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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cursed Patois, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Cursed Patois
+ From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899
+
+Author: Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+
+Release Date: October 30, 2007 [EBook #23247]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CURSED PATOIS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CURSED PATOIS
+
+From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899
+
+By Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+
+
+As his boat shot to the camp dock of beach stones, the camper thought he
+heard a child's voice behind the screen of brush. He leaped out and drew
+the boat to its landing upon a cross-piece held by two uprights in the
+water, and ascended the steep path worn in leaf mould.
+
+There was not only a child, there was a woman also in the camp. And
+Frank Puttany, his German feet planted outward in a line, his smiling
+dark face unctuous with hospitality towards creatures whom he had
+evidently introduced, in foolish helplessness gave his partner the usual
+greeting:
+
+"Veil, Prowny."
+
+"Hello, Puttany. Visitors?"
+
+Brown pulled off his cap to the woman. She was pretty, with eyes like
+a deer's, with white teeth showing between her parted scarlet lips, and
+much curling hair pinned up and blowing over her ears. She had the rich
+tint of a quarter-breed, lightened in her case by a constant suffusion
+which gave her steady color. She was dressed in a mixture of patches,
+but all were fitted to her perfect shape with a Parisian elegance sensed
+even by-backwoodsmen. Pressed against her knee stood the dirtiest and
+chubbiest four-year-old child on the borders of Brevoort Lake--perhaps
+the dirtiest on the north shore of Michigan. The Indian mixed with his
+French had been improved on by the sun until he was of a brick redness
+and hardness of flesh; a rosy-raeated thing, like a good muskalonge.
+Brown suddenly remembered the pair. They were Joe La France's wife and
+child. Joe La France was dead. Puttany had recently told him that Joe
+La France left a widow and a baby without shelter, and without relations
+nearer than Canada.
+
+After greeting Brown the guest resumed her seat on one of the
+camp-chairs, a box worn smooth by much use, having a slit cut in the top
+through which the hand could be thrust to lift it.
+
+The camp, in a small clearing, consisted of two tents, both of the
+wedge-shaped kind. The sleeping-tent was nearly filled by the bed
+it contained; and this, lifted a few inches above the ground on pole
+supports, was of browse or brush and straw, covered with blankets. A
+square canopy of mosquito-netting protected it. The cooking-tent had a
+foundation of logs and a canvas top. The floor was of pure white sand.
+Boxes like lockers were stored under the eaves to hold food, and in one
+corner a cylindrical camp-stove with an oven thrust its pipe through a
+tinned hole in the roof. Plenty of iron skillets, kettles, and pans hung
+above the lockers on pegs in the logs; and the camp dinner service of
+white ware, black-handled knives and forks, and metal spoons, neatly
+washed, stood on a table. Jess, the Scotch collie, who was always left
+to guard the tents in their owners' absence, sat at her usual post
+within the door; and she and Brown exchanged repressed growls at the
+strangers. Jess, being freed from her chain, trotted at his heels when
+he went back to the beach to clean fish for supper. She sat and watched
+his deft and work-hardened hands as he dipped and washed and drew and
+scaled his spoil. He was a clean-skinned, blue-eyed Canadian Irishman,
+well made and sinewy, bright and open of countenance. His blond hair
+clung in almost flaxen tendrils to his warm forehead. No ill-nature was
+visible about him, yet he turned like a man in fierce self-defence on
+his partner, who followed Jess and stood also watching him.
+
+"Puttany, you fool! what have you brought these cursed patois into camp
+for?"
+
+"Joe La France vas my old pardner," softly pleaded the German.
+
+"Damn you, man, we can't start an orphan-asylum and widows' home! We'll
+get a bad name at the hotels. The real good people won't have us for
+guides."
+
+"She told me in Allanville she had no place to stay. She did not know
+what to do. At the old voman's, where Joe put her, they have need of her
+bed. The old voman is too poor to keep her any more."
+
+"I'd have done just what you did; that's what makes me so mad. How long
+is she going to stay?"
+
+"I don't know," sheepishly responded his partner.
+
+"A Dutchman ought to have more sense than to load up with a lot of
+cursed patois. Nothing but French and Indian! We'll have to put the
+precious dears in the sleeping-tent, and bunk down ourselves with
+blankets in the other. Did you air the blankets good this morning,
+Frank?"
