Arizona weekly journal-miner., 1899-12-27
An Algonquin Legend
Ru Florence Wilkinsou.
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ifIs NOT this ufe2e be thought, g

He had two companions, one a young girl, olive-sdnned and black-halreo, the other an old woman, whose darker hue showed her 10 be of unmixed h. dian blood.
 '.M. VilleaubiIFe, said Yvonne, ''Zaire ees my graadmozaire's house, at gait montague, far, far. See you zaire? Gardez! gardez,"
 Her English was delicious, mixed as it was with French words and spoken with the Canadian-French accent She spoke to him in English, except when she became much interested in the con- versatiOn. or when the theme taxed too heavily her slender vocabulary.
 ''Ze rivaire she wind much, and l zink we shall hsf a storm. And ze eourante is against us, M- Villeaubille-"
 He glanced up at the sky where the clouds were gathering above the top of the Montague Ronde, dark, heavy clouds, through which the headlight ming flashed fttully.
 T do not isar ze storm, l" said Yvonne. but look, grandmere, wat was gait? Something's wite ran past me, on ze vater."
 Grandmere started, and looked about her uneasily.
 sIt was the mson's reflection in the stream, Nile. Yvonne," said Will loughby.
 From her place in the bottom of the boat grandmere muttered an unintei- ligible something.
 In the shadow of the frs the canoe slid on Plmost noiselessly, when out of the silence a wall quivered in the air above their heads Yvonne suppressed a cry of terror and crouched down low in the canoe. WiIloughby himself was startled by a voice so human, so mel ancholy. sounding in that solitude.
 .I believe it is a child crying!" he exclaimed. Let us go to the shore"
 Non, non, navaire, monsieur" Yvonne's voice trembled. but she stepped the paddle with her hand as he began to reverse the canoe.
 ''Zaire was not ze place it sounded it was above us. We will go on qvick- qvick!"
 "It was a wild loon. perhaps, in pas sage" Winoughby said. ''They have a human cry"
 He was endeavoring 10 reassure him self as well as the others, for fear is somewhat contagious.
 ''It was not loon. nor was it hu- man" the old woman spoke out in French for the first time.
 Look there," She pointed toward a bay of the river that ran up into marshy meadow.
 Willougby looked, but in the twi- light he saw nothing except the white mist slowly exhaling from the water and the fag-howers along the meadow edge.
 What is it?" he asked, his curiosity fairly aroused, for he perceived that it was something definite which his com panion feared.
 Tell me, Mile. Yvonne."
 Silence met his questionable girl putting her finger To her lips with the gesture of one who dsres not speak Willoughbv's vision became preternAt- uraIy acute as the weirdness of the sit uation impressed itself upon him. Watching the dusky shore past which they were closely skimming. he ob- served a slight, sinuous motion among the reeds of the margin, and then some thing shd suddenly in front of the ca noe.
 .'It is she." the girl cried. suddenly lowing her head forward upon grand mere's knees
 la Jongleuse! She is following us tonight"
 Hush, do not speak her name" sad grandmere's husky voice, ''or one of us will be taken"
 Again .Willoughby asked, and more earnestly. for an explanation.
 'I will tell you, Monsieur Villeaubille; but il is something's you will not laike of hearing"
 Then she continued rapidly in French, giving her version, somewhat modified, of the old legend current 200 years ago among the Algonquins and still preserved in tradition among the seiguories of Riviere-Quelle:
 she comes at twilight, when the mist rises from the streams; when the whippoorwin cries among the grasses then her voice is heard quavering and moaning like a lost child in the lonely marshes. She treads softly on the white, spongy moss, and where Ter footprints are she leaves behind her little pools of water. One cannot see her, NJ. Villeaubille. No. no. But one can see the rushes moving where she walks at twilight. for she gathers the pale-purple sticky aag-howers for her hair. Her hair is long and waves in the breeze. Sometimes one feels it brush the cheek. like the touch of a dank waterweed. Evil-evil for one whom she touches, monsieur.
 Where the alders droop and dip she loves to go, and there she sits and swings her feet in the water, and the cold low fog rises about her. The sif- feur whistles in the woods. It is a warning. But the belated fisherman bears the splashing of her feet and thinks the trout are leaping where the current is swift in the deep pool. He pushes his canoe under the low-hang- ing branches, and next morning one finds it empty.
 'Oue can never see her, but some times her long robe, which is the color of evening, leaves a trail of little stars behind il, pale and yellow, among the sedres. or a sheet of bluish light on the water where the scum is like cream and the blue-winged dragon-fiy darts. Then we know she has been there, the Jon A Growing Industry.