Her emotion was genuine he could not help but see, even through his
astonishment, and he stared at her with awaking sympathy.
"Is there some one who is so much to you, little one?" he asked. "I
thought there wasn't a youth in the post--no, nor in any other this
side the Red River-who did not pay homage to France Moline's little
daughter. Who is of such poor taste? Tell me, and what I can do I will
do to remedy the evil."
He was smiling at the little maid's pretty daring in coming straight to
the very head of De Seviere with her trouble, and he reached out a hand
to draw her down on the step beside him. There was never a woman in
distress who did not pull at the strings of his heart, and he longed to
soothe her, even while he smiled to himself at her childishness.
But Francette was not so childish, and he was one day to marvel at her
artless skill.
At the touch of his hand she came down, not upon the step beside him as
he meant, but upon her knees before him, with her two little hands upon
his knees and her face of elfin beauty upheld to him in the starlight.
"Oh, M'sieu, there is one who is so much,--oui, even more than all the
world, more than life itself,--more than heaven or hell, for whose sake
I would die a thousand deaths! One at whose feet I worship, scorning
all those youths of the settlement and the posts.
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