+
+"They vos veil aired."
+
+"You're a soft mark, Frank! One of us will have to marry Joe La France's
+widow--that's what it will come to!" Brown slapped the water in violent
+disgust, but Puttany blushed a dark and modest red.
+
+Men of their class rarely have vision or any kind of foresight. They
+live in the present and plan no farther than their horizon, being, like
+children, overpowered by visible things. But the Irish Canadian had
+lived many lives as lake sailor and lumberman, and he had a shrewd eye
+and quick humor. It was he who had devised the conveniences of the camp,
+and who delicately and skilfully prepared the meals so that the two
+fared like epicures; while Puttany did the scullery-work, and was
+superior only at deerstalking.
+
+The perfume of coffee presently sifted abroad, and the table was brought
+out and set under the evening sky. Lockers gave up their store of bread
+and pastry made by the capable hands of the camp housekeeper. The woman,
+their guest, sat watching him move from cook-tent to table, and Puttany
+lounged on the dog-kennel, whittling a stick.
+
+"Frank," said his partner, with sudden authority, "you take the kid down
+to the water and scrub him."
+
+"All over?" whispered Puttany, in confusion.
+
+"No--just his hands and top. Supper is ready to put on."
+
+The docile mother heard her child yelling and blubbering under generous
+douches while nurse's duty was performed by one of her entertainers, and
+she smiled in proof that her faith was grounded on their righteousness.
+She was indeed a mere girl. Her short scarlet upper lip showed her teeth
+with piquant innocence. As much a creature of the woods as a doe, her
+lot had been that primitive struggle which knows nothing about the
+amenities and proprieties of civilization. This Brown could clearly see,
+and he addressed her with the same protecting patronage he would have
+used with the child.
+
+"What's your kid's name?"
+
+"Gregoire, but he call himself Gougou. Me, I am Francoise La France."
+
+"Yes, I know that..You have had a hard time since Joe died."
+
+"I been anxion"--she clasped her hands and looked pleadingly at him--"I
+been very anxion!"
+
+"Well, you're all right now."
+
+"You let me do de mend'? I can sew. I use' learn to sew when I have
+t'ing to sew on."
+
+"Jerusalem! look at them shirts on the line! We have more clothes to
+sew on than any dude at the hotels. And if that isn't enough, I'll make
+Puttany strip and stay in the brush while you do his clothes."
+
+Francoise widened her smile.
+
+"I've been thinking we'll have to build you a house right over there."
+Her entertainer indicated the shore behind her.
+
+"Oppos'?" exclaimed Francoise, turning with pleased interest. Even in
+her husband's lifetime little thought had ever been taken for her.
+
+"Yes, directly opposite. We can fix it up snug like our winter camp at
+the other end of the lake."
+
+"Have you two camp?"
+
+"Yes--a winter camp and a summer camp. But we have stayed comfortably
+here in the cook-tent until the thermometer went fourteen degrees below
+zero. We'll sleep in it till we get your house done, and you can take
+the tent. If there are no parties wanting guides, we might as well begin
+it in the morning."
+
+"But," faltered Francoise, "afterw'iles when de ice is t'ick, and you go
+to de hudder camp--"
+
+"Oh, we'll take care of you," he promised. "You and Gougou will go with
+us. We couldn't leave you on this side."
+
+"In de dark nights," shuddered Francoise.
+
+"You needn't be afraid, any time. When we are off during the day we
+always leave Jess and Jim to guard the camp. Jess is a Scotch collie and
+Jim is a blood-hound. He's there in the kennel. Neither man nor varmint
+would have any chance with them."
+
+"I been use' to live alone when my husban' is away, M'sieu' Brownee. I
+not 'fraid like you t'ink. But if Gougou be cold and hongry."
+
+"Now that's enough," said Brown, with gentle severity. "Gougou will
+never be cold and hungry again while there's a stick of wood to be cut
+on the shores of this lake, or any game to bag, or a 'lunge to spear
+through the ice. We get about two days' lumbering a week down by
+St. Ignace. No use to work more than two days a week," he explained,
+jocosely. "That gives us enough to live on; and everybody around here
+owes us from fifty to a hundred dollars back pay for work, anyhow. I've
+bought this ground, twenty acres of it, and another year I'm going to
+turn it into a garden."
