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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Lady of Fort St. John, 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 Lady of Fort St. John
+
+
+Author: Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 19, 2006  [eBook #18631]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LADY OF FORT ST. JOHN***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Stacy Brown, Robert Cicconetti, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/) from
+page images generously made available by Early Canadiana Online
+(http://www.canadiana.org/eco/index.html)
+
+
+
+Note: Images of the original pages are available through
+      Early Canadiana Online. See
+      http://www.canadiana.org/ECO/ItemRecord/09719?id=773b7c56888b994b
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LADY OF FORT ST. JOHN
+
+by
+
+MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD
+
+Author of "The Romance of Dollard"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+Boston and New York
+Houghton, Mifflin and Company
+The Riverside Press, Cambridge
+1891
+Copyright, 1891,
+By Mary Hartwell Catherwood.
+All rights reserved.
+The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
+Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
+
+
+
+
+
+This book I dedicate
+
+TO
+
+TWO ACADIANS OF THE PRESENT DAY;
+
+NATIVES OF NOVA SCOTIA WHO REPRESENT THE LEARNING
+AND GENTLE ATTAINMENTS OF THE
+NEW ORDER:
+
+DR. JOHN-GEORGE BOURINOT, C. M. G., ETC.
+CLERK OF THE CANADIAN HOUSE OF COMMONS, OF
+OTTAWA; AND
+
+DR. GEORGE STEWART,
+OF QUEBEC.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+How can we care for shadows and types, when we may go back through
+history and live again with people who actually lived?
+
+Sitting on the height which is now topped by a Martello tower, at St.
+John in the maritime province of New Brunswick, I saw--not the opposite
+city, not the lovely bay; but this tragedy of Marie de la Tour, the
+tragedy "which recalls" (says the Abbé Casgrain in his "Pčlerinage au
+pays d'Evangéline") "the romances of Walter Scott, and forces one to own
+that reality is stranger than fiction."
+
+In "Papers relating to the rival chiefs, D'Aulnay and La Tour," of the
+Massachusetts Historical Collection, vol. vii., may be found these
+prefatory remarks:--
+
+"There is a romance of History as well as a History of Romance. To the
+former class belong many incidents in the early periods of New England
+and its adjacent colonies. The following papers ... refer to two
+persons, D'Aulnay and La Tour, ... individuals of respectable intellect
+and education, of noble families and large fortune. While the first was
+a zealous and efficient supporter of the Roman Church, the second was
+less so, from his frequent connection with others of a different faith.
+The scene of their ... prominent actions, their exhibition of various
+passions and talents, their conquests and defeats, their career and end,
+as exerting an influence on their associates as well as themselves, on
+other communities as well as their own--was laid in Nova Scotia. This
+phrase then comprised a territory vastly more extensive than it does
+now as a British Province. It embraced not only its present boundaries,
+which were long termed Acadia, but also about two thirds of the State of
+Maine."
+
+It startles the modern reader, in examining documents of the French
+archives relating to the colonies, to come upon a letter from Louis
+XIII. to his beloved D'Aulnay de Charnisay, thanking that governor of
+Acadia for his good service at Fort St. John. Thus was that great race
+who first trod down the wilderness on this continent continually and
+cruelly hampered by the man who sat on the throne in France.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER                                             PAGE
+
+ Prelude.   At the Head of the Bay of Fundy            1
+
+       I.   An Acadian Fortress                       13
+
+      II.   Le Rossignol                              21
+
+     III.   Father Isaac Jogues                       40
+
+      IV.   The Widow Antonia                         55
+
+       V.   Jonas Bronck's Hand                       64
+
+      VI.   The Mending                               73
+
+     VII.   A Frontier Graveyard                      82
+
+    VIII.   Van Corlaer                               96
+
+      IX.   The Turret                               107
+
+       X.   An Acadian Poet                          121
+
+      XI.   Marguerite                               133
+
+     XII.   D'Aulnay                                 143
+
+    XIII.   The Second Day                           155
+
+     XIV.   The Struggle between Powers              173
+
+      XV.   A Soldier                                191
+
+     XVI.   The Camp                                 211
+
+    XVII.   An Acadian Passover                      227
+
+   XVIII.   The Song of Edelwald                     252
+
+Postlude.   A Tide-Creek                             273
+
+
+
+
+LADY OF FORT ST. JOHN.
+
+
+
+
+PRELUDE.
+
+AT THE HEAD OF THE BAY OF FUNDY.
+
+
+The Atlantic rushed across a mile or two of misty beach, boring into all
+its channels in the neck of Acadia. Twilight and fog blurred the
+landscape, but the eye could trace a long swell of earth rising
+gradually from the bay, through marshes, to a summit with a small
+stockade on its southern slope. Sentinels pacing within the stockade
+felt the weird influence of that bald land. The guarded spot seemed an
+island in a sea of vapor and spring night was bringing darkness upon it.
+
+The stockade inclosed a single building of rough logs clumsily put
+together, and chinked with the hard red soil. An unhewn wall divided
+the house into two rooms, and in one room were gathered less than a
+dozen men-at-arms. Their officer lay in one of the cupboard-like bunks,
+with his hands clasped under his head. Some of the men were already
+asleep; others sat by the hearth, rubbing their weapons or spreading
+some garment to dry. A door in the partition opened, and the wife of one
+of the men came from the inner room.
+
+"Good-night, madame," she said.
+
+"Good-night, Zélie," answered a voice within.
+
+"If you have further need of me, you will call me, madame?"
+
+"Assuredly. Get to your rest. To-morrow we may have stormy weather for
+our voyage home."
+
+The woman closed the door, and the face of the one who had hearkened to
+her turned again to the fireplace. It was a room repeating the men's
+barrack in hewed floor, loophole windows, and rough joists.
+
+This frontier outpost on the ridge since called Beausejour was merely a
+convenient halting-place for one of the lords of Acadia. It stood on a
+detached spot of his large seigniory, which he had received with other
+portions of western Acadia in exchange for his grant of Cape Sable.
+
+Though in his early thirties, Charles de la Tour had seen long service
+in the New World. Seldom has a man from central France met the northern
+cold and sea air with so white a favor. His clean-shaven skin and the
+sunny undecided color of his hair were like a child's. Part of his armor
+had been unbuckled, and lay on the floor near him. He sat in a chair of
+twisted boughs, made of refuse from trees his men had dragged out of the
+neighboring forest for the building of the outpost. His wife sat on a
+pile of furs beside his knee. Her Huguenot cap lay on the shelf above
+the fire. She wore a black gown slashed in the sleeves with white, and a
+kerchief of lace pushed from her throat. Her black hair, which Zélie
+had braided, hung down in two ropes to the floor.
+
+"How soon, monsieur," she asked, "can you return to Fort St. John?"
+
+"With all speed possible, Marie. Soon, if we can work the miracle of
+moving a peace-loving man like Denys to action."
+
+"Nicholas Denys ought to take part with you."
+
+"Yet he will scarce do it."
+
+"The king-favored governor of Acadia will some time turn and push him as
+he now pushes you."
+
+"D'Aulnay hath me at sore straits," confessed La Tour, staring at the
+flame, "since he has cut off from me the help of the Bostonnais."
+
+"They were easily cut off," said Marie. "Monsieur, those Huguenots of
+the colonies were never loving friends of ours. Their policy hath been
+to weaken this province by helping the quarrel betwixt D'Aulnay and you.
+Now that D'Aulnay has strength at court, and has persuaded the king to
+declare you an outlaw, the Bostonnais think it wise to withdraw their
+hired soldiers from you. We have not offended the Bostonnais as allies;
+we have only gone down in the world."
+
+La Tour stirred uneasily.
+
+"I dread that D'Aulnay may profit by this hasty journey I make to
+northern Acadia, and again attack the fort in my absence."
+
+"He hath once found a woman there who could hold it," said Marie,
+checking a laugh.
+
+La Tour moved his palm over her cheek. Within his mind the province of
+Acadia lay spread from Penobscot River to the Island of Sable, and from
+the southern tip of the peninsula now called Nova Scotia nearly to the
+mouth of the St. Lawrence. This domain had been parceled in grants: the
+north to Nicholas Denys; the centre and west to D'Aulnay de Charnisay;
+and the south, with posts on the western coast, to Charles de la Tour.
+Being Protestant in faith, La Tour had no influence at the court of
+Louis XIII. His grant had been confirmed to him from his father. He had
+held it against treason to France; and his loyal service, at least, was
+regarded until D'Aulnay de Charnisay became his enemy. Even in that year
+of grace 1645, before Acadia was diked by home-making Norman peasants or
+watered by their parting tears, contending forces had begun to trample
+it. Two feudal barons fought each other on the soil of the New World.
+
+"All things failing me"--La Tour held out his wrists, and looked at them
+with a sharp smile.
+
+"Let D'Aulnay shake a warrant, monsieur. He must needs have you before
+he can carry you in chains to France."
+
+She seized La Tour's hands, with a swift impulse of atoning to them for
+the thought of such indignity, and kissed his wrists. He set his teeth
+on a trembling lip.
+
+"I should be a worthless, aimless vagrant without you, Marie. You are
+young, and I give you fatigue and heart-sickening peril instead of
+jewels and merry company."
+
+"The merriest company for us at present, monsieur, are the men of our
+honest garrison. If Edelwald, who came so lately, complains not of this
+New World life, I should endure it merrily enough. And you know I seldom
+now wear the jewels belonging to our house. Our chief jewel is buried in
+the ground."
+
+She thought of a short grave wrapped in fogs near Fort St. John; of fair
+curls and sweet childish limbs, and a mouth shouting to send echoes
+through the river gorge; of scamperings on the flags of the hall; and of
+the erect and princely carriage of that diminutive presence the men had
+called "my little lord."
+
+"But it is better for the boy that he died, Marie," murmured La Tour.
+"He has no part in these times. He might have survived us to see his
+inheritance stripped from him."
+
+They were silent until Marie said, "You have a long march before you
+to-morrow, monsieur."
+
+"Yes; we ought to throw ourselves into these mangers," said La Tour.
+
+One wall was lined with bunks like those in the outer room. In the lower
+row travelers' preparations were already made for sleeping.
+
+"I am yet of the mind, monsieur," observed Marie, "that you should have
+made this journey entirely by sea."
+
+"It would cost me too much in time to round Cape Sable twice. Nicholas
+Denys can furnish ship as well as men, if he be so minded. My lieutenant
+in arms next to Edelwald," said La Tour, smiling over her, "my equal
+partner in troubles, and my lady of Fort St. John will stand for my
+honor and prosperity until I return."
+
+Marie smiled back.
+
+"D'Aulnay has a fair wife, and her husband is rich, and favored by the
+king, and has got himself made governor of Acadia in your stead. She
+sits in her own hall at Port Royal: but poor Madame D'Aulnay! She has
+not thee!"
+
+At this La Tour laughed aloud. The ring of his voice, and the clang of
+his breastplate which fell over on the floor as he arose, woke an
+answering sound. It did not come from the outer room, where scarcely a
+voice stirred among the sleepy soldiery, but from the top row of bunks.
+Marie turned white at this child wail soothed by a woman's voice.
+
+"What have we here?" exclaimed La Tour.
+
+"Monsieur, it must be a baby!"
+
+"Who has broken into this post with a baby? There may be men concealed
+overhead."
+
+He grasped his pistols, but no men-at-arms appeared with the haggard
+woman who crept down from her hiding-place near the joists.
+
+"Are you some spy sent from D'Aulnay?" inquired La Tour.
+
+"Monsieur, how can you so accuse a poor outcast mother!" whispered
+Marie.
+
+The door in the partition was flung wide, and the young officer appeared
+with men at his back.
+
+"Have you found an ambush, Sieur Charles?"
+
+"We have here a listener, Edelwald," replied La Tour, "and there may be
+more in the loft above."
+
+Several men sprang up the bunks and moved some puncheons overhead. A
+light was raised under the dark roof canopy, but nothing rewarded its
+search. The much-bedraggled woman was young, with falling strands of
+silken hair, which she wound up with one hand while holding the baby.
+Marie took the poor wailer from her with a divine motion and carried it
+to the hearth.
+
+"Who brought you here?" demanded La Tour of the girl.
+
+She cowered before him, but answered nothing. Her presence seemed to him
+a sinister menace against even his obscurest holdings in Acadia. The
+stockade was easily entered, for La Tour was unable to maintain a
+garrison there. All that open country lay sodden with the breath of the
+sea. From whatever point she had approached, La Tour could scarcely
+believe her feet came tracking the moist red clay alone.
+
+"Will you give no account of yourself?"
+
+"You must answer monsieur," encouraged Marie, turning, from her cares
+with the child. It lay unwound from its misery on Marie's knees,
+watching the new ministering power with accepting eyes. Feminine and
+piteous as the girl was, her dense resistance to command could only vex
+a soldier.
+
+"Put her under guard," he said to his officer.
+
+"And Zélie must look to her comfort," added Marie.
+
+"Whoever she may be," declared La Tour, "she hath heard too much to go
+free of this place. She must be sent in the ship to Fort St. John, and
+guarded there."
+
+"What else could be done, indeed?" asked Marie. "The child would die of
+exposure here."
+
+The prisoner was taken to the other hearth; and the young officer, as he
+closed the door, half smiled to hear his lady murmur over the wretched
+little outcast, as she always murmured to ailing creatures,--
+
+"Let mother help you."
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+AN ACADIAN FORTRESS.
+
+
+At the mouth of the river St. John an island was lashed with drift, and
+tide-terraces alongshore recorded how furiously the sea had driven upon
+the land. There had been a two days' storm on the Bay of Fundy,
+subsiding to the clearest of cool spring evenings. An amber light lay on
+the visible world. The forest on the west was yet too bare of leaf buds
+to shut away sunset.
+
+A month later the headlands would be lined distinctly against a blue and
+quickening sky by freshened air and light and herbage. Two centuries and
+a half later, long streaks of electric light would ripple on that
+surface, and great ships stand at ease there, and ferry-boats rush back
+and forth. But in this closing dusk it reflected only the gray and
+yellow vaporous breath of April, and shaggy edges of a wilderness. The
+high shores sank their shadows farther and farther from the water's
+edge.
+
+Fort St. John was built upon a gradual ascent of rocks which rose to a
+small promontory on the south side of the river. There were four
+bastions guarded with cannon, the northeast bastion swelling above its
+fellows in a round turret topped with battlements. On this tower the
+flag of France hung down its staff against the evening sky, for there
+was scarcely any motion of the air. That coast lay silent like a
+pictured land, except a hint of falls above in the river. It was ebb
+tide; the current of the St. John set out toward the sea instead of
+rushing back on its own channel; and rocks swallowed at flood now broke
+the surface.
+
+A plume of smoke sprang from one bastion, followed by the rolling
+thunder of a cannon shot. From a small ship in the bay a gun replied to
+this salute. She stood, gradually clear of a headland, her sails
+hanging torn and one mast broken, and sentinel and cannoneer in the
+bastion saw that she was lowering a boat. They called to people in the
+fortress, and all voices caught the news:--
+
+"Madame has come at last!"
+
+Life stirred through the entire inclosure with a jar of closing doors
+and running feet.
+
+Though not a large fortification, St. John was well and compactly built
+of cemented stone. A row of hewed log-barracks stood against the
+southern wall, ample for all the troops La Tour had been able to muster
+in prosperous times. There was a stone vault for ammunition. A well, a
+mill and great stone oven, and a storehouse for beaver and other skins
+were between the barracks and the commandant's tower built massively
+into the northeast bastion. This structure gave La Tour the advantage of
+a high lookout, though it was much smaller than a castle he had formerly
+held at La Hčve. The interior accommodated itself to such compactness,
+the lower floor having only one entrance, and windows looking into the
+area of the fort, while the second floor was lighted through deep
+loopholes.
+
+A drum began to beat, a tall fellow gave the word of command, and the
+garrison of Fort St. John drew up in line facing the gate. A sentinel
+unbarred and set wide both inner and outer leaves, and a cheer burst
+through the deep-throated gateway, and was thrown back from the opposite
+shore, from forest and river windings. Madame La Tour, with two women
+attendants, was seen coming up from the water's edge, while two men
+pushed off with the boat.
+
+She waved her hand in reply to the shout.
+
+The tall soldier went down to meet her, and paused, bareheaded, to make
+the salutation of a subaltern to his military superior. She responded
+with the same grave courtesy. But as he drew nearer she noticed him
+whitening through the dusk.
+
+"All has gone well, Klussman, at Fort St. John, since your lord left?"
+
+"Madame," he said with a stammer, "the storm made us anxious about you."
+
+"Have you seen D'Aulnay?"
+
+"No, madame."
+
+"You look haggard, Klussman."
+
+"If I look haggard, madame, it must come from seeing two women follow
+you, when I should see only one."
+
+He threw sharp glances behind her, as he took her hand to lead her up
+the steep path. Marie's attendant was carrying the baby, and she lifted
+it for him to look at, the hairs on her upper lip moved by a
+good-natured smile. Klussman's scowl darkened his mountain-born
+fairness.
+
+"I would rather, indeed, be bringing more men to the fort instead of
+more women," said his lady, as they mounted the slope. "But this one
+might have perished in the stockade where we found her, and your lord
+not only misliked her, as you seem to do, but he held her in suspicion.
+In a manner, therefore, she is our prisoner, though never went prisoner
+so helplessly with her captors."
+
+"Yes, any one might take such a creature," said Klussman.
+
+"Those are no fit words to speak, Klussman."
+
+He was unready with his apology, however, and tramped on without again
+looking behind. Madame La Tour glanced at her ship, which would have to
+wait for wind and tide to reach the usual mooring.
+
+"Did you tell me you had news?" she was reminded to ask him.
+
+"Madame, I have some news, but nothing serious."
+
+"If it be nothing serious, I will have a change of garments and my
+supper before I hear it. We have had a hard voyage."
+
+"Did my lord send any new orders?"
+
+"None, save to keep this poor girl about the fort; and that is easily
+obeyed, since we can scarce do otherwise with her."
+
+"I meant to ask in the first breath how he fared in the outset of his
+expedition."
+
+"With a lowering sky overhead, and wet red clay under-foot. But I
+thanked Heaven, while we were tossing with a broken mast, that he was
+at least on firm land and moving to his expectations."
