When she finished, Otter Boy’s young black eyes were fastened on her but what she felt most conscious of was the tragic pity on the withered face of Ohum, the grandmother, as she came and put her arms around her.

“Oh, my dear, my dear!” she said.

Stone Girl disliked to be felt sorry for but neither did she like to jerk away from Ohum. Long after her visitor had gone she stood there remembering the moment when Ohum, the grandmother, had been so close. She knew now, she told herself, how Simone must have felt with her own white mother’s face against her cheek and the sweet smell of mothers rising about her.

WHEN Stone Girl woke during the night a faint white light seemed to hang in the stable room, and all the bustle and preparations in the inn next day were almost as if for her own wedding. Hunters brought deer, bear, and turkey from the forest. Half a dozen bloody carcasses hung from gibbets of poles outside. The inn’s kitchen simmered with heat and with the wheaten smells of baking bread, cake, and pie. The black-garbed minister came in time for dinner, was closeted with the bride, and afterward the words Mary Stanton had picked for her wedding text were gravely told from mouth to mouth together with strange-sounding name and numerals where the text could be found in the black book of the white people. All the talk that flew in the kitchen now concerned the wedding: the bride and bridegroom, the gold the bride would have from her dead mother, and her bride’s gown, not borrowed like the usual wedding garment or christening robe, but brand-new, never worn before. Indeed it had been cut out and stitched by the fingers of a downriver woman Mrs. Karricher had brought up for the occasion. Everything seemed propitious. The sun that morning came up as usual. Rain had fallen during the night but Lomache, the north wind, had blown away the clouds, so that the distant mountains rose like green walls. Seldom had Stone Girl seen a fairer day. It must be, she told herself, that even Getanitowit had given his blessing to the wedding. The arriving guests shot off their muskets in celebration as they approached. The inn filled. The talk and chatter reminded Stone Girl of a concourse of waterfowl on the swamps of the White Woman’s River.

She moved silently at her duties among the festivities. Not for nothing had she been called Stone Girl. When Mary Stanton came down the stairs in her satin bride’s gown, the dark-faced girl gave one level look, then remained blind to her, doing her chores in a white apron furnished by the inn. The table in the parlor had been covered for the occassion with a cloth and the cloth with bottles and glasses. Here, as directed by Mrs. Karricher, who presided over everything, she handed drinks to the favored guests crowded in the parlor while the red-headed barkeeper served the less fortunate ones in the hall. When all had been fortified, the wedding service began.