+
+"Oh, a garden, M'sieu' Brownee! Me, I love some garden! I plant honion
+once, salade also."
+
+"But I want to get my fences built before I put in improvements. You
+know what the silver rule is, don't you?"
+
+"No, m'sieu'," answered Francoise, vaguely. She knew little of any rule.
+
+"The silver rule is different from the golden rule. It's 'Do your
+neighbors, or your neighbors will do you.' If I don't protect myself,
+all the loose cattle around Brevoort will graze over me. Every fellow
+for himself. We can't keep the golden rule. We'd never get rich if we
+did."
+
+"You are rich mans?" interrogated Francoise, focussing her curiosity on
+that invisible power of wealth.
+
+"Millionaires," brazenly claimed the young man, as he put an
+earthen-ware pitcher on the table. "Set there, you thousand-dollar dish!
+We don't have a yacht on the lake because we prefer small boats, and
+we go out as guides to have fun with the greenhorns. The cooking at the
+hotels is good enough for common hunters and fishermen who come here
+from the cities to spend their money, but it isn't good enough for me.
+You've come to the right place, you may make your mind easy on that."
+
+Francoise smiled because he told her to make her mind easy, not because
+she understood the irony of his poverty. To have secure shelter, and
+such a table as he spread, and the prowess to achieve continual abundant
+sustenance from the world, made wealth in her eyes. She was as happy as
+Gougou when this strange family, gathered from three or four nations,
+sat down to their first meal.
+
+The sun went low like a scarlet eggy probing the mother-of-pearl lake
+with a long red line of shadow, until it wasted into grayness and so
+disappeared. Then home-returning sails became spiritualized, and moved
+in mist as in a dream--foggy lake and sky, as one body, seeming to push
+in upon the land.
+
+Francoise slept the sleep of a healthy woman, with her child on her arm,
+until at dawn the closed flap of the tent yielded to a bounding shape.
+She opened her startled eyes to see Jim the blood-hound at the foot of
+the bed, jerking the mosquito-netting. He growled at the interlopers,
+not being able in his canine mind to reconcile their presence with his
+customary duty of waking his masters in that tent. A call and a whistle
+at the other side of the camp drew him away doubting. But in a day both
+he and Jess had adopted the new members of the family and walked at
+Gougou's heels.
+
+Gougou existed in wonderland. He regarded the men as great and amiable
+powers, who could do what they pleased with the elements and with the
+creatures of the earth. They had a fawn, which had followed Brown home
+along the beach, feeding on leaves from his hand. They had built it a
+sylvan home of cedar boughs behind the camp, from which it wandered
+at will. And though at first shy of Gougou, the pretty thing was soon
+induced to stand upon its hind feet and dance for bits of cake. His
+Indian blood vearned towards the fawn; but Me-thuselah, the mighty
+turtle, was more exciting. Methuselah lived a prisoner in one side of
+the bait-tank, from which he was lifted by a rope around his tail. He
+was so enormous that it required both Brown and Puttany to carry him
+up the bank, and as he hung from the pole the sudden projection of his
+snapping head was a danger. When he fastened his teeth into a stick, the
+stick was hopelessly his as long as he chose to keep it. He was like
+an elephant cased in mottled shell, and the serrated ridge on his tail
+resembled a row of huge brown teeth. Methuselah was a many-wrinkled
+turtle. When he contracted, imbedding head in shoulders and legs in
+body, revealing all his claws and showing wicked little eyes near the
+point of his nose, his helpless rage stirred all the Indian; he was the
+most deliciously devilish thing that Gougou had ever seen.
+
+Then there was the joy of wintergreen, which both men brought to the
+child, and he learned to forage for it himself. The fleshy dark green
+leaves and red berries clustered thickly in the woods. He and his
+mother went in the boat when the day was to be given to bass or pickerel
+fishing, and he learned great lessons of water-lore from the two men.