+
+They entered the gateway, Madame La Tour's cheeks tingling richly from
+the effort of climbing. She saluted her garrison, and her garrison
+saluted her, each with a courteous pride in the other, born of the joint
+victory they had won over D'Aulnay de Charnisay when he attacked the
+fort. Not a man broke rank until she entered her hall. There was a
+tidiness about the inclosure peculiar to places inhabited by women. It
+added grace even to military appointments.
+
+"You miss the swan, madame," noted Klussman. "Le Rossignol is out
+again."
+
+"When did she go?"
+
+"The night after my lord and you sailed northward. She goes each time in
+the night, madame."
+
+"And she is still away?"
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+"And this is all you know of her?"
+
+"Yes, madame. She went, and has not yet come back."
+
+"But she always comes back safely. Though I fear," said Madame La Tour
+on the threshold, "the poor maid will some time fall into harm."
+
+He opened the door, and stood aside, saying under his breath, "I would
+call a creature like that a witch instead of a maid."
+
+"I will send for you, Klussman, when I have refreshed myself."
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+The other women filed past him, and entered behind his lady.
+
+The Swiss soldier folded his arms, staring hard at that crouching
+vagrant brought from Beausejour. She had a covering over her face, and
+she held it close, crowding on the heels in front of her as if she dared
+not meet his eye.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+LE ROSSIGNOL.
+
+
+A girlish woman was waiting for Marie within the hall, and the two
+exchanged kisses on the cheek with sedate and tender courtesy.
+
+"Welcome home, madame."
+
+"Home is more welcome to me because I find you in it, Antonia. Has
+anything unusual happened in the fortress while I have been setting
+monsieur on his way?"
+
+"This morning, about dawn, I heard a great tramping of soldiers in the
+hall. One of the women told me prisoners had been brought in."
+
+"Yes. The Swiss said he had news. And how has the Lady Dorinda fared?"
+
+"Well, indeed. She has described to me three times the gorgeous pageant
+of her marriage."
+
+They had reached the fireplace, and Marie laughed as she warmed her
+hands before a pile of melting logs.
+
+"Give our sea-tossed bundle and its mother a warm seat, Zélie," she said
+to her woman.
+
+The unknown girl was placed near the hearth corner, and constrained to
+take upon her knees an object which she held indifferently. Antonia's
+eyes rested on her, detecting her half-concealed face, with silent
+disapproval.
+
+"We found a child on this expedition."
+
+"It hath a stiffened look, like a papoose," observed Antonia. "Is it
+well in health?"
+
+"No; poor baby. Attend to the child," said Marie sternly to the mother;
+and she added, "Zélie must go directly with me to my chests before she
+waits on me, and bring down garments for it to this hearth."
+
+"Let me this time be your maid," said Antonia.
+
+"You may come with me and be my resolution, Antonia; for I have to set
+about the unlocking of boxes which hold some sacred clothes."
+
+"I never saw you lack courage, madame, since I have known you."
+
+"Therein have I deceived you then," said Marie, throwing her cloak on
+Zélie's arm, "for I am a most cowardly creature in my affections, Madame
+Bronck."
+
+They moved toward the stairs. Antonia was as perfect as a slim and
+blue-eyed stalk of flax. She wore the laced bodice and small cap of New
+Holland. Her exactly spoken French denoted all the neat appointments of
+her life. This Dutch gentlewoman had seen much of the world; having
+traveled from Fort Orange to New Amsterdam, from New Amsterdam to
+Boston, and from Boston with Madame La Tour to Fort St. John in Acadia.
+The three figures ascended in a line the narrow stairway which made a
+diagonal band from lower to upper corner of the remote hall end. Zélie
+walked last, carrying her lady's cloak. At the top a little light fell
+on them through a loophole.
+
+"Was Mynheer La Tour in good heart for his march?" inquired Antonia,
+turning from the waifs brought back to the expedition itself.
+
+"Stout-hearted enough; but the man to whom he goes is scarce to be
+counted on. We Protestant French are all held alien by Catholics of our
+blood. Edelwald will move Denys to take arms with us, if any one can. My
+lord depends much upon Edelwald. This instant," said Marie with a laugh,
+"I find the worst of all my discomforts these disordered garments."
+
+The stranger left by the fire gazed around the dim place, which was
+lighted only by high windows in front. The mighty hearth, inclosed by
+settles, was like a roseate side-chamber to the hall. Outside of this
+the stone-paved floor spread away unevenly. She turned her eyes from the
+arms of La Tour over the mantel to trace seamed and footworn flags, and
+noticed in the distant corner, at the bottom of the stairs, that they
+gave way to a trapdoor of timbers. This was fastened down with iron
+bars, and had a huge ring for its handle. Her eyes rested on it in fear,
+betwixt the separated settles.
+
+But it was easily lost sight of in the fire's warmth. She had been so
+chilled by salt air and spray as to crowd close to the flame and court
+scorching. Her white face kindled with heat. She threw back her
+mufflers, and the comfort of the child occurring to her, she looked at
+its small face through a tunnel of clothing. Its exceeding stillness
+awoke but one wish, which she dared not let escape in words.
+
+These stone walls readily echoed any sound. So scantily furnished was
+the great hall that it could not refrain from echoing. There were some
+chairs and tables not of colonial pattern, and a buffet holding silver
+tankards and china; but these seemed lost in space. Opposite the
+fireplace hung two portraits,--one of Charles La Tour's father, the
+other of a former maid of honor at the English court. The ceiling of
+wooden panels had been brought from La Tour's castle at Cape Sable; it
+answered the flicker of the fire with lines of faded gilding.
+
+The girl dropped her wrappings on the bench, and began to unroll the
+baby, as if curious about its state.
+
+"I believe it _is_ dead!" she whispered.
+
+But the clank of a long iron latch which fastened the outer door was
+enough to deflect her interest from the matter. She cast her cloak over
+the baby, and held it loosely on her knees, with its head to the fire.
+When the door shut with a crash, and some small object scurried across
+the stone floor, the girl looked out of her retreat with fear. Her
+eyelids and lips fell wider apart. She saw a big-headed brownie coming
+to the hearth, clad, with the exception of its cap, in the dun tints of
+autumn woods. This creature, scarcely more than two feet high, had a
+woman's face, of beak-like formation, projecting forward. She was as
+bright-eyed and light of foot as any bird. Moving within the inclosure
+of the settles, she hopped up with a singular power of vaulting, and
+seated herself, stretching toward the fire a pair of spotted seal
+moccasins. These were so small that the feet on which they were laced
+seemed an infant's, and sorted strangely with the mature keen face above
+them. Youth, age, and wise sylvan life were brought to a focus in that
+countenance.
+
+To hear such a creature talk was like being startled by spoken words
+from a bird.
+
+"I'm Le Rossignol," she piped out, when she had looked at the vagrant
+girl a few minutes, "and I can read your name on your face. It's
+Marguerite."
+
+The girl stared helplessly at this midget seer.
+
+"You're the same Marguerite that was left on the Island of Demons a
+hundred years ago. You may not know it, but you're the same. I know that
+downward look, and soft, crying way, and still tongue, and the very baby
+on your knees. You never bring any good, and words are wasted on you.
+Don't smile under your sly mouth, and think you are hiding anything
+from Le Rossignol."
+
+The girl crouched deeper into her clothes, until those unwinking eyes
+relieved her by turning with indifference toward the chimney.
+
+"I have no pity for any Marguerite," Le Rossignol added, and she tossed
+from her head the entire subject with a cap made of white gull breasts.
+A brush of red hair stood up in thousands of tendrils, exaggerating by
+its nimbus the size of her upper person. Never had dwarf a sweeter
+voice. If she had been compressed in order to produce melody, her tones
+were compensation, enough. She made lilting sounds while dangling her
+feet to the blaze, as if she thought in music.
+
+Le Rossignol was so positive a force that she seldom found herself
+overborne by the presence of large human beings. The only man in the
+fortress who saw her without superstition was Klussman. He inclined to
+complain of her antics, but not to find magic in her flights and
+returns. At that period deformity was the symbol of witchcraft. Blame
+fell upon this dwarf when toothache or rheumatic pains invaded the
+barracks, especially if the sufferer had spoken against her unseen
+excursions with her swan. Protected from childhood by the family of La
+Tour, she had grown an autocrat, and bent to nobody except her lady.
+
+"Where is my clavier?" exclaimed Le Rossignol. "I heard a tune in the
+woods which I must get out of my clavier,--a green tune, the color of
+quickening lichens; a dropping tune with sap in it; a tune like the wind
+across inland lakes."
+
+She ran along the settle, and thrust her head around its high back.
+
+Zélie, with white garments upon one arm, was setting solidly forth down
+the uncovered stairs, when the dwarf arrested her by a cry.
+
+"Go back, heavy-foot,--go back and fetch me my clavier."
+
+"Mademoiselle the nightingale has suddenly returned," muttered Zélie,
+ill pleased.
+
+"Am I not always here when my lady comes home? I demand the box wherein
+my instrument is kept."
+
+"What doth your instrument concern me? Madame has sent me to dress the
+baby."
+
+"Will you bring my clavier?"
+
+The dwarf's scream was like the weird high note of a wind-harp. It had
+its effect on Zélie. She turned back, though muttering against the
+overruling of her lady's commands by a creature like a bat, who could
+probably send other powers than a decent maid to bring claviers.
+
+"And where shall I find it?" she inquired aloud. "Here have I been in
+the fortress scarce half an hour, after all but shipwreck, and I must
+search out the belongings of people who do naught but idle."
+
+"Find it where you will. No one hath the key but myself. The box may
+stand in Madame Marie's apartment, or it may be in my own chamber. Such
+matters are blown out of my head by the wind along the coast. Make
+haste to fetch it so I can play when Madame Marie appears."
+
+Le Rossignol drew herself up the back of the settle, and perched at ease
+on the angle farthest from the fire. She beat her heels lightly against
+her throne, and hummed, with her face turned from the listless girl, who
+watched all her antics.
+
+Zélie brought the instrument case, unlocked it, and handed up a
+crook-necked mandolin and its small ivory plectrum to her tyrant. At
+once the hall was full of tinkling melody. The dwarf's threadlike
+fingers ran along the neck of the mandolin, and as she made the ivory
+disk quiver among its strings her head swayed in rapturous singing.
+
+Zélie forgot the baby. The garments intended for its use were spread
+upon the settle near the fire. She folded her arms, and wagged her head
+with Le Rossignol's. But while the dwarf kept an eye on the stairway,
+watching like a lover for the appearance of Madame La Tour, the outer
+door again clanked, and Klussman stepped into the hall. His big presence
+had instant effect on Le Rossignol. Her music tinkled louder and faster.
+The playing sprite, sitting half on air, gamboled and made droll faces
+to catch his eye. Her vanity and self-satisfaction, her pliant gesture
+and skillful wild music, made her appear some soulless little being from
+the woods who mocked at man's tense sternness.
+
+Klussman took little notice of any one in the hall, but waited by the
+closed door so relentless a sentinel that Zélie was reminded of her
+duty. She made haste to bring perfumed water in a basin, and turned the
+linen on the settle. She then took the child from its mother's limp
+hands, and exclaimed and muttered under her breath as she turned it on
+her knees.
+
+"What hast thou done to it since my lady left thee?" inquired Zélie
+sharply. But she got no answer from the girl.
+
+Unrewarded for her minstrelsy by a single look from the Swiss, Le
+Rossignol quit playing, and made a fist of the curved instrument to
+shake at him, and let herself down the back of the settle. She sat on
+the mandolin box in shadow, vaguely sulking, until Madame La Tour, fresh
+from her swift attiring, stood at the top of the stairway. That instant
+the half-hid mandolin burst into quavering melodies.
+
+"Thou art back again, Nightingale?" called the lady, descending.
+
+"Yes, Madame Marie."
+
+"Madame!" exclaimed Klussman, and as his voice escaped repression it
+rang through the hall. He advanced, but his lady lifted her finger to
+hold him back.
+
+"Presently, Klussman. The first matter in hand is to rebuke this
+runaway."
+
+Marie's firm and polished chin, the contour of her glowing mouth, and
+the kindling beauty of her eyes were forever fresh delights to Le
+Rossignol. The dwarf watched the shapely and majestic woman moving down
+the hall.
+
+"Madame," besought Zélie, looking anxiously around the end of the
+settle. But she also was obliged to wait. Marie extended a hand to the
+claws of Le Rossignol, who touched it with her beak.
+
+"Thou hast very greatly displeased me."
+
+"Yes, Madame Marie," said the culprit, with resignation.
+
+"How many times have you set all our people talking about these witch
+flights on the swan, and sudden returns after dark?"
+
+"I forget, Madame Marie."
+
+"In all seriousness thou shalt be well punished for this last," said the
+lady severely.
+
+"I was punished before the offense. Your absence punished me, Madame
+Marie."
+
+"A bit of adroit flattery will not turn aside discipline. The smallest
+vassal in the fort shall know that. A day in the turret, with a loaf of
+bread and a jug of water, may put thee in better liking to stay at
+home."
+
+"Yes, Madame Marie," assented the dwarf, with smiles.
+
+"And I may yet find it in my heart to have that swan's neck wrung."
+
+"Shubenacadie's neck! Oh, Madame Marie, wring mine! It would be the
+death of me if Shubenacadie died. Consider how long I have had him. And
+his looks, my lady! He is such a pretty bird."
+
+"We must mend that dangerous beauty of his. If these flights stop not, I
+will have his wings clipped."
+
+"His satin wings,--his glistening, polished wings," mourned Le
+Rossignol, "tipped with angel-finger feathers! Oh, Madame Marie, my
+heart's blood would run out of his quills!"
+
+"It is a serious breach in the discipline of this fortress for even you
+to disobey me constantly," said the lady, again severely, though she
+knew her lecture was wasted on the human brownie.
+
+Le Rossignol poked and worried the mandolin with antennć-like fingers,
+and made up a contrite face.
+
+The dimness of the hall had not covered Klussman's large pallor. The
+emotions of the Swiss passed over the outside of his countenance, in
+bulk like himself. His lady often compared him to a noble young bullock
+or other well-conditioned animal. There was in Klussman much
+wholesomeness and excuse for existence.
+
+"Now, Klussman," said Marie, meeting her lieutenant with the intentness
+of one used to sudden military emergencies. He trod straight to the
+fireplace, and pointed at the strange girl, who hid her face.
+
+"Madame, I have come in to speak of a thing you ought to know. Has that
+woman told you her name?"
+
+"No, she hath not. She hath kept a close tongue ever since we found her
+at the outpost."
+
+"She ever had a close tongue, madame, but she works her will in silence.
+It hath been no good will to me, and it will be no good will to the Fort
+of St. John."
+
+"Who is she, Klussman?"
+
+"I know not what name she bears now, but two years since she bore the
+name of Marguerite Klussman."
+
+"Surely she is not your sister?"
+
+"No, madame. She is only my wife." He lifted his lip, and his blue eyes
+stared at the muffled culprit.
+
+"We knew not you had a wife when you entered our service, Klussman."
+
+"Nor had I, madame. D'Aulnay de Charnisay had already taken her."
+
+"Then this woman does come from D'Aulnay de Charnisay?"
+
+"Yes, madame! And if you would have my advice, I say put her out of the
+gate this instant, and let her find shelter with our Indians above the
+falls."
+
+"Madame," exclaimed Zélie, lifting the half-nude infant, and thrusting
+it before her mistress with importunity which could wait no longer, "of
+your kindness look at this little creature. With all my chafing and
+sprinkling I cannot find any life in it. That girl hath let it die on
+her knees, and hath not made it known!"
+
+Klussman's glance rested on the body with that abashed hatred which a
+man condemns in himself when its object is helpless.
+
+"It is D'Aulnay's child," he muttered, as if stating abundant reason for
+its taking off.
+
+"I have brought an agent from D'Aulnay and D'Aulnay's child into our
+fortress," said Madame La Tour, speaking toward Marguerite's silent
+cover, under which the girl made no sign of being more than a hidden
+animal. Her stern face traveled from mother back to tiny body.
+
+There is nothing more touching than the emaciation of a baby. Its sunken
+temples and evident cheekbones, the line of its jaw, the piteous parted
+lips and thin neck were all reflected in Marie's eyes. Her entire figure
+softened, and passionate motherhood filled her. She took the still
+pliant shape from Zélie, held it in her hands, and finally pressed it
+against her bosom. No sign of mourning came from the woman called its
+mother.
+
+"This baby is no enemy of ours," trembled Madame La Tour. "I will not
+have it even reproached with being the child of our enemy. It is my
+little dead lad come again to my bosom. How soft are his dear limbs! And
+this child died for lack of loving while I went with empty arms! Have
+you suffered, dear? It is all done now. Mother will give you
+kisses,--kisses. Oh, baby,--baby!"
+
+Klussman turned away, and Zélie whimpered. But Le Rossignol thrust her
+head around the settle to see what manner of creature it was over which
+Madame Marie sobbed aloud.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+FATHER ISAAC JOGUES.
+
+
+The child abandoned by La Tour's enemy had been carried to the upper
+floor, and the woman sent with a soldier's wife to the barracks; yet
+Madame La Tour continued to walk the stone flags, feeling that small
+skeleton on her bosom, and the pressure of death on the air.
+
+Her Swiss lieutenant opened the door and uttered a call. Presently, with
+a clatter of hoofs on the pavement, and a mighty rasping of the
+half-tree which they dragged, in burst eight Sable Island ponies, shaggy
+fellows, smaller than mastiffs, yet with large heads. The settles were
+hastily cleared away for them, and they swept their load to the hearth.
+As soon as their chain was unhooked, these fairy horses shot out again,
+and their joyful neighing could be heard as they scampered around the
+fort to their stable. Two men rolled the log into place, set a table and
+three chairs, and one returned to the cook-house while the other spread
+the cloth.
+
+Claude La Tour and his wife, the maid of honor, seemed to palpitate in
+their frames, with the flickering expressions of firelight. The silent
+company of these two people was always enjoyed by Le Rossignol. She knew
+their disappointments, and liked to have them stir and sigh. In the
+daytime, the set courtier smile was sadder than a pine forest. But the
+chimney's huge throat drew in the hall's heavy influences, and when the
+log was fired not a corner escaped its glow. The man who laid the cloth
+lighted candles in a silver candelabrum and set it on the table, and
+carried a brand to waxlights which decorated the buffet.
+
+These cheerful preparations for her evening meal recalled Madame La Tour
+to the garrison's affairs. Her Swiss lieutenant yet stood by, his arms
+and chin settled sullenly on his breast; reluctant to go out and pass
+the barrack door where his wife was sheltered.
