to go back now; she must wear it, I suppose; perhaps in the crowd it will not be noticed." Tita, unmoved, had walked meanwhile over to the hearth, and sitting down on the floor before the fire, was taking off her snow-boots and donning her new slippers, apparently unconscious of remark. The scene was a striking one, or would have been such to a stranger. The lower floor of the warehouse had been swept and hastily garnished with evergreens and all the flags the little fort could muster; at each end on a broad hearth a great fire of logs roared up the old chimney, and helped to light the room, a soldier standing guard beside it, and keeping up the flame by throwing on wood every now and then from the heap in the corner near by. Candles were ranged along the walls, and lanterns hung from the beams above; all that the island could do in the way of illumination had been done. The result was a picturesque mingling of light and shade as the dancers came into the ruddy gleam of the fires and passed out again, now seen for a moment in the paler ray of a candle farther down the hall, now lost in the shadows which everywhere swept across the great brown room from side to side, like broad-winged ghosts resting in mid-air and looking down upon the revels. The music came from six French : had often been described to them by their respected parent. (They never seemed to have had but one.) "Of course you will dance, Anne?" said Rast Pronando. She smiled an assent, and they were soon among the dancers. Tita, left alone, followed them with her eyes as they pass "Look at that child," said the captain's wife. "What an odd little thing it is!" "It is Tita Douglas, Anne's little sister," said Mrs. Bryden, the wife of the commandant. "I am surprised they allowed her to come in that tableau dress." fiddlers, four young, gayly dressed fellows, and two grizzled, withered old men, and they played the tunes of the century before, and played them with all their might and main. The little fort, a onecompany post, was not entitled to a band; but there were, as usual, one or two German musicians among the enlisted men, and these now stood near the French fid-ed out of the fire-light and were lost in dlers and watched them with slow curios- the crowd and the sweeping shadows. ity, fingering now and then in imagina- Then she made her way, close to the wall, tion the great brass instruments which down to the other end of the long room, were to them the keys of melody, and where the commandant's wife and the dreaming over again the happy days when fort ladies sat in state, keeping up the digthey, too, played "with the band." But nity of what might be called the military the six French fiddlers cared nothing for end of the apartment. Here she sought the Germans they held themselves far the brightest light she could find, and above the common soldiers of the fort, placed herself in it carelessly, and as and despised alike their cropped hair, their though by chance, to watch the dancers. ideas, their uniforms, and the strict rules they were obliged to obey. They fiddled away with their eyes cast up to the dark beams above, and their tunes rang out in that shrill, sustained, clinging treble which no instrument save a violin can give. The entire upper circle of society was present, and a sprinkling of the second; for the young officers cared more for dancing than for etiquette, and a pretty young French girl was in their minds of more consequence than even the five Misses Macdougall with all their blood, which must have been, however, of a thin, although, of course, precious, quality, since between the whole five there seemed scarcely enough for one. The five were there, however, in green plaided delaines with broad lace collars and large flat shell-cameo breastpins with scrollwork settings: they presented an imposing appearance to the eyes of all. The father of these ladies, long at rest from his ledgers, was in his day a prominent resident official of the Fur Company; his five maiden daughters lived on in the old house, and occupied themselves principally in remembering him. Miss Lois seated herself beside these acknowledged heads of society, and felt that she was in her proper sphere. The dance-music troubled her ears, but she endured it manfully. "A gay scene," she observed, gazing through her spectacles. The five Misses Macdougall bowed acquiescence, and said that it was fairly gay; indeed, rather too gay, owing to more of a mingling than they approved; but nothing, ah! nothing, to the magnificent entertainments of times past, which "There is Anne now, and dancing with young Pronando, of course," said the wife of one of the lieutenants. "Dr. Gaston thinks there is no one like Anne Douglas," observed Mrs. Bryden. "He has educated her almost entirely; taught her Latin and Greek, and all sorts of things. Her father is a musical genius, you know, and in one way the girl knows all about music; in another, nothing at all. Do you think she is pretty, Mrs. Cromer ?" Mrs. Cromer thought "Not at all; too large, and-unformed in every way.' "I sometimes wonder, though, why she is not pretty," said Mrs. Bryden, in a musing tone. "She ought to be." "But do look at young Pronando," said the captain's wife. "How handsome he is to-night!" 