+If they trusted a troll line to his baby hands, he was in a state of
+beatitude. His object in life was to possess a bear cub, and many
+a porcupine creeping along the beach he mistook for that desirable
+property, until taught to distinguish quills from fur. Gougou heard, and
+he believed, that all porcupines were old lumbermen, who never died, but
+simply contracted to that shape. He furtively stoned them when he could,
+reflecting that they were tough, and delighting to see the quills fly.
+
+Francoise would sit in the camp like a picture of still life, glowing
+and silent at her appointed labor. She sewed for all of them, looking
+womanly and unhurried, with a pink-veined moccasin-flower in her hair;
+while Brown, cooking and baking, rushed from tent to wood-pile, his
+sleeves turned back from his white, muscular arms. He lived more
+intensely than any other member of the sylvan household. His blue eyes
+shone, and his face was vivid as he talked to her. He was a common man,
+blunted in the finer nature by a life of hardship, yet his shrewd spirit
+seized on much that less facile people like Puttany learned slowly or
+not at all.
+
+Puttany and the child were often together in one long play, broken
+only by the man's periods of labor. They basked in a boat near rushes,
+waiting for pickerel to strike, or waded a bog to a trout stream at the
+other end of the lake, hid in a forest full of windfalls and hoary moss
+and tropical growths of brake and fern. Gougou had new strong clothes
+and buckskin shoes. For the patois had not been a week in camp before
+Brown went to St. Ignace and brought back denim and white and black
+calico, which he presented to Francoise.
+
+"She ought to have a kind of second mourning," he explained to Puttany,
+who received his word on any matter as law. "Joe La France wasn't worth
+wearing first mourning for, but second mourning is decent for her, and
+it won't show in the camp like bright colors would."
+
+The world of city-maddened people who swarmed to this lake for their
+annual immersion in nature did not often intrude on the camp. Yet the
+fact of a woman's presence there could not be concealed, and Puttany was
+disciplined to say to strangers, "Dot vas my sister and her little poy."
+
+A tiny cabin was built for Francoise, with the luxuries of a puncheon
+floor and one glazed window. She inhabited it in primitive gladness, as
+a child adorns a play-house, and was careful to keep it in that trim,
+military state which Brown demanded. Francoise had a regard for M'sieu'
+Put-tanee, who was neat and ladylike in all his doings, and smiled
+amiably at her over her boy's head; but her veneration of M'sieu'
+Brownee extended beyond the reach of humor. If he had been a priest he
+could have had no more authority. She used to watch him secretly from
+her window at dawn, as he put himself through a morning drill to limber
+his muscles. Some spectators might have laughed, but she heard as
+seriously as if they were the motions of her own soul his tactics with a
+stick:
+
+"Straight out--across the shoulder--under the arm--down on the turf!"
+
+There were days when the misty gray lake, dim and delicious, lay veiled
+within its irregular shores. Then the lowering sun stood on tree-tops,
+a pale red wraith like the ghost of an Indian. And there were days
+of sharp, clear shine, when Black Point seemed to approach across the
+water, and any moving object could be seen in the Burning--a growth of
+green springing where the woods had been swept by fire. The men were
+often away, guiding fishing parties from dawn until sunset, or hunting
+parties from sunset half the night. Francoise and Gou-gou dwelt in the
+camp, having the dogs as their protectors, though neither primitive nor
+civilized life menaced them there with any danger. Some evenings, when
+few affairs had crowded the day, Brown sat like a patriarch in the midst
+of his family, and took Gougou on his knee to hear bear stories. He
+supervised the youngster's manners like a mother, and Gougou learned to
+go down to the washing-place and use soap when the signs were strong for
+bear-dens and deer-stalking.
+
+"I saw a bear come out on the beach once," Brown would tell him, "when
+I was stalking for deer and had a doe and fawn in the lake. I smelt him,
+but couldn't get him to turn his eyes towards me. I killed both deer,
+and skinned them, and cut up one. And that bear went into the woods and
+howled for hours. I took all the venison I could carry, but left part
+of the carcasses. When we went after them in the morning, the bear had
+eaten all up clean."
