Anyway, I feel that it's much
better for them to take their chances in the woods than to be in
the hands of Governor Hamilton. If I were a man I'd do just as
Papa Roussillon and Rene did; I'd break the bigoted head of every
Englishman that mistreated me, I'll do it, girl as I am, if they
annoy me, see if I don't!"
She was thinking of Captain Farnsworth, who had been from the
first untiring in his efforts to gain something more than a
passing acquaintance. As yet he had not made himself unbearable;
but Alice's fine intuition led her to the conclusion that she must
guard against him from the outset.
Adrienne's simple heart could not grasp the romantic criterion
with which Alice was wont to measure action. Her mind was single,
impulsive, narrow and direct in all its movements. She loved,
hated, desired, caressed, repulsed, not for any assignable reason
more solid or more luminous than "because." She adored Rene and
wanted him near her. He was a hero in her imagination, no matter
what he did. Little difference was it to her whether he hauled
logs for the English or smoked his pipe in idleness by the winter
fire--what could it matter which flag he served under, so that he
was true to her? Or whom he served if she could always have him
coming to see her and calling her his little pet? He might crush
an Irish Corporal's head every day, if he would but stroke her
hair and say: "My sweet little one.
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