66 An Apollo Belvedere," said the wife of the lieutenant, who, having rashly allowed herself to spend a summer at West Point, was now living in the consequences. But although the military element presided like a court circle at one end of the room, and the five Misses Macdougall and Miss Lois like an element of first families at the other, the intervening space was well filled with a motley assemblagelithe young girls with sparkling black eyes and French vivacity, matrons with a shade more of brown in their complexions, and withered old grandams who sat on benches along the walls, and looked on with a calm dignity of silence which never came from Saxon blood. Intermingled were youths of rougher aspect but of fine mercurial temperaments, who danced with all their hearts as well as bodies, and kept exact time with the music, throwing in fancy steps from pure love of it as they whirled lightly down the hall with their laughing partners. There were a few young men of Scotch descent present also, clerks in the stores, and superintendents of the fisheries which now formed the only business of the once thriving frontier village. These were considered by island parents of the better class desirable suitors for their daughters-far preferable to the young officers who succeeded each other rapidly at the little fort, with attachments delightful, but as transitory as themselves. It was noticeable, however, that the daughters thought otherwise. Near the doorway in the shadow a crowd of Indians had gathered, while almost all of the common soldiers from the fort, on one pretext or another, were in the hall, attending to the fires and lights, or acting as self-appointed police. Even Chaplain Gaston looked in for a moment, and staid an hour; and later in the evening the tall form of Père Michaux appeared, clad in a furred mantle, a black silk cap crowning his silver hair. Tita immediately left her place and went to meet him, bending her head with an air of deep reverence. "See the child-how theatrical!" said Mrs. Cromer. "Yes. Still, the Romanists do believe in all kinds of amusement, and even ask a blessing on it," said the lieutenant's wife. "It was not that-it was the little air and attitude of devoutness that I meant. See the puss now!" But the puss was triumphant at last. One of the younger officers had noted her solemn little salutation in front of the priest, and now approached to ask her to dance, curious to see what manner of child this small creature could be. In another moment she was whirling down the hall with him, her dark face flushed, her eyes radiant, her dancing exquisitely light and exact. She passed Anne and Rast with a sparkling glance, her small breast throbbing with a swell of satisfied vanity that almost stopped her breath. "There is Tita," said the elder sister, rather anxiously. "I hope Mr. Walters will not spoil her with his flattery." "There is no danger; she is not pretty enough," answered Rast. "You do A flush rose in Anne's face. not like my little sister," she said. "Oh, I do not dislike her," said Rast. "I could not dislike anything that belonged to you," he added, in a lower tone. She smiled as he bent his handsome head toward her to say this. She was fond of Rast; he had been her daily companion through all her life; she scarcely remembered anything in which he was not concerned, from her first baby walk in the woods back of the fort, her first ride in a dog-sledge on the ice, to yesterday's consultation over the chapel evergreens. The six French fiddlers played on; they knew not fatigue. In imagination they had danced every dance. Tita was taken out on the floor several times by the officers, who were amused by her little airs and her small elfish face: she glowed with triumph. Anne had but few invitations, save from Rast; but as his were continuous, she danced all the evening. At midnight Miss Lois and the Misses Macdougall formally rose, and the fort ladies. sent for their wrappings: the ball, as far as the first circle was concerned, was ended. But long afterward the sound of the fiddles was still heard, and it may be surmised that the second circle was having its turn, possibly not without a sprinkling of the third also. FANCY'S CHANCES. Kind were the girls we never knew. Of fancy's hour those forms we trace, Hovering around the years that go Those years our lives can ne'er replace. Sweet lips are those that never turn A cruel word; dear eyes that lead The heart on in a blithe concern; White hand of her we did not wed; Fair hair or dark, that falls along A form that never shrinks with timeBright image of a realm of song Standing beside our years of prime. When you shall go, then may we know The heart is dead, the man is old; Life can no other charm bestow When girls we might have loved turn cold. |