+
+Bear-dens, Gougou was informed, might be found where there was a
+windfall. The bears stuffed cracks between the fallen trees with moss,
+and so made themselves a tight house in which to hibernate. If you were
+obliged to have bear meat that season when the game was thin, you
+could cut a hole into a den, stand by it with an axe, and lop off the
+inquiring head stuck out to investigate disturbances. Bears had very
+small stomachs, but whatever they ate went to fat. They walked much on
+their hind feet, and browsed on nuts or mast when their hunting was not
+successful, being able to thrive on little. Usually a father, a mother,
+and a cub formed one household in one den.
+
+Brown's mind ran on the subject of households; and he sometimes talked
+to Francoise about his mother.
+
+"My mother Gaelics like the Scotch," he said. Francoise could not
+imagine what it was to Gaelic. People had not Gaelic-ed on the
+Chaudiere, where she was brought up until the children were obliged
+to scatter from the narrow farm. But the priest had never warned her
+against it, and since M'sieu' Brownee's mother was addicted to the
+practice, it must be something excellent, perhaps even religious. She
+secretly invoked St. Francis, her patron saint, to obtain for her
+that mysterious power of Gaelic-ing of which M'sieu' Brownee spoke so
+tenderly.
+
+So the summer passed, and frost was already ripening to glory the ranks
+on ranks of dense forest pressing to the lake borders. Brown and Puttany
+rowed home through an early September evening, lifted their boat to its
+cross-piece dock, and pulled the plug out of the bottom to let it drain.
+There was no sound, even of the dogs, as they flung their spoil ashore.
+It was the very instant of moon-rise. At first a copper rim was answered
+by the faintest line in the water. Then the full reddish disk stood upon
+a strong copper pillar, smooth and flawless in a rippleless lake, and
+that became denuded of its capital as the ball rose over it into the
+sky.
+
+"Seems still," remarked Brown, and he ran up the path, shaking leaf
+loam like dry tobacco dust from the roots of ferns he had brought to
+Francoise. He knew at once that she and Gougou had left the camp. He sat
+down on the dog-kennel with his hands on his knees, staring at the dim
+earth. Puttany went from tent to cabin, calling his daily playmate,
+unable to convince himself that some unusual thing had happened, and he
+hoped that Brown would contradict him when he felt compelled to announce
+his slow discovery.
+
+"Dey vas gone!"
+
+"Damn you, Puttany!" exploded his partner, "what did you bring her here
+for? I didn't want to get into this! I wanted to steer clear of women!
+You knew I was soft! You knew her black eyes, and the child that made
+her seem like the Virgin, would get in their work on me!"
+
+"No, I didn't," said Puttany, in phlegmatic consternation.
+
+"What's the matter, Frank? Haven't we behaved white to this woman? Have
+you done anything, you stupid old Dutchman," cried Brown, collaring
+his partner with abrupt violence, "that would drive her out of the camp
+without a word?"
+
+"I svear, Prowny," the other gasped, as soon as he had breath for
+swearing, "I haf been so polite to her as my own mudder."
+
+The younger man sat down again, dropping lax hands across his knees.
+A growl inside the box reminded him that Jim the blood-hound should be
+brought to account for this disappearance.
+
+"Come out here!" he commanded, and the lithe beast crept wagging and
+apologizing to his side. "What kind of a way is this for you to keep
+a camp--Jess sitting in the kitchen, and you in the box, and somebody
+carrying off Francoise and the boy, and every rag that would show they
+had ever been here--and not a sound out of your cowardly head till we
+come home and catch you skulking? I've a notion to take a board and beat
+you to death!"
+
+Jim lay down with an abject and dismal whine.
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+Jim lifted his nose and sniffed hopefully, and his master rose up and
+dragged him by the collar to the empty cabin. It was the first time
+Brown had entered that little cell since its dedication to the woman for
+whom it was built. He rubbed Jim's muzzle against the bed, and pointed
+to nails in the logs where the clothes of the patois had hung.
+
+"Now you lope out and find them--do you hear?"
+
+Jim, crouching on his belly in acknowledgment that his apprehension had
+been at fault during some late encounter, slunk across the camp and took
+the path to the hotels.
+
+Brown turned on Puttany following at his heels: "Frank, are you sure Joe
+La France is dead?"
+
+"Oh yes, he is det."
+
+"Did you see him die? Were you there when he was buried? Was he put
+underground with plenty of dirt on top of him, or did he merely drop in
+the water?"