+
+"Are sentinels set for the night, Klussman?" inquired the lady.
+
+He stood erect, and answered, "Yes, madame."
+
+"I will not wait for my supper before I hear your news. Discharge it
+now. I understand the grief you bear, my friend. Your lord will not
+forget the faithfulness you show toward us."
+
+"Madame, if I may speak again, put that woman out of the gate. If she
+lingers around, I may do her some hurt when I have a loaded piece in my
+hand. She makes me less a man."
+
+"But, Klussman, the Sieur de la Tour, whose suspicions of her you have
+justified, strictly charged that we restrain her here until his return.
+She has seen and heard too much of our condition."
+
+"Our Indians would hold her safe enough, madame."
+
+"Yet she is a soft, feeble creature, and much exhausted. Could she bear
+their hard living?"
+
+"Madame, she will requite whoever shelters her with shame and trouble.
+If D'Aulnay has turned her forth, she would willingly buy back his favor
+by opening this fortress to him. If he has not turned her forth, she is
+here by his command. I have thought out all these things; and, madame, I
+shall say nothing more, if you prefer to risk yourself in her hands
+instead of risking her with the savages."
+
+The dwarf's mandolin trembled a mere whisper of sound. She leaned her
+large head against the settle and watched the Swiss denounce his wife.
+
+"You speak good military sense," said the lady, "yet there is monsieur's
+command. And I cannot bring myself to drive that exhausted creature to a
+cold bed in the woods. We must venture--we cannot do less--to let her
+rest a few days under guard. Now let me hear your news."
+
+"It was only this, madame. Word was brought in that two priests from
+Montreal were wandering above the falls and trying to cross the St. John
+in order to make their way to D'Aulnay's fort at Penobscot. So I set
+after them and brought them in, and they are now in the keep, waiting
+your pleasure."
+
+"Doubtless you did right," hesitated Madame La Tour. "Even priests may
+be working us harm, so hated are we of Papists. But have them out
+directly, Klussman. We must not be rigorous. Did they bear any papers?"
+
+"No, madame; and they said they had naught to do with D'Aulnay, but were
+on a mission to the Abenakis around Penobscot, and had lost their course
+and wandered here. One of them is that Father Isaac Jogues who was
+maimed by the Mohawks, when he carried papistry among them, and the
+other his donné--a name these priests give to any man who of his own
+free will goes with them to be servant of the mission."
+
+"Bring them out of the keep," said Madame La Tour.
+
+The Swiss walked with ringing foot toward the stairway, and dropped upon
+one knee to unbar the door in the pavement. He took a key from his
+pocket and turned it in the lock, and, as he lifted the heavy leaf of
+beams and crosspieces, his lady held over the darkness a candle, which
+she had taken from one of the buffet sconces. Out of the vault rose a
+chill breath from which the candle flame recoiled.
+
+"Monsieur," she spoke downward, "will you have the goodness to come up
+with your companion?"
+
+Her voice resounded in the hollow; and some movement occurred below as
+soft-spoken answer was made:--
+
+"We come, madame."
+
+A cassocked Jesuit appeared under the light, followed by a man wearing
+the ordinary dress of a French colonist. They ascended the stone steps,
+and Klussman replaced the door with a clank which echoed around the
+hall. Marie gave him the candle, and with clumsy touch he fitted it to
+the sconce while she led her prisoners to the fire. The Protestant was
+able to dwell with disapproval on the Jesuit's black gown, though it
+proved the hard service of a missionary priest; the face of Father
+Jogues none but a savage could resist.
+
+His downcast eyelids were like a woman's, and so was his delicate mouth.
+The cheeks, shading inward from their natural oval, testified to a life
+of hardship. His full and broad forehead, bordered by a fringe of hair
+left around his tonsure, must have overbalanced his lower face, had that
+not been covered by a short beard, parted on the upper lip and peaked at
+the end. His eyebrows were well marked, and the large-orbed eyes seemed
+so full of smiling meditation that Marie said to herself, "This lovely,
+woman-looking man hath the presence of an angel, and we have chilled him
+in our keep!"
+
+"Peace be with you, madame," spoke Father Jogues.
+
+"Monsieur, I crave your pardon for the cold greeting you have had in
+this fortress. We are people who live in perils, and we may be
+over-suspicious."
+
+"Madame, I have no complaint to bring against you."
+
+Both men were shivering, and she directed them to places on the settle.
+They sat where the vagrant girl had huddled. Father Jogues warmed his
+hands, and she noticed how abruptly serrated by missing or maimed
+fingers was their tapered shape. The man who had gone out to the
+cook-house returned with platters, and in passing the Swiss lieutenant
+gave him a hurried word, on which the Swiss left the hall. The two men
+made space for Father Jogues at their lady's board, and brought forward
+another table for his donné.
+
+"Good friends," said Marie, "this Huguenot fare is offered you heartily,
+and I hope you will as heartily take it, thereby excusing the hunger of
+a woman who has just come in from seafaring."
+
+"Madame," returned the priest, "we have scarcely seen civilized food
+since leaving Montreal, and we need no urging to enjoy this bounty. But,
+if you permit, I will sit here beside my brother Lalande."
+
+"As you please," she answered, glancing at the plain young Frenchman in
+colonial dress with suspicion that he was made the excuse for separating
+Romanist and Protestant.
+
+Father Jogues saw her glance and read her thought, and silently accused
+himself of cowardice for shrinking, in his maimed state, from her table
+with the instincts of a gentle-born man. He explained, resting his hand
+upon the chair which had been moved from the lady's to his servant's
+table:--
+
+"We have no wish to be honored above our desert, madame. We are only
+humble missionaries, and often while carrying the truth have been
+thankful for a meal of roots or berries in the woods."
+
+"Your humility hurts me, monsieur. On the Acadian borders we have bitter
+enmities, but the fort of La Tour shelters all faiths alike. We can
+hardly atone to so good a man for having thrust him into our keep."
+
+Father Jogues shook his head, and put aside this apology with a gesture.
+The queen of France had knelt and kissed his mutilated hands, and the
+courtiers of Louis had praised his martyrdom. But such ordeals of
+compliment were harder for him to endure than the teeth and knives of
+the Mohawks.
+
+As soon as Le Rossignol saw the platters appearing, she carried her
+mandolin to the lowest stair step and sat down to play: a quaint
+minstrel, holding an instrument almost as large as herself. That part of
+the household who lingered in the rooms above owned this accustomed
+signal and appeared on the stairs: Antonia Bronck, still disturbed by
+the small skeleton she had seen Zélie dressing for its grave; and an
+elderly woman of great bulk and majesty, with sallow hair and face, who
+wore, enlarged, one of the court gowns which her sovereign, the queen
+of England, had often praised. Le Rossignol followed these two ladies
+across the hall, alternately aping the girlish motion of Antonia and her
+elder's massive progress. She considered the Dutch gentlewoman a sweet
+interloper who might, on occasions, be pardoned; but Lady Dorinda was
+the natural antagonist of the dwarf in Fort St. John. Marie herself
+seated her mother-in-law, with the graceful deference of youth to middle
+age and of present power to decayed grandeur. Lady Dorinda was not easy
+to make comfortable. The New World was hardly her sphere. In earlier
+life, she had learned in the school of the royal Stuarts that some
+people are, by divine right, immeasurably better than others,--and
+experience had thrust her down among those unfortunate others.
+
+Seeing there were strange men in the hall, Antonia divined that the
+prisoners from the keep had been brought up to supper. But Lady Dorinda
+settled her chin upon her necklace, and sighed a large sigh that
+priests and rough men-at-arms should weary eyes once used to revel in
+court pageantry. She looked up at the portrait of her dead husband,
+which hung on the wall. He had been created the first knight of Acadia;
+and though this honor came from her king, and his son refused to inherit
+it after him, Lady Dorinda believed that only the misfortunes of the La
+Tours had prevented her being a colonial queen.
+
+"Our chaplain being absent in the service of Sieur de la Tour," spoke
+Marie, "will monsieur, in his own fashion, bless this meal?"
+
+Father Jogues spread the remnant of his hands, but Antonia did not hear
+a word he breathed. She was again in Fort Orange. The Iroquois stalked
+up hilly paths and swarmed around the plank huts of Dutch traders. With
+the savages walked this very priest, their patient drudge until some of
+them blasphemed, when he sternly and fearlessly denounced the sinners.
+
+Supper was scarcely begun when the Swiss lieutenant came again into the
+hall and saluted his lady.
+
+"What troubles us, Klussman?" she demanded.
+
+"There is a stranger outside."
+
+"What does he want?"
+
+"Madame, he asks to be admitted to Fort St. John."
+
+"Is he alone? Hath he a suspicious look?"
+
+"No, madame. He bears himself openly and like a man of consequence."
+
+"How many followers has he?"
+
+"A dozen, counting Indians. But all of them he sends back to camp with
+our Etchemins."
+
+"And well he may. We want no strange followers in the barracks. Have you
+questioned him? Whence does he come?"
+
+"From Fort Orange, in the New Netherlands, madame."
+
+"He is then Hollandais." Marie turned to Antonia Bronck, and was jarred
+by her blanching face.
+
+"What is it, Antonia? You have no enemy to follow you into Acadia?"
+
+The flaxen head was shaken for reply.
+
+"But what brings a man from Fort Orange here?"
+
+"There be nearly a hundred men in Fort Orange," whispered Antonia.
+
+"He says," announced the Swiss, "that he is cousin and agent of the
+seignior they call the patroon, and his name is Van Corlaer."
+
+"Do you know him, Antonia?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And is he kindly disposed to you?"
+
+"He was the friend of my husband, Jonas Bronck," trembled Antonia.
+
+"Admit him," said Marie to her lieutenant.
+
+"Alone, madame?"
+
+"With all his followers, if he wills it. And bring him as quickly as you
+can to this table."
+
+"We need Edelwald to manage these affairs," added the lady of the fort,
+as her subaltern went out. "The Swiss is faithful, but he has manners as
+rugged as his mountains."
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+THE WIDOW ANTONIA.
+
+
+Antonia sat in tense quiet, though whitened even across the lips where
+all the color of her face usually appeared; and a stalwart and courtly
+man presented himself in the hall. Some of the best blood of the Dutch
+Republic had evidently gone to his making. He had the vital and reliable
+presence of a master in affairs, and his clean-shaven face had firm
+mouth-corners. Marie rose up without pause to meet him. He was freshly
+and carefully dressed in clothes carried for this purpose across the
+wilderness, and gained favor even with Lady Dorinda, as a man bearing
+around him in the New World the atmosphere of Europe. He made his
+greeting in French, and explained that he was passing through Acadia on
+a journey to Montreal.
+
+"We stand much beholden to monsieur," said Marie with a quizzical face,
+"that he should travel so many hundred leagues out of his way to visit
+this poor fort. I have heard that the usual route to Montreal is that
+short and direct one up the lake of Champlain."
+
+Van Corlaer's smile rested openly on Antonia as he answered,--
+
+"Madame, a man's most direct route is the one that leads to his object."
+
+"Doubtless, monsieur. And you are very welcome to this fort. We have
+cause to love the New Netherlanders."
+
+Marie turned to deliver Antonia her guest, but Antonia stood without
+word or look for him. She seemed a scared Dutch child, bending all her
+strength and all her inherited quiet on maintaining self-control. He
+approached her, searching her face with his near-sighted large eyes.
+
+"Had Madame Bronck no expectation of seeing Arendt Van Corlaer in
+Acadia?"
+
+"No, mynheer," whispered Antonia.
+
+"But since I have come have you nothing to say to me?"
+
+"I hope I see you well, mynheer."
+
+"You might see me well," reproached Van Corlaer, "if you would look at
+me."
+
+She lifted her eyes and dropped them again.
+
+"This Acadian air has given you a wan color," he noted.
+
+"Did you leave Teunis and Marytje Harmentse well?" quavered Antonia,
+catching at any scrap. Van Corlaer stared, and answered that Teunis and
+Marytje were well, and would be grateful to her for inquiring.
+
+"For they also helped to hide this priest from the Mohawks," added
+Antonia without coherence. Marie could hear her heart laboring.
+
+"What priest?" inquired Van Corlaer, and as he looked around his eyes
+fell on the cassocked figure at the other table.
+
+"Monsieur Corlaer," spoke Father Jogues, "I was but waiting fit
+opportunity to recall myself and your blessed charity to your memory."
+
+Van Corlaer's baffled look changed to instant glad recognition.
+
+"That is Father Jogues!"
+
+He met the priest with both hands, and stood head and shoulders taller
+while they held each other like brothers.
+
+"I thought to find you in Montreal, Father Jogues, and not here, where
+in my dim fashion I could mistake you for the chaplain of the fort."
+
+"Monsieur Corlaer, I have not forgot one look of yours. I was a great
+trouble to you with, my wounds, and my hiding and fever. And what pains
+you took to put me on board the ship in the night! It would be better
+indeed to see me at Montreal than ever in such plight again at Fort
+Orange, Monsieur Corlaer!"
+
+"Glad would we be to have you at Fort Orange again, without pain to
+yourself, Father Jogues."
+
+"And how is my friend who so much enjoyed disputing about religion?"
+
+"Our dominie is well, and sent by my hand his hearty greeting to that
+very learned scholar Father Jogues. We heard you had come back from
+France."
+
+Van Corlaer dropped one hand on the donné's shoulder and leaned down to
+examine his smiling face.
+
+"It is my brother Lalande, the donné of this present mission," said the
+priest.
+
+"My young monsieur," said Van Corlaer, "keep Father Jogues out of the
+Mohawks' mouths henceforth. They have really no stomach for religion,
+though they will eat saints. It often puzzles a Dutchman to handle that
+Iroquois nation."
+
+"Our lives are not our own," said the young Frenchman.
+
+"We must bear the truth whether it be received or not," said Father
+Jogues.
+
+"Whatever errand brought you into Acadia," said Van Corlaer, turning
+back to the priest, "I am glad to find you here, for I shall now have
+your company back to Montreal."
+
+"Impossible, Monsieur Corlaer. For I have set out to plant a mission
+among the Abenakis. They asked for a missionary. Our guides deserted us,
+and we have wandered off our course and been obliged to throw away
+nearly all the furniture of our mission. But we now hope to make our way
+along the coast."
+
+"Father Jogues, the Abenakis are all gone northward. We passed through
+their towns on the Penobscot."
+
+"But they will come back?"
+
+"Some time, though no man at Penobscot would be able to say when."
+
+Father Jogues' perplexed brows drew together. Wanderings, hunger, and
+imprisonment he could bear serenely as incidents of his journey. But to
+have his flock scattered before he could reach it was real calamity.
+
+"We must make shift to follow them," he said.
+
+"How will you follow them without supplies, and without knowing where
+they may turn in the woods?"
+
+"I see we shall have to wait for them at Penobscot," said Father Jogues.
+
+"Take a heretic's advice instead. For I speak not as the enemy of your
+religion when I urge you to journey with me back to Montreal. You can
+make another and better start to establish this mission."
+
+The priest shook his head.
+
+"I do not see my way. But my way will be shown to me, or word will come
+sending me back."
+
+Some sign from the lady of the fortress recalled Van Corlaer to his duty
+as a guest. The supper grew cold while he parleyed. So he turned quickly
+to take the chair she had set for him, and saw that Antonia was gone.
+
+"Madame Bronck will return," said Marie, pitying his chagrin, and
+searching her own mind for Antonia's excuse. "We brought a half-starved
+baby home from our last expedition, and it lies dead upstairs. Women
+have soft hearts, monsieur: they cannot see such sights unmoved. She
+hath lost command of herself to-night."
+
+Van Corlaer's face lightened with tenderness. Bachelor though he was, he
+had held infants in his hands for baptism, and not only the children of
+Fort Orange but dark broods of the Mohawks often rubbed about his knees.
+
+"You brought your men into the fort, Monsieur Corlaer?"
+
+"No, madame. I sent them back to camp by the falls. We are well
+provisioned. And there was no need for them to come within the walls."
+
+"If you lack anything I hope you will command it of us."
+
+"Madame, you are already too bounteous; and we lack nothing."
+
+"The Sieur de la Tour being away, the conduct and honor of this fort are
+left in my hands. And he has himself ever been friendly to the people of
+the colonies."
+
+"That is well known, madame."
+
+Soft waxlight, the ample shine of the fire, trained service, and housing
+from the chill spring night, abundant food and flask, all failed to
+bring up the spirits of Van Corlaer. Antonia did not return to the
+table. The servingmen went and came betwixt hall and cook-house. Every
+time one of them opened the door, the world of darkness peered in, and
+over the night quiet of the fort could be heard the tidal up-rush of the
+river.
+
+"The men can now bring our ship to anchor," observed Marie. Father
+Jogues and his donné, eating with the habitual self-denial of men who
+must inure themselves to hunger, still spoke with Van Corlaer about
+their mission. But during all his talk he furtively watched the
+stairway.
+
+The dwarf sat on her accustomed stool beside her lady, picking up bits
+from a well heaped silver platter on her knees; and she watched Van
+Corlaer's discomfiture when Lady Dorinda took him in hand and Antonia
+yet remained away.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+JONAS BRONCK'S HAND.
+
+
+The guests had deserted the hall fire and a sentinel was set for the
+night before Madame La Tour knocked at Antonia's door.
+
+Antonia was slow to open it. But she finally let Marie into her chamber,
+where the fire had died on the hearth, and retired again behind the
+screen to continue dabbing her face with water. The candle was also
+behind the screen, and it threw out Antonia's shadow, and showed her
+disordered flax-white hair flung free of its cap and falling to its
+length. Marie sat down in the little world of shadow outside the screen.
+The joists directly above Antonia flickered with the flickering light.
+One window high in the wall showed the misty darkness which lay upon
+Fundy Bay. The room was chilly.
+
+"Monsieur Corlaer is gone, Antonia," said Marie.
+
+Antonia's shadow leaped, magnifying the young Dutchwoman's start.
+
+"Madame, you have not sent him off on his journey in the night?"
+
+"I sent him not. I begged him to remain. But he had such cold welcome
+from his own countrywoman that he chose the woods rather than the
+hospitality of Fort St. John."
+
+Much as Antonia stirred and clinked flasks, her sobs grew audible behind
+the screen. She ran out with her arms extended and threw herself on the
+floor at Marie's knees, transformed by anguish. Marie in full compassion
+drew the girlish creature to her breast, repenting herself while Antonia
+wept and shook.
