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We walked with Madame Dey slowly back up the hill to her house. “We can’t leave the boy like that for his parents to find,” she said, over and over. As we reached the door of her house, she stopped suddenly. “I’m going to bring him here,” she announced. ” my mother said, aghast. ” “I am,” she said, and we followed her back to the station, hypnotized by her plan. ” The station master shrugged. He unlocked the baggage room door and went back to his office. Madame Dey looked at the dead man, put out her hand and forced his eyes closed; then lifting the handles of the wagon, she pushed it outside.

In-One-Door-and-Out-the-Other,” and I suspect that the detours he often made across the creek and through the chemical company grounds to get from one side of the village to the other were motivated more by a desire to avoid her shouts than the need to keep an eye on his obligations. ” reduced him to the level of the villagers, a declassing he hated and which she, with her infallible instinct for recognizing pretentiousness, pursued with amusement. She believed he would, if he could, have her evicted from her perch, but in those early years she was confident that the promise of protection given her by the departed company manager’s wife would keep her safe.

Madame Dey may not have known that she was referred to as “la vieille sauvage” (which the king did translate, when he spoke of her, as “the old squaw”) for no one, not even the king, would have dared to call her that to her face. In a way, I suppose, they resembled the triple forces that formed Canada itself: the religion of the French, the economic strength of the English, and the prior existence of the Indians. But while “le curé” and “the king” had establishments of considerable dimensions behind their power, Madame Dey exercised hers by personality alone — not that I wish to imply the other two were at all deficient in that sphere.