Smet meant to crush. He always supple-
mented his acts of physical prowess with
that explanation. It was the sin that he
struck at from the shoulder -- and may not
even an anointed one strike at sin?

Father de Smet could draw a fine line,
too, between the things which were bad in
themselves, and the things which were only
extrinsically bad. For example, there were
the soups of Mademoiselle Ninon. Mam'selle
herself was not above reproach, but her soups
were. Mademoiselle Ninon was the only
Parisian thing in the settlement. And she
was certainly to be avoided -- which was per-
haps the reason that no one avoided her. It
was four years since she had seen Paris. She
was sixteen then, and she followed the for-
tunes of a certain adventurer who found it
advisable to sail for Montreal. Ninon had
been bored back in Paris, it being dull in the
mantua-making shop of Madame Guittar. If
she had been a man she would have taken
to navigation, and might have made herself
famous by sailing to some unknown part of
the New World. Being a woman, she took a
lover who was going to New France, and for-
got to weep when he found an early and vio-
lent death. And there were others at hand,
and Ninon sailed around the cold blue lakes,