+
+"I was cruel to say Monsieur Corlaer is gone. He has only left the
+fortress to camp with his men at the falls. He will be here two more
+days, and to-morrow you must urge him to stay our guest."
+
+"Madame, I dare not see him at all!"
+
+"But why should you not see Monsieur Corlaer?"
+
+Antonia settled to the floor and rested her head and arms on her
+friend's lap.
+
+"For you love him."
+
+"O madame! I did not show that I loved him? No. It would be horrible for
+me to love him."
+
+"What has he done? And it is plain he has come to court you."
+
+"He has long courted me, madame."
+
+"And you met him as a stranger and fled from him as a wolf!--this
+Hollandais gentleman who hath saved our French people--even
+priests--from the savages!"
+
+"All New Amsterdam and Fort Orange hold him in esteem," said Antonia,
+betraying pride. "I have heard he can do more with the Iroquois tribes
+than any other man of the New World." She uselessly wiped her eyes. She
+was weak from long crying.
+
+"Then why do you run from him?"
+
+"Because he hath too witching a power on me, madame. I cannot spin or
+knit or sew when he is by; I must needs watch every motion of his if he
+once fastens my eyes."
+
+"I have noticed he draws one's heart," laughed Marie.
+
+"He does. It is like witchcraft. He sets me afloat so that I lose my
+feet and have scarce any will of my own. I never was so disturbed by my
+husband Jonas Bronck," complained Antonia.
+
+"Did you love your husband?" inquired Marie.
+
+"We always love our husbands, madame. Mynheer Bronck was very good to
+me."
+
+"You have never told me much of Monsieur Bronck, Antonia."
+
+"I don't like to speak of him now, madame. It makes me shiver."
+
+"You are not afraid of the dead?"
+
+"I was never afraid of him living. I regarded him as a father."
+
+"But one's husband is not to be regarded as a father."
+
+"He was old enough to be my father, madame. I was not more than sixteen,
+besides being an orphan, and Mynheer Bronck was above fifty, yet he
+married me, and became the best husband in the colony. He was far from
+putting me in such states as Mynheer Van Corlaer does."
+
+"The difference is that you love Monsieur Corlaer."
+
+"Do not speak that word, madame."
+
+"Would you have him marry another woman?"
+
+"Yes," spoke Antonia in a stoical voice, "if that pleased him best. I
+should then be driven to no more voyages. He followed me to New
+Amsterdam; and I ventured on a long journey to Boston, where I had
+kinspeople, as you know. But there I must have broken down, madame, if I
+had not met you. It was fortunate for me that the English captain
+brought you out of your course. For mynheer set out to follow me there.
+And now he has come across the wilderness even to this fort!"
+
+"Confess," said Marie, giving her a little shake, "how pleased you are
+with such a determined lover!"
+
+But instead of doing this, Antonia burst again into frenzied sobbing and
+hugged her comforter.
+
+"O madame, you are the only person I dare love in the world!"
+
+Marie smoothed the young widow's damp hair with the quieting stroke
+which calms children.
+
+"Let mother help thee," she said; and neither of them remembered that
+she was scarcely as old as Antonia. In love and motherhood, in military
+peril, and contact with riper civilizations, to say nothing of inherited
+experience, the lady of St. John had lived far beyond Antonia Bronck.
+
+"Your husband made you take an oath not to wed again,--is it so?"
+
+"No, madame, he never did."
+
+"Yet you told me he left you his money?"
+
+"Yes. He was very good to me. For I had neither father nor mother."
+
+"And he bound you by no promise?
+
+"None at all, madame."
+
+"What, then, can you find to break your heart upon in the suit of
+Monsieur Corlaer? You are free. Even as my lord--if I were dead--would
+be free to marry any one; not excepting D'Aulnay's widow."
+
+Marie smiled at that improbable union.
+
+"No, I do not feel free." Antonia shivered close to her friend's knees.
+"Madame, I cannot tell you. But I will show you the token."
+
+"Show me the token, therefore. And a sound token it must be, to hold you
+wedded to a dead man whom in life you regarded as a father."
+
+Antonia rose upon her feet, but stood dreading the task before her.
+
+"I have to look at it once every month," she explained, "and I have
+looked at it once this month already."
+
+The dim chill room with its one eye fixed on darkness was an eddy in
+which a single human mind resisted that century's current of
+superstition. Marie sat ready to judge and destroy whatever spell the
+cunning old Hollandais had left on a girl to whom he represented law and
+family.
+
+Antonia beckoned her behind the screen, and took from some ready
+hiding-place a small oak box studded with nails, which Marie had never
+before seen. How alien to the simple and open life of the Dutch widow
+was this secret coffer! Her face changed while she looked at it; grieved
+girlhood passed into sunken age. Her lips turned wax-white, and drooped
+at the corners. She set the box on a dressing-table beside the candle,
+unlocked it and turned back the lid. Marie was repelled by a faint odor
+aside from its breath of dead spices.
+
+Antonia unfolded a linen cloth and showed a pallid human hand, its stump
+concealed by a napkin. It was cunningly preserved, and shrunken only by
+the countless lines which denote approaching age. It was the right hand
+of a man who must have had imagination. The fingers were sensitively
+slim, with shapely blue nails, and without knobs or swollen joints. It
+was a crafty, firm-possessing hand, ready to spring from its nest to
+seize and eternally hold you.
+
+The lady of St. John had seen human fragments scattered by cannon, and
+sword and bullet had done their work before her sight. But a faintness
+beyond the touch of peril made her grasp the table and turn from that
+ghastly hand.
+
+"It cannot be, Antonia"--
+
+"Yes, it is Mynheer Bronck's hand," whispered Antonia, subduing herself
+to take admonition from the grim digits.
+
+"Lock it up; and come directly away from it. Come out of this room. You
+have opened a grave here."
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+The Mending.
+
+
+But Antonia delayed to set in order her hair and cap and all her
+methodical habits of life. When Jonas Bronck's hand was snugly locked in
+its case and no longer obliged her to look at it, she took a pensive
+pleasure in the relic, bred of usage to its company. She came out of her
+chamber erect and calm. Marie was at the stairs speaking to the soldier
+stationed in the hall below. He had just piled up his fire, and its
+homely splendor sent back to remoteness all human dreads. He hurried up
+the stairway to his lady.
+
+"Go knock at the door of the priest, Father Jogues, and demand his
+cassock," she said.
+
+The man halted, and asked,--
+
+"What shall I do with it?"
+
+"Bring it hither to me."
+
+"But if he refuses to have it brought?"
+
+"The good man will not refuse. Yet if he asks why," said Madame La Tour
+smiling, "tell him it is the custom of the house to take away at night
+the cassock of any priest who stays here."
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+The soldier kept to himself his opinion of meddling with black gowns,
+and after some parleying at the door of Father Jogues' apartment,
+received the garment and brought it to his lady.
+
+"We will take our needles, and sit by the hall fire," said Marie to
+Antonia. "Did you note the raggedness of Father Jogues' cassock? I am an
+enemy to papists, especially D'Aulnay de Charnisay; but who can harden
+her heart against a saint because he patters prayers on a rosary? Thou
+and I will mend his black gown. I cannot see even a transient member of
+my household uncomfortable."
+
+The soldier put two waxlights on the table by the hearth, and withdrew
+to the stairway. He was there to guard as prisoner the priest for whom
+his lady set herself to work. She drew her chair to Antonia's and they
+spread the cassock between them. It had been neatly beaten and picked
+clear of burrs, but the rents in it were astonishing. Even within
+sumptuous fireshine the black cloth taxed sight; and Marie paused
+sometimes to curtain her eyes with her hand, but Antonia worked on with
+Dutch steadiness. The touch of a needle within a woman's fingers cools
+all her fevers. She stitches herself fast to the race. There is safety
+and saneness in needlework.
+
+"This spot wants a patch," said Antonia.
+
+"Weave it together with stitches," said Marie. "Daughter of presumption!
+would you add to the gown of a Roman priest?"
+
+"Priest or dominie," commented Antonia, biting a fresh thread, "he would
+be none the worse for a stout piece of cloth to his garment."
+
+"But we have naught to match with it. I would like to set in a little
+heresy cut from one of the Sieur de la Tour's good Huguenot doublets."
+
+The girlish faces, bent opposite, grew placid with domestic interest.
+Marie's cheeks ripened by the fire, but the whiter Hollandaise warmed
+only through the lips. This hall's glow made more endurable the image of
+Jonas Bronck's hand. "When was it cut off, Antonia?" murmured Marie,
+stopping to thread a needle.
+
+The perceptible blight again fell over Antonia's face as she replied,--
+
+"After he had been one day dead."
+
+"Then he did not grimly lop it off himself?"
+
+"Oh, no," whispered Antonia with deep sighing. "Mynheer the doctor did
+that, on his oath to my husband. He was the most learned cunning man in
+medicine that ever came to our colony. He kept the hand a month in his
+furnace before it was ready to send to me."
+
+"Did Monsieur Bronck, before he died, tell you his intention to do
+this?" pressed Marie, feeling less interest in the Dutch embalmer's
+method than in the sinuous motive of a man who could leave such a
+bequest.
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+"I do marvel at such an act!" murmured the lady of St. John, challenging
+Jonas Bronck's loyal widow to take up his instant defense.
+
+"Madame, he was obliged to do it by a dream he had."
+
+"He dreamed that his hand would keep off intruders?" smiled Marie.
+
+"Yes," responded Antonia innocently, "and all manner of evil fortune. I
+have to look at it once a month as long as I live, and carry it with me
+everywhere. If it should be lost or destroyed trouble and ruin would
+fall not only on me but on every one who loved me."
+
+The woman of larger knowledge did not argue against this credulity.
+Antonia was of the provinces, bred out of their darkest hours of
+superstition and savage danger. But it was easy to see how Jonas
+Bronck's hand must hold his widow from second marriage. What lover could
+she ask to share her monthly gaze upon it, and thus half realize the
+continued fleshly existence of Jonas Bronck? The rite was in its nature
+a secret one. Shame, gratitude, the former usages of her life, and a
+thousand other influences, were yet in the grip of that rigid hand. And
+if she lost or destroyed it, nameless and weird calamity, foreseen by a
+dying man, must light upon the very lover who undertook to separate her
+from her ghastly company.
+
+"The crafty old Hollandais!" thought Marie. "He was cunning in his
+knowledge of Antonia. But he hath made up this fist at a younger
+Hollandais who will scarce stop for dead hands."
+
+The Dutch gentlewoman snuffed both waxlights. Her lips were drawn in
+grieved lines. Marie glanced up at one of the portraits on the wall, and
+said:--
+
+"The agonies which men inflict on the beings they love best, must work
+perpetual astonishment in heaven. Look at the Sieur Claude de la Tour, a
+noble of France who could stoop to become the first English knight of
+Acadia, forcing his own son to take up arms against him."
+
+The elder La Tour frowned and flickered in his frame.
+
+"Yet he had a gracious presence," said Antonia. "Lady Dorinda says he
+was the handsomest man at the English court."
+
+"I doubt it not; the La Tours are a beautiful race. And it was that very
+graciousness which made him a weak prisoner in the hands of the English.
+They married him to one of the queen's ladies, and granted him all
+Acadia, which he had only to demand from his son, if he would turn it
+over to England and declare himself an English subject I can yet see his
+ships as they rounded Cape Sable; and the face of my lord when he read
+his father's summons to surrender the claims of France. We were to be
+loaded with honors. France had driven us out on account of our faith;
+England opened her arms. We should be enriched, and live forever a happy
+and united family, sole lords of Acadia."
+
+Marie broke off another thread.
+
+"The king of France, who has outlawed my husband and delivered him to
+his enemy, should have seen him then, Antonia. Sieur Claude La Tour put
+both arms around him and pleaded. It was, 'My little Charles, do not
+disgrace me by refusal;' and 'My father, I love you, but here I
+represent the rights of France.' 'The king of France is no friend of
+ours,' says Sieur Claude. 'Whether he rewards or punishes me,' says
+Charles, 'this province belongs to my country, and I will hold it while
+I have life to defend it.' And he was obliged to turn his cannon against
+His own father; and the ships were disabled and driven off."
+
+"Was the old mynheer killed?"
+
+"His pride was killed. He could never hold up his head in England again,
+and he had betrayed France. My lord built him a house outside our fort,
+yet neither could he endure Acadia. He died in England. You know I
+brought his widow thence with me last year. She should have her dower of
+lands here, if we can hold them against D'Aulnay de Charnisay."
+
+The lady of the fort shook out Father Jogues' cassock and rose from the
+mending. Antonia picked up their tools and flicked bits of thread from
+her skirt.
+
+"I am glad it is done, madame, for you look heavy-eyed, as any one
+ought, after tossing two nights on Fundy Bay and sewing on a black gown
+until midnight cock-crow of the third."
+
+"I am not now fit to face a siege," owned Marie. "We must get to bed.
+Though first I crave one more look at the dead baby Zélie hath in
+charge. There is a soft weakness in me which mothers even the outcast
+young of my enemy."
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+A FRONTIER GRAVEYARD.
+
+
+The next morning was gray and transparent: a hemisphere of mist filled
+with light; a world of vapor palpitating with some indwelling spirit.
+That lonesome lap of country opposite Fort St. John could scarcely be
+defined. Scraps of its dawning spring color showed through the mobile
+winding and ascending veil. Trees rose out of the lowlands between the
+fort and the falls.
+
+Van Corlaer was in the gorge, watching that miracle worked every day in
+St. John River. The tide was racing inland. The steep rapids within
+their throat of rock were clear of fog. Foam is the flower of water; and
+white petal after white petal was swept under by the driving waves. As
+the tide rose the tumult of falls ceased. The channel filled. All rocks
+were drowned. For a brief time another ship could have passed up that
+natural lock, as La Tour's ship had passed on the cream-smooth current
+at flood tide the day before.
+
+Van Corlaer could not see its ragged sails around the breast of rock,
+but the hammering of its repairers had been in his ears since dawn; and
+through the subsiding wash of water he now heard men's voices.
+
+The Indians whose village he had joined were that morning breaking up
+camp to begin their spring pilgrimage down the coast along various
+fishing haunts; for agriculture was a thing unknown to these savages.
+They were a seafaring people in canoes. At that time even invading
+Europeans had gained little mastery of the soil. Camp and fortress were
+on the same side of the river. Lounging braves watched indifferently
+some figures wading fog from the fort, perhaps bringing them a farewell
+word, perhaps forbidding their departure. The Indian often humored his
+invader's feudal airs, but he never owned the mastery of any white man.
+Squaws took down cone-shaped tents, while their half-naked babies
+sprawled in play upon the ashes of last winter's fires. Van Corlaer's
+men sauntered through the vanishing town, trying at times to strike some
+spark of information from Dutch and Etchemin jargon.
+
+Near the river bank, between camp and fort, was an alluvial spot in
+which the shovel found no rock. A rough line of piled stones severed it
+from surrounding lands, and a few trees stood there, promising summer
+shade, though, darkly moist along every budded twig, they now swayed in
+tuneless nakedness. Here the dead of Fort St. John were buried; and
+those approaching figures entered a gap of the inclosure instead of
+going on to the camp. Three of La Tour's soldiers, with Father Jogues
+and his donné, had come to bury the outcast baby. One of the men was
+Zélie's husband, and she walked beside him. Marguerite lay sulking in
+the barracks. The lady had asked Father Jogues to consecrate with the
+rites of his church the burial of this little victim probably born into
+his faith. But he would have followed it in any case, with that instinct
+which drove him to baptize dying Indian children with rain-drops and
+attempt to pluck converts from the tortures of the stake.
+
+"Has this child been baptized?" he inquired of Zélie on the path down
+from the fort.
+
+She answered, shedding tears of resentment against Marguerite, and with
+fervor she could not restrain,--
+
+"I'll warrant me it never had so much as a drop of water on its head,
+and but little to its body, before my lady took it."
+
+"But hath it not believing parents?"
+
+"Our Swiss says," stated Zélie, with a respectful heretic's sparing of
+this priest, "that it is the child of D'Aulnay de Charnisay." And she
+added no comment. The soldiers set their spades to last year's sod, cut
+an oblong wound, and soon had the earth heaped out and a grave made.
+Father Jogues, perplexed, and heavy of heart for the sins of his
+enlightened as well as his savage children, concluded to consecrate the
+baby's bed. The Huguenot soldiers stood sullenly by while a Romish
+service went on. They or their fathers had been driven out of France by
+the bitterness of that very religion which Father Jogues expressed in
+sweetness. They had not the broad sympathy of their lady, who could
+excuse and even stoop to mend a priest's cassock; and they made their
+pause as brief as possible.
+
+While the spat and clink of spades built up one child's hillock, Zélie
+was on her knees beside another some distance from it, scraping away
+dead leaves. Her lady had bid her look how this grave fared, and she
+noticed fondly that fern was beginning to curl above the buried lad's
+head. The heir of the La Tours lay with his feet toward the outcast of
+the Charnisays, but this was a chance arrangement. Soldiers and
+servants of the house were scattered about the frontier burial ground,
+and Zélie noted to report to her lady that winter had partly effaced and
+driven below the surface some recent graves. Instead of being marked by
+a cross, each earthen door had a narrow frame of river stones built
+around it.
+
+Van Corlaer left the drowned falls and passed his own tents, and waited
+outside the knee-high inclosure for Father Jogues. The missionary, in
+his usual halo of prayer, dwelt upon the open breviary. Many a tree
+along the Mohawk valley yet bore the name of Jesu which he had carved in
+its bark, as well as rude crosses. Such marks helped him to turn the
+woods into one wide oratory. But unconverted savages, tearing with their
+teeth the hands lifted up in supplication for them, had scarcely taxed
+his heart as heretics and sinful believers taxed it now. The soldiers,
+having finished, took up their tools, and Van Corlaer joined Father
+Jogues as the party came out of the cemetery.
+
+The day was brightening. Some sea-birds were spreading their white
+breasts and wing-linings like flashes of silver against shifting vapor.
+The party descended to a wrinkle in the land which would be dry at
+ebb-tide. Now it held a stream flowing inland upon grass--unshriveled
+long grass bowed flat and sleeked to this daily service. It gave
+beholders a delicious sensation to see the clean water rushing up so
+verdant a course. A log which would seem a misplaced and useless
+foot-bridge when the tide was out, was crossed by one after another; and
+as Van Corlaer fell back to step beside Father Jogues, he said:--
+
+"The Abenakis take to the woods and desert their fishing, and these
+Etchemins leave the woods and take to the coast. You never know where to
+have your savage. Did you note that the village was moving?"