+
+"I vas not there."
+
+"Maybe the lazy hound has resurrected. I've seen these lumbermen dropped
+into the water and drowned too often. You can never be sure they won't
+be up drinking and fighting to-morrow unless you run a knife through
+them."
+
+"He is a det man," affirmed Puttany.
+
+"Then somebody else has carried her off, and I'm going to know all about
+it before I come back to camp. If I never come back, you may have the
+stuff and land. I'm in this heels over head, and I don't care how soon
+things end with me."
+
+"But, Prowny, old poy, I vill help you--"
+
+"You stay here. This is my hunt."
+
+Jim passed the rustic guest-houses without turning aside from the trail.
+Brown took no thought of inquiring at their doors, for throughout the
+summer Francoise had not once been seen at the hotels. He did, however,
+hastily borrow a horse from the stable where he was privileged, and
+pursuing the blood-hound along the lake shore, he cantered over a
+causeway of logs and earth which had been raised above a swamp.
+
+The trail was very fresh, for Jim, without swerving, followed the road
+where it turned at right angles from the shore and wound inland among
+stumps. They had nearly reached Allanville, a group of log huts beside a
+north-shore railroad, when Jim uttered the bay of victory.
+
+Brown dropped from the saddle and called him sternly back. To be hunting
+Francoise with a blood-hound out of leash--how horrible was this!
+
+He tied his horse to a tree and took Jim by the collar, restraining the
+creature's fierce joy of discovery. Francoise must be near, unless a
+hound whose scent was unerring had become a fool.
+
+What if she had left camp of her own will? She was so quiet, one could
+not be sure of her thoughts. Brown was sure of his thoughts. He grinned
+in the lonely landscape, seeing himself as he had appeared on recent
+Sundays, in his best turtle-tail neck-tie mounted on velvet.
+
+"I've got it bad," he confessed.
+
+Stooping to Jim's collar while the dog whined and strained, he passed a
+cabin. And there Jim relaxed in the search and turned around. The moon
+stood high enough to make a wan fairy daylight. Gougou, like a gnome,
+started from the ground to meet them, and the dog at once lay down and
+fawned at his feet.
+
+More slowly approaching from the cabin, Brown saw Francoise, still
+carrying in her hand the bundle of her belongings brought from camp. In
+the shadow of the house a man watched the encounter, and a sift of rank
+tobacco smoke hinted the pipes of fathers and sons resting from the
+day's labor on the cabin door-sill or the sward. Voices of children
+could be heard, and other dogs gave mouth, so that Brown laid severe
+commands on Jim before he could tremblingly speak to Francoise.
+
+"Oh, M'sieu' Brownee, I t'ink maybe you come!"
+
+"But, Francoise, what made you leave?"
+
+"It is my husban's brudder. I not know what to do! He bring us to dese
+folks to stay all night till de cars go."
+
+"Why didn't he show himself to us, and take you like a man?"
+
+"Oh, M'sieu' Brownee--he say de priest hexcommunicate me--to
+live--so--in de camp! It is not my fault--and I t'ink about you and
+M'sieu' Put-tanee--and Gougou he bite his honcle, and kick and scream!"
+
+"Damn the uncle!" swore Brown, deeply.
+
+"Oh, I been so anxion!" sobbed Francoise.
+
+"We must be married right off," said Brown. "I'll fix your
+brother-in-law. Francoise, will yon have me for your husband?"
+
+"Me, M'sieu' Brownee?"
+
+"Yes, you--you cursed sweet patois!"
+
+"M'sieu' Brownee, you may call me de cursed patois. I not know
+anyt'ings. But when Andre La France take me away, oh, I t'ink I die! Let
+me honly be Francoise to do your mend'! I be 'appier to honly look at
+you dan some womans who 'ave 'usban'!"
+
+"Francoise, kiss me--kiss me!" His voice broke with a sob. "If you loved
+me you would have me!"
+
+"M'sieu' Brownee, I ado' you!"
+
+Suddenly giving way to passionate weeping, and to all the tenderness
+which nature teaches even barbarians to repress, she abandoned herself
+to his arms.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Cursed Patois, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CURSED PATOIS ***
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