noon
While parties went up the river and down the river , and talked about the chutes in the rapids where a victim could be sucked down to death in an instant , or about tracing the windigo 's secret camp , Archange hid herself in the attic . She lay upon Michel 's bed and wept , or walked the plank floor . It was no place for her . At noon the bark roof heated her almost to fever . The dormer windows gave her little air , and there was dust as well as something like an individual sediment of the poverty from which the boy had come . Yet she could endure the loft dungeon better than the face of the Chippewa mother who blamed her , or the bluff excitement of Monsieur Cadotte . She could hear his voice from time to time , as he ran in for spirits or provisions for parties of searchers .