+
+"Yes, I saw that, Monsieur Corlaer; and I must now take leave of the
+lady of the fort and join myself to them."
+
+"If you do you will give deep offense to La Tour," said the Dutchman,
+pushing back some strands of light hair which had fallen over his
+forehead, and turning his great near-sighted eyes on his friend. "These
+Indians are called Protestant. They are in La Tour's grant. Thou knowest
+that he and D'Aulnay de Charnisay have enough to quarrel about without
+drawing churchmen into their broil."
+
+Father Jogues trod on gently. He knew he could not travel with any
+benighted soul and not try to convert it. These poor Etchemins appealed
+to his conscience; but so did the gracious lady of the fort.
+
+"If I could mend the rents in her faith," he sighed, "as she hath mended
+the rents in my cassock!"
+
+Two of the soldiers turned aside with their spades to a slope behind the
+fortress, where there was a stable for the ponies and horned cattle, and
+where last year's garden beds lay blackened under last year's refuse
+growth. Having planted the immortal seed, their next duty was to
+prepare for the trivial resurrections of the summer. Frenchmen love
+green messes in their soup. The garden might be trampled by besiegers,
+but there were other chances that it would yield something. Zélie's
+husband climbed the height to escort the priest and report to his lady,
+but he had his wife to chatter beside him. Father Jogues' donné walked
+behind Van Corlaer, and he alone overheard the Dutchman's talk.
+
+"This lady of Fort St. John, Father Jogues, so housed, and so ground
+between the millstones of La Tour and D'Aulnay--she hath wrought up my
+mind until I could not forbear this journey. It is well known through
+the colonies that La Tour can no longer get help, and is outlawed by his
+king. This fortress will be sacked. La Tour would best stay at home to
+defend his own. But what can any other man do? I am here to defend my
+own, and I will take it and defend it."
+
+Van Corlaer looked up at the walls, and his chest swelled with a large
+breath of regret.
+
+"God He knoweth why so sweet a lady is set here to bear the brunts of a
+frontier fortress, where no man can aid her without espousing her
+husband's quarrel!--while hundreds of evil women degrade the courts of
+Europe. But I can only do mine errand and go. And you will best mend
+your own expedition at this time by a new start from Montreal, Father
+Jogues."
+
+The priest turned around on the ascent and looked toward the vanishing
+Indian camp. He was examining as self-indulgence his strong and
+gentlemanly desire not to involve Madame La Tour in further troubles by
+proselyting her people.
+
+"Whatever way is pointed out to me, Monsieur Corlaer," he answered,
+"that way I must take. For the mending of an expedition rests not in the
+hands of the poor instrument that attempts it."
+
+Their soldier signaled for the gates to be opened, and they entered the
+fort. Marie was on her morning round of inspection. She had just given
+back to a guard the key of the powder magazine. Well, storehouse,
+fuel-house, barracks, were in military readiness. But refuse stuff had
+been thrown in spots which her people were now severely cleaning. She
+greeted her returning guests, and heard the report of Zélie's husband. A
+lace mantle was drawn over her head and fastened under the chin,
+throwing out from its blackness the warm brown beauty of her face.
+
+"So our Indians are leaving the falls already?" she repeated, fixing
+Zélie's husband with a serious eye.
+
+"Yes, madame," witnessed Zélie. "I myself saw women packing tents."
+
+"Have they heard any rumor which scared them off early,--our good lazy
+Etchemins, who hate fighting?"
+
+"No, madame," Van Corlaer answered, being the only person who came
+directly from the camp, "I think not, though their language is not clear
+to me like our western tongues. It is simply an early spring, calling
+them out."
+
+"They have always waited until Pâques week heretofore," she remembered.
+But the wandering forth of an irresponsible village had little to do
+with the state of her fort. She was going upon the walls to look at the
+cannon, and asked her guests to go with her.
+
+The priest and his donné and Van Corlaer ascended a ladder, and Madame
+La Tour followed.
+
+"I do not often climb like a sailor," she said, when Van Corlaer gave
+her his hand at the top. "There is a flight of steps from mine own
+chamber to the level of the walls. And here Madame Bronck and I have
+taken the air on winter days when we felt sure of its not blowing us
+away. But you need not look sad over our pleasures, monsieur. We have
+had many a sally out of this fort, and monsieur the priest will tell you
+there is great freedom on snowshoes."
+
+"Madame Bronck has allowed herself little freedom since I came to Fort
+St. John," observed Van Corlaer.
+
+They all walked the walls from bastion to bastion, and Marie examined
+the guns, and spoke with her soldiers. On the way back Father Jogues and
+Lalande paused to watch the Etchemins trail away, and to commune on what
+their duty directed them to do. Marie walked on with Van Corlaer toward
+the towered bastion, talking quickly, and ungloving her right hand to
+help his imagination with it. A bar of sunlight rested with a long slant
+through vapor on the fortress. Far blue distances were opened on the
+bay. The rippling full river had already begun to subside and sink line
+by line from its island.
+
+Van Corlaer gave no attention to the beautiful world. He listened to
+Madame La Tour with a broadening humorous face and the invincible port
+of a man who knows nothing of defeat. The sentinel trod back and forth
+without disturbing this intent conference, but other feet came rushing
+up the stone steps which let from Marie's room to the level of the wall.
+
+"Madame--madame!" exclaimed Antonia Bronck; but her flaxen head was
+arrested in ascent beside Van Corlaer's feet, and her distressed eyes
+met in his a whimsical look which stung her through with suspicion and
+resentment.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+VAN CORLAER.
+
+
+"What is it, Antonia?" demanded Marie.
+
+"Madame, it is nothing."
+
+Antonia owned her suitor's baring of his head, and turned upon the
+stairs.
+
+"But some alarm drove you out."
+
+Marie leaned over the cell inclosing the stone steps. It was not easy to
+judge from Antonia's erect bearing what had so startled her. Her friend
+followed her to the door below, and the voices of the two women hummed
+indistinctly in that vault-like hollow.
+
+"You have told him," accused Antonia directly. "He is laughing about
+Mynheer Bronck's hand!"
+
+"He does take a cheerful view of the matter," conceded the lady of the
+fort. Antonia looked at her with all the asperity which could be
+expressed in a fair Dutch face.
+
+"As long as I kept my trouble to myself I could bear it. But I show it
+to another, and the worst befalls me."
+
+"Is that hand lost, Antonia?"
+
+"I cannot find it, or even the box which held it."
+
+"Never accuse me with your eye," said Marie with droll pathos. "If it
+were lost or destroyed by accident, I could bear without a groan to see
+you so bereaved. But the slightest thing shall not be filched in Fort
+St. John. When did you first miss it?"
+
+"A half hour since. I left the box on my table last night instead of
+replacing it in my chest;--being so disturbed."
+
+"Every room shall be searched," said Marie. "Where is Le Rossignol?"
+
+"She went after breakfast to call her swan in the fort."
+
+"I saw her not. And I have neglected to send her to the turret for her
+punishment. That little creature has a magpie's fondness for plunder.
+Perhaps she has carried off your box. I will send for her."
+
+Marie left the room. Antonia lingered to glance through a small square
+pane in the door--an eye which the commandants of the fort kept on their
+battlements. It had an inner tapestry, but this remained as Marie had
+pushed it aside that morning to take her early look at the walls. Van
+Corlaer was waiting on the steps, and as he detected Antonia in the
+guilty act of peeping at him, his compelling voice reached her in Dutch.
+She returned into the small stone cell formed by the stairs, and closed
+the door, submitting defiantly to the interview.
+
+"Will you sit here?" suggested Van Corlaer, taking off his cloak and
+making for her a cushion upon the stone. Antonia reflected that he would
+be chilly and therefore hold brief talk, so she made no objection, and
+sat down on one end of the step while he sat down on the other. They
+spoke Dutch: with their formal French fell away the formal phases of
+this meeting in Acadia. The sentinel's walk moved almost overhead, and
+died away along the wall and returned again, but noises within the fort
+scarcely intruded to their rocky cell. They did not hear even the voices
+of Lalande and Father Jogues descending the ladder.
+
+"We have never had any satisfactory talk together, Antonia," began Van
+Corlaer.
+
+"No, mynheer," breathed the girlish relict of Bronck, feeling her heart
+labor as she faced his eyes.
+
+"It is hard for a man to speak his mind to you."
+
+"It hath seemed easy enough for Mynheer Van Corlaer, seeing how many
+times he hath done so," observed Antonia, drawing her mufflings around
+her neck.
+
+"No. I speak always with such folly that you will not hear me. It is not
+so when I talk among men or work on the minds of savages. Let us now
+begin reasonably. I do believe you like me, Antonia."
+
+"A most reasonable beginning," noted Antonia, biting her lips.
+
+"Now I am a man in the stress and fury of mid-life, hard to turn from my
+purpose, and you well know my purpose. Your denials and puttings-off and
+flights have pleased me. But your own safety may waste no more good time
+in further play. I have not come into Acadia to tinkle a song under your
+window, but to wed you and carry you back to Fort Orange with me."
+
+Antonia stirred, to hide her trembling.
+
+"Are you cold?" inquired Van Corlaer.
+
+"No, mynheer."
+
+"If the air chills you I will warm your hands in mine."
+
+"My hands are well muffled, mynheer."
+
+He adjusted his back against the wall and again opened the conversation.
+
+"I brought a young dominie with me. He wished to see Montreal. And I
+took care to have with him such papers as might be necessary to the
+marriage."
+
+"He had best get my leave," observed Madame Bronck.
+
+"That is no part of his duty. But set your mind at rest; he is a young
+dominie of credit. When I was in Boston I saw a rich sedan chair made
+for the viceroy of Mexico, but brought to the colonies for sale. It put
+a thought in my head, and I set skilled fellows to work, and they made
+and we have carried through the woods the smallest, most
+cunning-fashioned sedan chair that woman ever stepped into. I brought it
+for the comfortable journeying of Madame Van Corlaer."
+
+"That unknown lady will have much satisfaction in it," murmured Antonia.
+
+"I hope so. And be better known than she was as Jonas Bronck's wife."
+
+She colored, but hid a smile within her muffling. Her good-humored
+suitor leaned toward her, resting his arms upon his knees.
+
+"Touching a matter which has never been mentioned between us;--was the
+curing of Bronck's hand well approved by you?"
+
+"Mynheer, I am angry at Madame La Tour. Or did he," gasped Antonia, not
+daring to accuse by name the colonial doctor who had managed her dark
+secret, "did he show that to you?"
+
+"Would the boldest chemist out of Amsterdam cut off and salt the member
+of any honest burgher without leave of the patroon?" suggested Van
+Corlaer. "Besides, my skill was needed, for I was once learned in
+chemistry."
+
+It was so surprising to see this man over-ride her terror that Antonia
+stared at him.
+
+"Mynheer, had you no dread of the sight?"
+
+"No; and had I known you would dread it the hand had spoiled in the
+curing. I thought less of Jonas Bronck, that he could bequeath a morsel
+of himself like dried venison."
+
+"Mynheer Bronck was a very good man," asserted Antonia severely.
+
+"But thou knowest in thy heart that I am a better one," laughed Van
+Corlaer.
+
+"He was the best of husbands," she insisted, trembling with a woman's
+anxiety to be loyal to affection which she has not too well rewarded.
+"It was on my account that he had his hand cut off."
+
+"I will outdo Bronck," determined Van Corlaer. "I will have myself
+skinned at my death and spread out as a rug to your feet. So good a
+housekeeper as Antonia will beat my pelt full often, and so be obliged
+to think on me."
+
+Afloat in his large personality as she always was in his presence, she
+yet tried to resist him.
+
+"The relic that you joke about, Mynheer Van Corlaer, I have done worse
+with; I have lost it."
+
+"Bronck's hand?"
+
+"Yes. It hath been stolen."
+
+"Why, I commend the taste of the thief!"
+
+"And misfortune is sure to follow."
+
+"Well, let misfortune and the hand go together."
+
+"It was not so said." She looked furtively at Bronck's powerful rival,
+loath to reveal to him the sick old man's prophecies.
+
+"I have heard of the hearts of heroes being sealed in coffers and
+treasured in the cities from which they sprung," said Van Corlaer,
+taking his hat from the step and holding it to shield his eyes from
+mounting light. "But Jonas was no hero. And I have heard of papists
+venerating little pieces of saints' bones. Father Jogues might do so,
+and I could behold him without smiling. But a Protestant woman should
+have no superstition for relics."
+
+"What I cannot help dreading," confessed Antonia, moving her hands
+nervously in their wrapping, "is what may follow this loss."
+
+"Why, let the hand go! What should follow its loss?"
+
+"Some trouble might befall the people who are kindest to me."
+
+"Because Bronck's hand has been mislaid?" inquired Van Corlaer with
+shrewd light in his eyes.
+
+"Yes, mynheer," hesitated Antonia. He burst into laughter and Antonia
+looked at him as if he had spoken against religion.
+
+She sighed.
+
+"It was my duty to open the box once every month."
+
+Van Corlaer threw his hat down again on the step above.
+
+"Are you cold, mynheer?" inquired Antonia considerately.
+
+"No. I am fired like a man in mid-battle. Will nothing move you to show
+me a little love, madame? Why, look you, there were French women among
+captives ransomed from the Mohawks who shed tears on these hands of
+mine. Strangers and alien people have some movement of feeling, but you
+have none."
+
+"Mynheer," pleaded Antonia, goaded to inconsistent and trembling
+asperity, "you make my case very hard. I could not tell you why I dare
+not wed again, but since you know, why do you cruelly blame me? A woman
+does not weep the night away without some movement of feeling. Yes,
+mynheer, you have taunted me, and I will tell you the worst. I have
+thought of you more than of any other person in the world, and felt such
+satisfaction in your presence that I could hardly forego it. Yet holding
+me thus bound to you, you are by no means satisfied," sobbed Antonia.
+
+Van Corlaer glowed over her a moment with some smiling compunction, and
+irresistibly took her in his arms. From the instant that Antonia found
+herself there unstartled, her point of view was changed. She looked at
+her limitations no longer alone, but through Van Corlaer's eyes, and saw
+them vanishing. The sentinel, glancing down from time to time with a
+furtive cast of his eye, saw Antonia nodding or shaking her flaxen head
+in complete unison with Van Corlaer's nods and negations, and caught the
+sweet monotone of her voice repeating over and over:--
+
+"Yes, mynheer. Yes, mynheer."
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+THE TURRET.
+
+
+While Antonia continued her conference on the stone steps leading to the
+wall, the dwarf was mounting a flight which led to the turret. Klussman
+walked ahead, carrying her instrument and her ration for the day. There
+was not a loophole to throw glimmers upon the blackness. The ascent
+wound about as if carved through the heart of rock, and the tall Swiss
+stooped to its slope. Such a mountain of unseen terraces made Le
+Rossignol pant. She lifted herself from step to step, growing dizzy with
+the turns and holding to the wall.
+
+"Wait for me," she called up the gloom, and shook her fist at the unseen
+soldier because he gave her no reply. Klussman stepped out on the turret
+floor and set down his load. Stretching himself from the cramp of the
+stairway, he stood looking over bay and forest and coast. The
+battlemented wall was quite as high as his shoulder. One small cannon,
+brought up with enormous labor, was here trained through an embrasure to
+command the mouth of the river.
+
+Le Rossignol emerged into the unroofed light and the sea air like a
+potentate, dragging a warm furred robe. She had fastened great hoops of
+gold in her ears, and they gave her peaked face a barbaric look. It was
+her policy to go in state to punishment. The little sovereign stalked
+with long steps and threw out her arm in command.
+
+"Monsieur the Swiss, stoop over and give me thy back until I mount the
+battlement."
+
+Klussman, full of his own bitter and confused thinking, looked blankly
+down at her heated countenance.
+
+"Give me thy back!" sang the dwarf in the melodious scream which anger
+never made harsh in her.
+
+"Faith, yes, and my entire carcass," muttered the Swiss. "I care not
+what becomes of me now."
+
+"Madame Marie sent you to escort me to this turret. You have the honor
+because you are an officer. Now do your duty as lieutenant of this
+fortress, and make me a comfortable prisoner."
+
+Klussman set his hands upon his sides and smiled down upon his prisoner.
+
+"What is your will?"
+
+"Twice have I told you to stoop and give me your back, that I may mount
+from the cannon to the battlements. Am I to be shut up here without an
+outlook?"
+
+"May I be hanged if I do that," exclaimed Klussman. "Make a footstool of
+myself for a spoiled puppet like thee?"
+
+Le Rossignol ran towards him and kicked his boots with the heel of her
+moccasin. The Swiss, remonstrating and laughing, moved back before her.
+
+"Have some care--thou wilt break a deer-hoof on my stout leather. And
+why mount the battlements? A fall from this turret edge would spread
+thee out like a raindrop. Though the fewer women there are in the world
+the better," added Klussman bitterly.
+
+"Presume not to call me a woman!"
+
+"Why, what art thou?"
+
+"I am the nightingale."
+
+"By thy red head thou art the woodpecker. Here is my back, clatterbill.
+Why should I not crawl the ground to be walked over? I have been worse
+used than that."
+
+He grinned fiercely as he bent down with his hands upon his knees. Le
+Rossignol mounted the cannon, and with a couple of light bounds, making
+him a perch midway, reached an embrasure and sat arranging her robes.
+
+"Now you may hand me my clavier," she said, "and then you shall have my
+thanks and my pardon."
+
+The Swiss handed her the instrument. His contempt was ruder than he
+knew. Le Rossignol pulled her gull-skin cap well down upon her ears,
+for though the day was now bright overhead, a raw wind came across the
+bay. She leaned over and looked down into the fortress to call her swan.
+The cook was drawing water from the well, and that soft sad note lifted
+his eyes to the turret. Le Rossignol squinted at him, and the man went
+into the barracks and told his wife that he felt shooting pains in his
+limbs that instant.
+
+"Come hither, gentle Swiss," said the dwarf striking the plectrum into
+her mandolin strings, "and I will reward thee for thy back and all thy
+courtly services."
+
+Klussman stepped to the wall and looked with her into the fort.
+
+"Take that sweet sight for my thanks," said Le Rossignol, pointing to
+Marguerite below. The miserable girl had come out of the barracks and
+was sitting in the sun beside the oven. She rested her head against it
+and met the sky light with half-shut eyes, lovely in silken hair and
+pallid flesh through all her sullenness and dejection. As Klussman saw
+her he uttered an oath under his breath, which the dwarf's hand on the
+mandolin echoed with a bang. He turned his back on the sight and betook
+himself to the stairway, the dwarf's laughter following him. She felt
+high in the world and played with a good spirit. The sentinel below
+heard her, but he took care to keep a steady and level eye. When the
+swan rose past him, spreading its wings almost against his face, he
+prudently trod the wall without turning his head.
+
+"Hé, Shubenacadie," said the human morsel to her familiar as the wide
+wings composed themselves beside her. "We had scarce said good-morning
+when I must be haled before my lady for that box of the Hollandaise."
+The swan was a huge white creature of his kind, with fiery eyes. There
+was satin texture delightful to the touch in the firm and glistening
+plumage of his swelling breast. Le Rossignol smoothed it.
+
+"They have few trinkets in that barbarous Fort Orange in the west. I
+detest that Hollandaise more since she carries about such a casket. Let
+us be cozy. Kiss me, Shubenacadie."
+
+The swan's attachment and obedience to her were struggling against some
+swan-like instinct which made him rear a lofty head and twist it
+riverward.
+
+"Kiss me, I say! Shall I have to beat thee over the head with my clavier
+to teach thee manners?"
+
+Shubenacadie darted his snake neck downward and touched bills with her.
+She patted his coral nostrils.
+
+"Not yet. Before you take to the water we must have some talk. I am shut
+up here to stay this whole day. And for what? Not because of the casket,
+for they know not what I have done with it. But because thou and I
+sometimes go out without the password. Stick out thy toes and let me
+polish them."
+
+Shubenacadie resisted this mandate, and his autocrat promptly dragged
+one foot from under him, causing him to topple on the parapet. He
+hissed at her. Le Rossignol looked up at the threatening flat head and
+hissed back.
+
+"You are as bad as that Swiss," she laughed. "I will put a yoke on you.
+I will tie you to the settle in the hall. Why have all man creatures
+such tempers? Thank heaven I was not born to hose and doublet. Never did
+I see a mild man in my life except Edelwald. As for this Swiss, I am
+done with him. He hath a wife, Shubenacadie. She sits down there by the
+oven now; a miserable thing turned off by D'Aulnay de Charnisay. Have I
+told thee the Swiss had a soul above a common soldier and I picked him
+out to pay court to me? Beat me for it. Pull the red hair he condemned.
+I would have had him sighing for me that I might pity him. The populace
+is beneath us, but we must amuse ourselves. Beat me, I demand. Punish me
+well for abasing my eyes to that Swiss."
+
+Shubenacadie understood the challenge and the tone. He was used to
+rendering such service when his mistress repented of her sins. Yet he
+gave his tail feathers a slight flirt and quavered some guttural to
+sustain his part in the conversation, and to beg that he might be
+excused from holding the sword this time. As she continued to prod him,
+however, he struck her with his beak. Le Rossignol was human in never
+finding herself able to bear the punishment she courted. She flew at the
+swan, he spread his wings for ardent warfare, and they both dropped to
+the stone floor in a whirlwind of mandolin, arms, and feathers. The
+dwarf kept her hold on him until he cowered and lay with his neck along
+the pavement.
+
+"Thou art a Turk, a rascal, a horned beast!" panted Le Rossignol.
+Shubenacadie quavered plaintively, and all her wrath was gone. She
+spread out one of his wings and smoothed the plumes. She nursed his head
+in her lap and sung to him. Two of his feathers, plucked out in the
+contest, she put in her bosom. He flirted his tail and gathered himself
+again to his feet, and she broke her loaf and fed him and poured water
+into her palm for his bill.
+
+Le Rossignol esteemed the military dignity given to her imprisonment,
+and she was a hardy midget who could bear untold exposure when wandering
+at her own will. She therefore received with disgust her lady's summons
+to come down long before the day was spent, the messenger being only
+Zélie.
+
+"Ah--h, mademoiselle," warned the maid, stumping ponderously out of the
+stone stairway, "are you about to mount that swan again?"
+
+"Who has ever seen me mount him?"
+
+"I would be sworn there are a dozen men in the fort that have."
+
+"But you never have."
+
+"No. I have been absent with my lady."
+
+"Well, you shall see me now."
+
+The dwarf flung herself on Shubenacadie's back, and thrust her feet down
+under his wings. He began to rise, and expanded, stretching his neck
+forward, and Zélie uttered a yell of terror. The weird little woman
+leaped off and turned her laughing beak toward the terrified maid. Her
+ear-hoops swung as she rolled her mocking head.
+
+"Oh, if it frightens you I will not ride to-day," she said. Shubenacadie
+sailed across the battlements, and though they could no longer see him
+they knew he had taken to the river.
+
+"If I tell my lady this," shivered Zélie, "she will never let you out of
+the turret. And she but this moment sent me to call you down out of the
+chill east wind."
+
+"Tell Madame Marie," urged the dwarf insolently.
+
+"And do you ride that way over bush and brier, through mirk and
+daylight?"
+
+"I was at Penobscot this week," answered Le Rossignol.
+
+Zélie gazed with a bristling of even the hairs upon her lip.
+
+"It goeth past belief," she observed, setting her hands upon her sides.
+"And the swan, what else can he do besides carry thee like a dragon?"
+
+"He sings to me," boldly asserted Le Rossignol. "And many a good bit of
+advice have I taken from his bill."
+
+"It would be well if he turned his mind more to thinking and less to
+roving," respectfully hinted Zélie. "I will go before you downstairs and
+leave the key in the turret door," she suggested.
+
+"Take up these things and go when you please, and mind that I do not
+hear my clavier striking the wall."
+
+"Have you not felt the wind in this open donjon?"
+
+"The wind and I take no note of each other," answered the dwarf, lifting
+her chilled nose skyward. "But the cold water and bread have worked me
+most discomfort in this imprisonment. Go down and tell the cook for me
+that he is to make a hot bowl of the broth I like."
+
+"He will do it," said Zélie.
+
+"Yes, he will do it," said the dwarf, "and the sooner he does it the
+better."
+
+"Will you eat it in the hall?"
+
+"I will eat it wherever Madame Marie is."
+
+"But that you cannot do. There is great business going forward and she
+is shut with Madame Bronck in our other lady's room."
+
+"I like it when you presume to know better than I do what is going
+forward in this fort!" exclaimed the dwarf jealously, a flush mounting
+her slender cheeks.
+
+"I should best know what has happened since you left the hall,"
+contended Zélie.
+
+"Do you think so, poor heavy-foot? You can only hearken to what is
+whispered past your ear; but I can sit here on the battlements and read
+all the secrets below me."
+
+"Can you, Mademoiselle Nightingale? For instance, where is Madame
+Bronck's box?"
+
+The maid drew a deep breath at her own daring.
+
+"It is not about Madame Bronck's box that they confer. It is about the
+marriage of the Hollandaise," answered Le Rossignol with a bold guess.
+"I could have told you that when you entered the turret."
+
+Zélie experienced a chill through her flesh which was not caused by the
+damp breath of Fundy Bay.
+
+"How doth she find out things done behind her back--this clever little
+witch? And perhaps you will name the bridegroom, mademoiselle?"
+
+"Who could that be except the big Hollandais who hath come out of the
+west after her? Could she marry a priest or a common soldier?"
+
+"That is true," admitted Zélie, feeling her superstition allayed.
+
+"There must be as few women as trinkets in that wilderness Fort of
+Orange from which he came," added the dwarf.
+
+"Why?" inquired Zélie, wrinkling her nose and squinting in the sunlight.
+
+But Le Rossignol took no further trouble than to give her a look of
+contempt, and lifted the furred garment to descend the stairs.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+AN ACADIAN POET.
+
+
+"The woman who dispenses with any dignity which should attend her
+marriage, doth cheapen herself to her husband," said Lady Dorinda to
+Antonia Bronck, leaning back in the easiest chair of the fortress. It
+was large and stiff, but filled with cushions. Lady Dorinda's chamber
+was the most comfortable one in Fort St. John. It was over the front of
+the great hall, and was intended for a drawing-room, being spacious,
+well warmed by a fireplace and lighted by windows looking into the fort.
+A stately curtained bed, a toilet table with swinging mirror, bearing
+many of the ornaments and beauty-helpers of an elderly belle, and
+countless accumulations which spoke her former state in the world, made
+this an English bower in a French fort.
+
+Her dull yellow hair was coifed in the fashion of the early Stuarts. She
+held a hand-screen betwixt her face and the fire, but the flush which
+touched its usual sallowness was not caused by heat. A wedding was a
+diversion of her exile which Lady Dorinda had never hoped for. There had
+been some mating in the fort below among soldiers and peasant women, to
+which she did not lower her thoughts. The noise of resulting
+merrymakings sufficiently sought out and annoyed her ear. But the
+wedding of the guest to a man of consequence in the Dutch colony was
+something to which she might unbend herself.
+
+Antonia had been brought against her will to consult with this faded
+authority by Marie, who sat by, supporting her through the ordeal. There
+was never any familiar chat between the lady of the fort and the widow
+of Claude La Tour. Neither forgot their first meeting behind cannon, and
+the tragedy of a divided house. Lady Dorinda lived in Acadia because she
+could not well live elsewhere. And she secretly nursed a hope that in
+her day the province would fall into English hands, her knight be
+vindicated, and his son obliged to submit to a power he had defied to
+the extremity of warring with a father.
+
+If the two women had no love for each other they at least stinted no
+ceremony. Marie presented the smallest surface of herself to her
+mother-in-law. It is true they had been of the same household only a few
+months; but months and years are the same betwixt us and the people who
+solve not for us this riddle of ourselves. Antonia thought little of
+Lady Dorinda's opinions, but her saying about the dignity of marriage
+rites had the force of unexpected truth. Arendt Van Corlaer had used up
+his patience in courtship. He was now bent on wedding Antonia and
+setting out to Montreal without the loss of another day. His route was
+planned up St. John River and across-country to the St. Lawrence.
+
+"I would therefore give all possible state to this occasion," added
+Lady Dorinda. "Did you not tell me this Sir Van Corlaer is an officer?"
+
+"He is the real patroon of Fort Orange, my lady."
+
+"He should then have military honors paid him on his marriage," observed
+Lady Dorinda, to whom patroon suggested the barbarous but splendid
+vision of a western pasha. "Salutes should be fired and drums sounded.
+In thus recommending I hope I have not overstepped my authority, Madame
+La Tour?"
+
+"Certainly not, your ladyship," murmured Marie.
+
+"The marriage ceremony hath length and solemnity, but I would have it
+longer, and more solemn. A woman in giving herself away should greatly
+impress a man with the charge he hath undertaken. There be not many
+bridegrooms like Sir Claude de la Tour, who fasted an entire day before
+his marriage with me. The ceremonial of that marriage hath scarce been
+forgotten at court to this hour."
+
+Lady Dorinda folded her hands and closed her eyes to sigh. Her voice had
+rolled the last words in her throat. At such moments she looked very
+superior. Her double chins and dull light eyes held great reserves of
+self-respect. A small box of aromatic seeds lay in her lap, and as her
+hands encountered it she was reminded to put a seed in her mouth and
+find pensive comfort in chewing it.
+
+"Edelwald should be here to give the proper grace to this event," added
+Lady Dorinda.
+
+"I thought of him," said Marie. "Edelwald has so much the nature of a
+troubadour."
+
+"The studies which adorn a man were well thought of when I was at
+court," said Lady Dorinda. "Edelwald is really thrown away upon this
+wilderness."
+
+Antonia was too intent on Van Corlaer and his fell determination to turn
+her mind upon Edelwald. She had, indeed, seen very little of La Tour's
+second in command, for he had been away with La Tour on expeditions
+much of the time she had spent in Acadia. Edelwald was the only man of
+the fortress called by his baptismal name, yet it was spoken with
+respect and deference like a title. He was of the family of De Born. In
+an age when religion made political ties stronger than the ties of
+nature, the La Tours and De Borns had fought side by side through
+Huguenot wars. When a later generation of La Tours were struggling for
+foothold in the New World, it was not strange that a son of the De
+Borns, full of songcraft and spirit inherited from some troubadour
+soldier of the twelfth century, should turn his face to the same land.
+From his mother Edelwald took Norman and Saxon strains of blood. He had
+left France the previous year and made his voyage in the same ship with
+Madame La Tour and her mother-in-law, and he was now La Tour's trusted
+officer.
+
+Edelwald could take up any stringed instrument, strike melody out of it
+and sing songs he had himself made. But such pastimes were brief in
+Acadia. There was other business on the frontier; sailing, hunting,
+fighting, persuading or defying men, exploring unyielded depths of
+wilderness. The joyous science had long fallen out of practice. But
+while the grim and bloody records of our early colonies were being made,
+here was an unrecorded poet in Acadia. La Tour held this gift of
+Edelwald's in light esteem. He was a man so full of action and of
+schemes for establishing power that he touched only the martial side of
+the young man's nature, though in that contact was strong comradeship.
+Every inmate of the fortress liked Edelwald. He mediated between
+commandant and men, and jealousies and bickerings disappeared before
+him.
+
+"It would be better," murmured Antonia, breaking the stately silence by
+Lady Dorinda's fire, "if Mynheer Van Corlaer journeyed on to Montreal
+and returned here before any marriage takes place."
+
+"Think of the labor you will thereby put upon him," exclaimed Marie. "I
+speak for Monsieur Corlaer and not for myself," she added; "for by that
+delay I should happily keep you until summer. Besides, the priest we
+have here with us himself admits that the town of Montreal is little to
+look upon. Ville-Marie though it be named by the papists, what is it but
+a cluster of huts in the wilderness?"
+
+"I was six months preparing to be wedded to Mynheer Bronck," remembered
+Antonia.
+
+"And will Monsieur Corlaer return here from Montreal?"
+
+"No, madame. He will carry me with him."
+
+"I like him better for it," said Marie smiling, "though it pleases me
+ill enough."
+
+This was Antonia's last weak revolt against the determination of her
+stalwart suitor. She gained a three days' delay from him by submitting
+to the other conditions of his journey. It amused Marie to note the
+varying phases of Antonia's surrender. She was already resigned to the
+loss of Jonas Bronck's hand, and in no slavish terror of the
+consequences.
+
+"And it is true I am provided with all I need," she mused on, in the
+line of removing objections from Van Corlaer's way.
+
+"I have often promised to show you the gown I wore at my marriage," said
+Lady Dorinda, roused from her rumination on the aromatic seed, and
+leaving her chair to pay this gracious compliment to the Dutch widow.
+"It hath faded, and been discolored by the sea air, but you will not
+find a prettier fashion of lace in anything made since."
+
+She had no maid, for the women of the garrison had all been found too
+rude for her service. When she first came to Acadia with Claude La Tour,
+an English gentlewoman gladly waited on her. But now only Zélie gave her
+constrained and half-hearted attention, rating her as "my other lady,"
+and plainly deploring her presence. Lady Dorinda had one large box
+bound with iron, hidden in a nook beyond her bed. She took the key from
+its usual secret place and busied herself opening the box. Marie and
+Antonia heard her speak a word of surprise, but the curtained bed hid
+her from them. The raised lid of her box let out sweet scents of
+England, but that breath of old times, though she always dreaded its
+sweep across her resignation, had not made her cry out.
+
+She found a strange small coffer on the top of her own treasures. Its
+key stood in its lock, and Lady Dorinda at once turned that key, as a
+duty to herself. Antonia's loss of some precious casket had been
+proclaimed to her, but she recollected that in her second thought, when
+she had already laid aside the napkin and discovered Jonas Bronck's
+hand. Lady Dorinda snapped the lid down and closed her own chest. She
+rose from her place and stretched both arms toward the couch at the foot
+of her bed. Having reached the couch she sank down, her head meeting a
+cushion with nice calculation.
+
+"I am about to faint," said Lady Dorinda, and having parted with her
+breath in one puff, she sincerely lost consciousness and lay in extreme
+calm, her clay-colored eyelids shut on a clay-colored face. Marie was
+used to these quiet lapses of her mother-in-law, for Lady Dorinda had
+not been a good sailor on their voyage; but Antonia was alarmed. They
+bathed her face with a few inches of towel dipped in scented water, and
+rubbed her hands and fanned her. She caught life in again with a gasp,
+and opened her eyes to their young faces.
+
+"Your ladyship attempted too much in opening that box," said Marie. "It
+is not good to go back through old sorrows."
+
+"Madame La Tour may be right," gasped Claude's widow.
+
+"I could not now look at that gown, Lady Dorinda," protested Antonia.
+When her ladyship was able to sit again by the fire, she asked both of
+them to leave her; and being alone, she quieted her anxiety about her
+treasures in the chest by a forced search. Nothing had been disturbed.
+The coals burned down red while Lady Dorinda tried to understand this
+happening. She dismissed all thought of the casket's belonging to
+Antonia Bronck;--a mild and stiff-mannered young provincial who had
+nothing to do with ghastly tokens of war. That hand was a political
+hint, mysteriously sent to Lady Dorinda and embodying some important
+message.
+
+D'Aulnay de Charnisay may have sent it as a pledge that he intended to
+do justice to the elder La Tour while chastising the younger. There was
+a strange girl in the fort, accused of coming from D'Aulnay. Lady
+Dorinda could feel no enmity towards D'Aulnay. Her mind swarmed with
+foolish thoughts, harmless because ineffectual. She felt her importance
+grow, and was sure that the seed of a deep political intrigue lay hidden
+in her chest.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+MARGUERITE.
+
+
+The days which elapsed before Antonia Bronck's marriage were lived
+joyfully by a people who lost care in any festival. Van Corlaer brought
+the sleek-faced young dominie from camp and exhibited him in all his
+potency as the means of a Protestant marriage service. He could not
+speak a word of French, but only Dutch was required of him. All
+religious rites were celebrated in the hall, there being no chapel in
+Fort St. John, and this marriage was to be witnessed by the garrison.
+
+During this cheerful time a burning unrest, which she concealed from her
+people, drove Marie about her domain. She fled up the turret stairs and
+stood on the cannon to look over the bay. Her husband had been away but
+eight days. "Yet he often makes swift journeys," she thought. The load
+of his misfortunes settled more heavily upon her as she drew nearer to
+the end of woman companionship.
+
+In former times, before such bitterness had grown in the feud between
+D'Aulnay and La Tour, she had made frequent voyages from Cape Sable up
+Fundy Bay to Port Royal. The winters were then merry among noble
+Acadians, and the lady of Fort St. Louis at Cape Sable was hostess of a
+rich seigniory. Now she had the sickness of suspense, and the wasting of
+life in waiting. Frequently during the day she met Father Jogues, who
+also wandered about disturbed by the evident necessity of his return to
+Montreal.
+
+"Monsieur," said Marie once, "can you on your conscience bless a
+heretic?"
+
+"Madame," said Father Jogues, "heaven itself blesses a good and
+excellent woman."
+
+"Well, monsieur, if you could lift up your hand, even with the sign
+which my house holds idolatrous, and say a few words of prayer, I
+should then feel consecrated to whatever is before me."
+
+Perhaps Father Jogues was tempted to have recourse to his vial of holy
+water and make the baptismal signs. Many a soul he truly believed he had
+saved from burning by such secret administration. And if savages could
+be thus reclaimed, should he hold back from the only opportunity ever
+given by this beautiful soul? His face shone. But with that gracious
+instinct to refrain from intermeddling which was beyond his times, he
+only lifted his stumps of fingers and spoke the words which she craved.
+A maimed priest is deprived of his sacred offices, but the pope had made
+a special dispensation for Father Jogues.
+
+"Thanks, monsieur," said Marie. "Though it be sin to declare it, I will
+say your religion hath mother-comfort in it. Perhaps you have felt, in
+the woods among Iroquois, that sometime need of mother-comfort which a
+civilized woman may feel who has long outgrown her childhood."
+
+The mandolin was heard in the barracks once during those days, for Le
+Rossignol had come out of the house determined to seek out Marguerite.
+She found the Swiss girl beside the powder magazine, for Marguerite had
+brought out a stool, and seemed trying to cure her sick spirit in the
+sun. The dwarf stood still and looked at her with insolent eyes.
+Soldiers' wives hid themselves within their doors, cautiously watching,
+or thrusting out their heads to shake at one another or to squall at any
+child venturing too near the encounter. They did not like the strange
+girl, and besides, she was in their way. But they liked the Nightingale
+less, and pitied any one singled out for her attack.
+
+"Good day to madame the former Madame Klussman," said the dwarf.
+Marguerite gathered herself in defense to arise and leave her stool. But
+Le Rossignol gathered her mandolin in equal readiness to give pursuit.
+And not one woman in the barracks would have invited her quarry.
+
+"I was in Penobscot last week," announced Le Rossignol, and heads popped
+out of all the doors to lift eyebrows and open mouths at each other. The
+swan-riding witch! She confessed to that impossible journey!
+
+"I was in Penobscot last week," repeated Le Rossignol, holding up her
+mandolin and tinkling an accompaniment to her words, "and there I saw
+the house of D'Aulnay de Charnisay, and a very good house it is; but my
+lord should burn it. It is indeed of rough logs, and the windows are so
+high that one must have wings to look through them; but quite good
+enough for a woman of your rank, seeing that D'Aulnay hath a palace for
+his wife in Port Royal."
+
+"I know naught about the house," spoke Marguerite, a yellow sheen of
+anger appearing in her eyes.
+
+"Do you know naught about the Island of Demons, then?"
+
+The Swiss girl muttered a negative and looked sidewise at her
+antagonist.
+
+"I will tell you that story," said Le Rossignol.
+
+She played a weird prelude. Marguerite sat still to be baited, like a
+hare which has no covert. The instrument being heavy for the dwarf, she
+propped it by resting one foot on the abutting foundation of the
+powder-house, and all through her recital made the mandolin's effects
+act upon her listener.
+
+"The Sieur de Roberval sailed to this New World, having with him among a
+shipload of righteous people one Marguerite." She slammed her emphasis
+on the mandolin.
+
+"There have ever been too many such women, and so the Sieur de Roberval
+found, though this one was his niece. Like all her kind, madame, she had
+a lover to her scandal. The Sieur de Roberval whipped her, and prayed
+over her, and shut her up in irons in the hold; yet live a godly life
+she would not. So what could he do but set her ashore on the Island of
+Demons?"
+
+"I do not want to hear it," was Marguerite's muttered protest.
+
+But Le Rossignol advanced closer to her face.
+
+"And what does the lover do but jump overboard and swim after her? And
+well was he repaid." Bang! went the mandolin. "So they went up the rocky
+island together, and there they built a hut. What a horrible land was
+that!
+
+"All day long fiends twisted themselves in mist. The waves made a sadder
+moaning there than anywhere else on earth. Monsters crept out of the sea
+and grinned with dull eyes and clammy lips. No fruit, no flower,
+scarcely a blade of grass dared thrust itself toward the sky on that
+scaly island. Daylight was half dusk there forever. But the nights, the
+nights, madame, were full of howls, of contending beasts--the nights
+were storms of demons let loose to beat on that island!
+
+"All the two people had to eat were the stores set ashore by the Sieur
+de Roberval. Now a child was born in their hut, and the very next night
+a bear knocked at the door and demanded the child. Marguerite full
+freely gave it to him."
+
+The girl shrunk back, and Le Rossignol was delighted until she herself
+noticed that Klussman had come in from some duty outside the gates. His
+eye detected her employment, and he sauntered not far off with his
+shoulder turned to the powder-house.
+
+"Next night, madame," continued Le Rossignol, and her tone and the
+accent of the mandolin made an insult of that unsuitable title, "a
+horned lion and two dragons knocked at the door and asked for the lover,
+and Marguerite full freely gave him to them. Kind soul, she would do
+anything to save herself!"
+
+"Go away!" burst out the girl.
+
+"And from that time until a ship took her off, the demons of Demon
+Island tried in vain to get Marguerite. They howled around her house
+every night, and gaped down her chimney, and whispered through the
+cracks and sat on the roof. But thou knowest, madame, that a woman of
+her kind, so soft and silent and downward-looking, is more than a match
+for any demon; sure to live full easily and to die a fat saint."
+
+"Have done with this," said Klussman behind the dwarf, who turned her
+grotesque beak and explained,--
+
+"I am but telling the story of the Island of Demons to Madame Klussman."
+
+As soon as she had spoken the name the Swiss caught her in his hand,
+mandolin and all, and walked across the esplanade, holding her at arm's
+length, as he might have carried an eel. Le Rossignol ineffectually
+squirmed and kicked, raging at the spectacle she made for laughing women
+and soldiers. She tried to beat the Swiss with her mandolin, but he
+twisted her in another direction, a cat's weight of fury. Giving her no
+chance to turn upon him, he opened the entrance and shut her inside the
+hall, and stalked back to make his explanation to his wife. Klussman had
+avoided any glimpse of Marguerite until this instant of taking up her
+defense.
+
+"I pulled that witch-midget off thee," he said, speaking for the
+fortress to hear, "because I will not have her raising tumults in the
+fort. Her place is in the hall to amuse her ladies."
+
+Marguerite's chin rested on her breast.
+
+"Go in the house," said Klussman roughly. "Why do you show yourself out
+here to be mocked at?"
+
+The poor girl raised her swimming eyes and looked at him in the fashion
+he remembered when she was ill; when he had nursed her with agonies of
+fear that she might die. The old relations between them were thus
+suggested in one blinding flash. Klussman turned away so sick that the
+walls danced around him. He went outside the fort again, and wandered
+around the stony height, turning at every few steps to gaze and strain
+his eyes at that new clay in the graveyard.
+
+"When she lies beside that," muttered the soldier, "then I can be soft
+to her," though he knew he was already soft to her, and that her look
+had driven through him.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+D'AULNAY.
+
+
+The swelling spring was chilled by cold rain, driving in from the bay
+and sweeping through the half budded woods. The tide went up St. John
+River with an impulse which flooded undiked lowlands, yet there was no
+storm dangerous to shipping. Some sails hung out there in the whirl of
+vapors with evident intention of making port.
+
+Marie took a glass up to the turret and stood on the cannon to watch
+them. Rain fine as driven stings beat her face, and accumulated upon her
+muffling to run down and drip on the wet floor. She could make out
+nothing of the vessels. There were three of them, each by its sails a
+ship. They could not be the ships of Nicholas Denys carrying La Tour's
+recruits. She was not foolish enough, however great her husband's
+prosperity with Denys, to expect of him such a miraculous voyage around
+Cape Sable.
+
+Sails were a rare sight on that side of the bay. The venturesome seamen
+of the Massachusetts colony chose other courses. Fundy Bay was aside
+from the great sea paths. Port Royal sent out no ships except
+D'Aulnay's, and on La Tour's side of Acadia his was the only vessel.
+
+Certain of nothing except that these unknown comers intended to enter
+St. John River, Madame La Tour went downstairs and met Klussman on the
+wall. He turned from his outlook and said directly,--
+
+"Madame, I believe it is D'Aulnay."
+
+"You may be right," she answered. "Is any one outside the gates?"
+
+"Two men went early to the garden, but the rain drove them back.
+Fortunately, the day being bad, no one is hunting beyond the falls."
+
+"And is our vessel well moored?"
+
+"Her repairing was finished some days ago, you remember, madame, and she
+sits safe and comfortable. But D'Aulnay may burn her. When he was here
+before, my lord was away with the ship."
+
+"Bar the gates and make everything secure at once," said Marie. "And
+salute these vessels presently. If it be D'Aulnay, we sent him back to
+his seigniory with fair speed once before, and we are no worse equipped
+now."
+
+She returned down the stone steps where Van Corlaer's courtship had
+succeeded, and threw off her wet cloak to dry herself before the fire in
+her room. She kneeled by the hearth; the log had burned nearly away. Her
+mass of hair was twisted back in the plain fashion of the Greeks--that
+old sweet fashion created with the nature of woman, to which the world
+periodically returns when it has exhausted new devices. The smallest
+curves, which were tendrils rather than curls of hair, were blown out of
+her fleece over forehead and ears. A dark woman's beauty is independent
+of wind and light. When she is buffeted by weather the rich inner color
+comes through her skin, and the brightest dayshine can do nothing
+against the dusk of her eyes.
+
+If D'Aulnay was about to attack the fort, Marie was glad that Monsieur
+Corlaer had taken his bride, the missionaries, and his people and set
+out in the opposite direction. Barely had they escaped a siege, for they
+were on their way less than twenty-four hours. She had regretted their
+first day in a chill rain. But chill rain in boundless woods is better
+than sunlight in an invested fortress. Father Jogues' happy face with
+its forward droop and musing eyelids came before Marie's vision.
+
+"I need another of his benedictions," she said in undertone, when a
+knock on her door and a struggle with its latch disturbed her.
+
+"Enter, Le Rossignol," said Madame La Tour. And Le Rossignol entered,
+and approached the hearth, standing at full length scarcely as high as
+her lady kneeling. The room was a dim one, for all apartments looking
+out of the fort had windows little larger than portholes, set high in
+the walls. Two or three screens hid its uses as bedchamber and
+dressing-room, and a few pieces of tapestry were hung, making occasional
+panels of grotesque figures. A couch stood near the fireplace. The
+dwarf's prominent features were gravely fixed, and her bushy hair stood
+in a huge auburn halo around them. She wet her lips with that sudden
+motion by which a toad may be seen to catch flies.
+
+"Madame Marie, every one is running around below and saying that
+D'Aulnay de Charnisay is coming again to attack the fort."
+
+"Your pretty voice has always been a pleasure to me, Nightingale."
+
+"But is it so, madame?"
+
+"There are three ships standing in."
+
+Le Rossignol's russet-colored gown moved nearer to the fire. She
+stretched her claws to warm and then lifted one of them near her lady's
+nose.
+
+"Madame Marie, if D'Aulnay de Charnisay be coming, put no faith in that
+Swiss!"
+
+"In Klussman?"
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+"Klussman is the best soldier now in the fort," said Madame La Tour
+laughing. "If I put no faith in him, whom shall I trust?"
+
+"Madame Marie, you remember that woman you brought back with you?"
+
+"I have not seen her or spoken with her," said Marie self-reproachfully,
+"since she vexed me so sorely about her child. She is a poor creature.
+But they feed and house her well in the barracks."
+
+"Madame Marie, Klussman hath been talking with that woman every day this
+week."
+
+The dwarf's lady looked keenly at her.
+
+"Oh, no. There could be no talk between those two."
+
+"But there hath been. I have watched him. Madame Marie, he took me up
+when I went into the fort before Madame Bronck's marriage--when I was
+but playing my clavier before that sulky knave to amuse her--he took me
+up in his big common-soldier fingers, gripping me around the waist, and
+flung me into the hall."
+
+"Did he so?" laughed Marie. "I can well see that my Nightingale can put
+no more faith in the Swiss. But hearken to me, thou bird-child. There!
+Hear our salute!"
+
+The cannon leaped almost over their heads, and the walls shook with its
+boom and rebound. Marie kept her finger up and waited for a reply.
+Minute succeeded minute. The drip of accumulated rain-drops from the
+door could be heard, but nothing else. Those sullen vessels paid no
+attention to the inquiry of Fort St. John.
+
+"Our enemy has come."
+
+She relaxed from her tense listening and with a deep breath looked at Le
+Rossignol.
+
+"Do not undermine the faith of one in another in this fortress. We must
+all hold together now. The Swiss may have a tenderness for his wretched
+wife which thou canst not understand. But he is not therefore faithless
+to his lord."
+
+Taking the glass and throwing on her wet cloak, Marie again ran up to
+the wall. But Le Rossignol sat down cross-legged by the fire, wise and
+brooding.
+
+"If I could see that Swiss hung," she observed, "it would scratch in my
+soul a long-felt itch."
+
+When calamity threatens, we turn back to our peaceful days with
+astonishment that they ever seemed monotonous. Marie watched the ships,
+and thought of the woman days with Antonia before Van Corlaer came; of
+embroidery, and teaching the Etchemins, and bringing sweet plunder from
+the woods for the child's grave; of paddling on the twilight river when
+the tide was up, brimming and bubble-tinted; of her lord's coming home
+to the autumn-night hearth; of the little wheels and spinning, and
+Edelwald's songs--of all the common joys of that past life. The clumsy
+glass lately brought from France to master distances in the New World,
+wearied her hands before it assured her eyes.
+
+D'Aulnay de Charnisay was actually coming to attack Fort St. John a
+second time. He warily anchored his vessels out of the fort's range; and
+hour after hour boats moved back and forth landing men and artillery on
+the cape at the mouth of the river, a position which gave as little
+scope as possible to St. John's guns. All that afternoon tents and
+earthworks were rising, and detail by detail appeared the deliberate and
+careful preparations of an enemy who was sitting down to a siege.
+
+At dusk camp-fires began to flame on the distant low cape, and voices
+moved along air made sensitively vibrant by falling damp. There was the
+suggested hum of a disciplined small army settling itself for the night
+and for early action.
+
+Madame La Tour came out to the esplanade of the fort, and the Swiss met
+her, carrying a torch which ineffectual rain-drops irritated to constant
+hissing. He stood, tall and careworn, holding it up that his lady might
+see her soldiers. Everything in the fort was ready for the siege. The
+sentinels were about to be doubled, and sheltered by their positions.
+
+"I have had you called together, my men," she spoke, "to say a word to
+you before this affair begins."
+
+The torch flared its limited circle of shine, smoke wavering in a
+half-seen plume at its tip, and showed their erect figures in line, none
+very distinct, but all keenly suggestive of life. Some were
+black-bearded and tawny, and others had tints of the sun in flesh and
+hair. One was grizzled about the temples, and one was a smooth-cheeked
+youth. The roster of their familiar names seemed to her as precious as a
+rosary. They watched her, feeling her beauty as keenly as if it were a
+pain, and answering every lambent motion of her spirit.
+
+All the buildings were hinted through falling mist, and glowing hearths
+in the barracks showed like forge lights; for the wives of the half
+dozen married soldiers had come out, one having a child in her arms.
+They stood behind their lady, troubled, but reliant on her. She had with
+them the prestige of success; she had led the soldiers once before, and
+to a successful defense of the fort.
+
+"My men," said Marie, "when the Sieur de la Tour set out to northern
+Acadia he dreaded such a move as this on D'Aulnay's part. But I assured
+him he need not fear for us."
+
+The soldiers murmured their joy and looked at one another smiling.
+
+"The Sieur de la Tour will soon return, with help or without it. And
+D'Aulnay has no means of learning how small our garrison is. Bind
+yourselves afresh to me as you bound yourselves before the other
+attack."
+
+"My lady, we do!"
+
+Out leaped every right hand, Klussman's with the torch, which lost and
+caught its flame again with the sudden sweep.
+
+"That is all: and I thank you," said Marie. "We will do our best."
+
+She turned back to the tower under the torch's escort, her soldiers
+giving her a full cheer which might further have deceived D'Aulnay in
+the strength of the garrison.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+THE SECOND DAY.
+
+
+The exhilaration of fighting quickened every pulse in the fort. By next
+dawn the cannon began to speak. D'Aulnay had succeeded in planting
+batteries on a height eastward, and his guns had immediate effect. The
+barracks were set on fire and put out several times during the day. All
+the inmates gathered in the stone hall, and at its fireplace the cook
+prepared and distributed rations. Great balls plowed up the esplanade,
+and the oven was shattered into a storm of stone and mortar, its
+adjoining mill being left with a gap in the side.
+
+Responsive tremors from its own artillery ran through the fortress'
+walls. The pieces, except that one in the turret, were all brought into
+two bastions, those in the southeast bastion being trained on
+D'Aulnay's batteries, and the others on his camp. The gunner in the
+turret also dropped shot with effect among the tents, and attempted to
+reach the ships. But he was obliged to use nice care, for the iron
+pellets heaped on the stone floor behind him represented the heavy labor
+of one soldier who tramped at intervals up the turret stair, carrying
+ammunition.
+
+The day had dawned rainless but sullen. It was Good Friday. The women
+huddling in the hall out of their usual haunts noticed Marguerite's
+refusal even of the broth the cook offered her. She was restless, like a
+leopard, and seemed full of electrical currents which found no discharge
+except in the flicker of her eyes. Leaving the group of settles by the
+fireplace where these simple families felt more at home and least
+intrusive on the grandeur of the hall, she put herself on a distant
+chair with her face turned from them. This gave the women a chance to
+backbite her, to note her roused mood, and to accuse her among
+themselves of wishing evil to the fort and consequently to their
+husbands.
+
+"She hath the closest mouth in Acadia," murmured one. "Doth anybody in
+these walls certainly know that she came from D'Aulnay?"
+
+"The Swiss, her husband, told it."
+
+"And if she find means to go back to D'Aulnay, it will appear where she
+came from," suggested Zélie.
+
+"I would he had her now," said the first woman. "I have that feeling for
+her that I have for a cat with its hairs on end."
+
+Madame La Tour came to the hall and sat briefly and alone at her own
+table to take her dinner and supper. Later in the siege she stood and
+merely took food from the cook's hands, talking with and comforting her
+women while she ate. The surgeon of the fort was away with La Tour. She
+laid bandages ready, and felt obliged to dress not only the first but
+every wound received.
+
+Pierre Doucett was brought from one of the bastions stunned and
+bleeding, and his wife rose up with her baby in her arms, filling the
+hall with her cries. The baby and her neighbors' children were moved to
+join her. But the eye of her lady was as awful as Pierre's wound. Her
+outcry sunk to a whimper; she hushed the children, and swept them off
+the settle so Pierre could lie there, and even paid out the roll of
+bandage with one hand while her lady used it. Marie controlled her own
+faintness; for a woman on whom a man's labors are imposed must bear
+them.
+
+The four little children stood with fingers in their mouths, looking at
+these grim tokens of war. All day long they heard the crashing or
+thumping of balls, and felt the leap and rebound of cannon. The cook,
+when he came down from a bastion to attend to his kettles, gave them
+nice bits to eat, and in spite of solemnity, they counted it a holiday
+to be in the hall. Pierre Doucett groaned upon his settle, and Madame
+La Tour being on the lookout in the turret, Pierre Doucett's wife again
+took to wailing over him. The other women comforted her with their
+ignorant sympathy, and Marguerite sat with her back to it all. But the
+children adapted themselves to the situation, and trooped across to the
+foot of the stairway to play war. On that grim pavement door which led
+down into the keep they shot each other with merry cannonading and were
+laid out in turn on the steps.
+
+Le Rossignol passed hours of that day sitting on the broad door-sill of
+the tower. She loved to watch the fiery rain; but she was also waiting
+for a lull in the cannonading that she might release her swan. He was
+always forbidden the rooms in the tower by her lady; for he was a
+pugnacious creature, quick to strike with beak or wings any one who
+irritated him. Especially did he seem tutored in the dwarf's dislike of
+Lady Dorinda. In peaceful times when she descended to the ground and
+took a sylvan excursion outside the fort, he ruffled all his feathers
+and pursued her even from the river. Le Rossignol had a forked branch
+with which she yoked him as soon as D'Aulnay's vessels alarmed the fort.
+She also tied him by one leg under his usual shelter, the pent-house of
+the mill. He always sulked at restraint, but Le Rossignol maintained
+discipline. In the destruction of the oven and the reeling of the mill,
+Shubenacadie leaped upward and fell back flattened upon the ground. The
+fragments had scarcely settled before his mistress had him in her arms.
+At the risk of her life she dragged him across to the entrance, and sat
+desolately crumbling away between her fingers such feathers as were
+singed upon him, and sleeking his long gasping neck. She swallowed
+piteously with suspense, but could not bring herself to examine his
+body. He had his feet; he had his wings; and finally he sat up of his
+own accord, and quavered some slight remark about the explosion.
+
+"What ails thee?" exclaimed the dwarf indignantly. "Thou great coward!
+To lie down and gasp and sicken my heart for the singeing of a few
+feathers!"
+
+She boxed the place where a swan's ear should be, and Shubenacadie bit
+her. It was a serene and happy moment for both of them. Le Rossignol
+opened the door and pushed him in. Shubenacadie stood awkwardly with his
+feet sprawled on the hall pavement, and looked at the scenes to which
+his mistress introduced him. He noticed Marguerite, and hissed at her.
+
+"Be still, madman," admonished the dwarf. "Thou art an intruder here.
+The peasants will drive thee up chimney. Low-born people, when they get
+into good quarters, always try to put their betters out."
+
+Shubenacadie waddled on, scarcely recovered from the prostration of his
+fright, and inclined to hold the inmates of the tower accountable for
+it. Marie had just left Pierre Doucett, and his nurses were so busy with
+him that the swan was not detected until he scattered the children from
+the stairs.
+
+"Now, Mademoiselle Nightingale," said Zélie, coming heavily across the
+flags, "have we not enough strange cattle in this tower, that you must
+bring that creature in against my lady's orders?"
+
+"He shall not stand out there under D'Aulnay's guns. Besides, Madame
+Marie hath need of him," declared Le Rossignol impudently. "She would
+have me ride to D'Aulnay's camp and bring her word how many men have
+fallen there to-day."
+
+Zélie shivered through her indignation.
+
+"Do you tell me such a tale, when you were shut in the turret for that
+very sin?"
+
+"Sin that is sin in peace is virtue in war," responded Le Rossignol.
+"Mount, Shubenacadie."
+
+"My lady will have his neck, wrung," threatened Zélie.
+
+"She dare not. The chimney will tumble in. The fort will be taken."
+
+"Art thou working against us?" demanded the maid wrathfully.
+
+"Why should I work for you? You should, indeed, work for me. Pick me up
+this swan and carry him to the top of the stairs."
+
+"I will not do it!" cried Zélie, revolting through every atom of her
+ample bulk. "Do I want to be lifted over the turret like thistledown?"
+
+The dwarf laughed, and caught her swan by the back of his neck. With
+webbed toes and beating wings he fought every step; but she pulled
+herself up by the balustrade and dragged him along. His bristling
+plumage scraped the upper floor until he and his wrath were shut within
+the dwarf's chamber.
+
+"Naught but muscle and bone and fire and flax went to the making of that
+stunted wight," mused Zélie, setting her knuckles in her hips. "What a
+pity that she escapes powder and ball, when poor Pierre Doucett is shot
+down!--a man with wife and child, and useful to my lady besides."
+
+It was easy for Claude La Tour's widow to fill her idleness with visions
+of political alliance, but when D'Aulnay de Charnisay began to batter
+the walls round her ears, her common sense resumed sway. She could be of
+no use outside her apartment, so she took her meals there, trembling,
+but in her fashion resolute and courageous. The crash of cannon-shot was
+forever associated with her first reception in Acadia. Therefore this
+siege was a torture to her memory as well as a peril to her body. The
+tower had no more sheltered place, however, than Lady Dorinda's room.
+Zélie had orders to wait upon her with strict attention. The cannonading
+dying away as darkness lifted its wall between the opposed forces, she
+hoped for such sleep as could be had in a besieged place, and waited
+Zélie's knock. War, like a deluge, may drive people who detest each
+other into endurable contact; and when, without even a warning stroke on
+the panel, Le Rossignol slipped in as nimbly as a spider, Lady Dorinda
+felt no such indignation as she would have felt in ordinary times.
+
+"May I sit by your fire, your highness?" sweetly asked the dwarf. Lady
+Dorinda held out a finger to indicate the chimney-side and to stay
+further progress. The sallow and corpulent woman gazed at the beak-faced
+atom.
+
+"It hath been repeated a thousand times, but I will say again I am no
+highness."
+
+Le Rossignol took the rebuke as a bird might have taken it, her bright
+round eyes reflecting steadily the overblown mortal opposite. She had
+never called Lady Dorinda anything except "her highness." The dullest
+soldier grinned at the apt sarcastic title. When Marie brought her to
+account for this annoyance, she explained that she could not call Lady
+Dorinda anything else. Was a poor dwarf to be punished because people
+made light of every word she used? Yet this innocent creature took a
+pleasure of her own in laying the term like an occasional lash on the
+woman who so despised her. Le Rossignol sat with arms around her knees,
+on the hearth corner. Lady Dorinda in her cushioned chair chewed
+aromatic seeds.
+
+The room, like a flower garden, exhaled all its perfumes at evening.
+Bottles of essences and pots of pomade and small bags of powders were
+set out, for the luxurious use of its inmate when Zélie prepared her for
+the night. Le Rossignol enjoyed these scents. The sweet-odored
+atmosphere which clung about Lady Dorinda was her one attribute approved
+by the dwarf. Madame Marie never in any way appealed to the nose. Madame
+Marie's garments were scentless as outdoor air, and the freshness of
+outdoor air seemed to belong to them. Le Rossignol liked to have her
+senses stimulated, and she counted it a lucky thing to sit by that deep
+fire and smell the heavy fragrance, of the room. A branched silver
+candlestick held two lighted tapers on the dressing-table. The bed
+curtains were parted, revealing a huge expanse of resting-place within;
+and heavy folds shut the starlit-world from the windows. One could here
+forget that the oven was blown up, and the ground of the fort plowed
+with shot and sown with mortar.
+
+"Is there no fire in the hall?" inquired Lady Dorinda.
+
+"It hath all the common herd from the barracks around it," explained Le
+Rossignol. "And Pierre Doucett is stretched there, groaning over the
+loss of half his face."
+
+"Where is Madame La Tour?"
+
+"She hath gone out on the walls since the firing stopped. Our gunner in
+the turret told me that two guns are to be moved back before moonrise
+into the bastions they were taken from. Madame Marie is afraid D'Aulnay
+will try to encompass the fort to-night."
+
+"And what business took thee into the turret?"
+
+"Your highness"--
+
+"Ladyship," corrected Lady Dorinda.
+
+--"I like to see D'Aulnay's torches," proceeded the dwarf, without
+accepting correction. "His soldiers are burying the dead over there. He
+needs a stone tower with walls seven feet thick like ours, does
+D'Aulnay."
+
+Lady Dorinda put another seed in her mouth, and reflected that Zélie's
+attendance was tardier than usual. She inquired with shadings of
+disapproval,--
+
+"Is Madame La Tour's woman also on the walls?"
+
+"Not Zélie, your highness"--
+
+"Ladyship," insisted Lady Dorinda.
+
+"That heavy-foot Zélie," chuckled the dwarf, deaf to correction, "a fine
+bit of thistledown would she be to blow around the walls. Zélie is
+laying beds for the children, and she hath come to words with the cook
+through trying to steal eggs to roast for them. We have but few wild
+fowl eggs in store."
+
+"Tell her that I require her," said Lady Dorinda, fretted by the
+irregularities of life in a siege. "Madame La Tour will account with her
+if she neglects her rightful duties."
+
+Le Rossignol crawled reluctantly up to stand in her dots of moccasins.
+
+"Yes, your highness"--
+
+"Ladyship," repeated Claude La Tour's widow, to whom the sting was
+forever fresh, reminding her of a once possible regency.
+
+"But have you heard about the woman that was brought into the fortress
+before Madame Bronck went away?"
+
+"What of her?"
+
+"The Swiss says she comes from D'Aulnay."
+
+"It is Zélie that I require," said Lady Dorinda with discouraging
+brevity. Le Rossignol dropped her face, appearing to give round-eyed
+speculation to the fire.
+
+"It is believed that D'Aulnay sent by that strange woman a box of poison
+into the fort to work secret mischief. But," added the dwarf, looking up
+in open perplexity, "that box cannot now be found."
+
+"Perhaps you can tell what manner of box it was," said Lady Dorinda with
+irony, though a dull red was startled into her cheeks.
+
+"Madame Marie says it was a tiny box of oak, thick set with nails. She
+would not alarm the fort, so she had search made for it in Madame
+Bronck's name."
+
+Lady Dorinda, incredulous, but trembling, divined at once that the dwarf
+had hid that coffer in her chest. Perhaps the dwarf had procured the
+hand and replaced some valuable of Madame Bronck's with it. She longed
+to have the little beast shaken and made to confess. While she was
+considering what she could do with dignity, Zélie rapped and was
+admitted, and Le Rossignol escaped into outside darkness.
+
+Hours passed, however, before Shubenacadie's mistress sought his
+society. She undressed in her black cell which had but one loophole
+looking toward the north, and taking the swan upon her bed tried to
+reconcile him to blankets. But Shubenacadie protested with both wings
+against a woolly covering which was not in his experience. The times
+were disjointed for him. He took no interest in Lady Dorinda and the
+box of Madame Bronck, and scratched the pallet with his toes and the
+nail at the end of his bill. But Le Rossignol pushed him down and
+pressed her confidences upon this familiar.
+
+"So her highness threw that box out into the fort. I had to shiver and
+wait until Zélie left her, but I knew she would choose to rid herself of
+it through a window, for she would scarce burn it, she hath not
+adroitness to drop it in the hall, show it to Madame Marie she would
+not, and keep it longer to poison her court gowns she dare not. She hath
+found it before this. Her looking-glass was the only place apter than
+that chest. I would give much to know what her yellow highness thought
+of that hand. Here, mine own Shubenacadie, I have brought thee this
+sweet biscuit moistened with water. Eat, and scratch me not.
+
+"And little did its studding of nails avail the box, for the fall split
+it in three pieces; and I hid them under rubbish, for mortar and stones
+are plentiful down there. You should have seen my shade stretch under
+the moon like a tall hobgoblin. The nearest sentinel on the wall
+challenges me. 'Who is there?' 'Le Rossignol.' 'What are you doing?'
+'Looking: for my swan's yoke.' Then he laughs--little knowing how I
+meant to serve his officer. The Hollandais mummy hath been of more use
+to me than trinkets. I frightened her highness with it, and now it is
+set to torment the Swiss. Let me tell thee, Shubenacadie: punishment
+comes even on a swan who would stretch up his neck and stand taller than
+his mistress. Wert thou not blown up with the oven? Hide thy head and
+take warning."
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN POWERS.
+
+
+The dwarf's report about Klussman forced Madame La Tour to watch the
+strange girl; but Marguerite seemed to take no notice of any soldier who
+came and went in the hall. As for the Swiss, he carried trouble on his
+self-revealing face, but not treachery. Klussman camped at night on the
+floor with other soldiers off guard; screens and the tall settles being
+placed in a row between this military bivouac and women and children of
+the household protected near the stairs. He awoke as often as the guard
+was changed, and when dawn-light instead of moonlight appeared with the
+last relief, he sprang up, and took the breastplate which had been laid
+aside for his better rest. Out of its hollow fell Jonas Bronck's hand,
+bare and crouching with stiff fingers on the pavement. The soldiers
+about to lie down laughed at themselves and Klussman for recoiling from
+it, and fury succeeded pallor in his blond face.
+
+"Did you do that?" he demanded of the men, but before they could utter
+denials, his suspicion leaped the settles. Spurning Jonas Bronck's
+treasured fragment with his boot in a manner which Antonia could never
+have forgiven, Klussman sent it to the hearth and strode after it. He
+had not far to look for Marguerite. As his eye traveled recklessly into
+the women's camp, he encountered her beside him, sitting on the floor
+behind a settle and matching the red of a burning tree trunk with the
+red of her bruised eyelids.
+
+"Did you put that in my breastplate?" said Klussman, pointing to the
+hand as it lay palm upwards. Marguerite shuddered and burst out crying.
+This had been her employment much of the night, but the nervous fit of
+childish weeping swept away all of Klussman's self-control.
+
+"No; no;" she repeated. "You think I do everything that is horrible."
+And she sobbed upon her hands.
+
+Klussman stooped down and tossed the hand like an escaped coal behind
+the log. As he stooped he said,--
+
+"I don't think that. Don't cry. If you cry I will shoot myself."
+
+Marguerite looked up and saw his helplessness in his face. He had sought
+her before, but only with reproaches. Now his resentment was broken.
+Twice had the dwarfs mischief thrown Marguerite on his compassion, and
+thereby diminished his resistance to her. Jonas Bronck's hand, in its
+red-hot seclusion behind the log, writhed and smoked, discharging its
+grosser parts up the chimney's shaft. Unseen, it lay a wire-like outline
+of bone; unseen, it became a hand of fairy ashes, trembling in every
+filmy atom; finally an ember fell upon it, and where a hand had been
+some bits of lime lay in a white glow.
+
+Klussman went out and mounted one of the bastions, where the gunners
+were already preparing for work. The weather had changed in the night,
+and the sky seemed immeasurably lifted while yet filled with the
+uncertainties of dawn. Fundy Bay revealed more and more of its clean
+blue-emerald level, and far eastward the glassy water shaded up to a
+flushing of pink. Smoke rose from the mess fires in D'Aulnay's camp. The
+first light puff of burnt powder sprung from his batteries, and the
+artillery duel again began.
+
+"If we had but enough soldiers to make a sally," said Madame La Tour to
+her officer, as she also came for an instant to the bastion, "we might
+take his batteries. Oh, for monsieur to appear on the bay with a stout
+shipload of men."
+
+"It is time he came," said the Swiss.
+
+"Yes, we shall see him or have news of him soon."
+
+In the tumult of Klussman's mind Jonas Bronck's hand never again came
+uppermost. He cared nothing and thought nothing about that weird
+fragment, in the midst of living disaster. It had merely been the
+occasion of his surrendering to Marguerite. He determined that when La
+Tour returned and the siege was raised, if he survived he would take his
+wife and go to some new colony. Live without her he could not. Yet
+neither could he reëspouse her in Fort St. John, where he had himself
+openly denounced her.
+
+Spring that day leaped forward to a semblance of June. The sun poured
+warmth; the very air renewed life. But to Klussman it was the brilliancy
+of passing delirium. He did not feel when gun-metal touched his hands.
+The sound of the incoming tide, which could be heard betwixt artillery
+boomings, and the hint of birds which that sky gave, were mute against
+his thoughts.
+
+Though D'Aulnay's loss was visibly heavy, it proved also an ill day for
+the fort. The southeast bastion was raked by a fire which disabled the
+guns and killed three men. Five others were wounded at various posts.
+The long spring twilight sunk through an orange horizon rim and filled
+up the measure which makes night, before firing reluctantly stopped.
+Marie had ground opened near the powder magazine to make a temporary
+grave for her three dead. They had no families. She held a taper in her
+hand and read a service over them. One bastion and so many men being
+disabled, a sentinel was posted in the turret after the gunners
+descended. The Swiss took this duty on himself, and felt his way up the
+pitch-black stairs. He had not seen Marguerite in the hall when he
+hurriedly took food, but she was safe in the tower. No woman ventured
+out in the storm of shot. The barracks were charred and battered.
+
+As Klussman reached the turret door he exclaimed against some human
+touch, but caught his breath and surrendered himself to Marguerite's
+arms, holding her soft body and smoothing her silk-stranded hair.
+
+"I heard you say you would come up here," murmured Marguerite. "And the
+door was unlocked."
+
+"Where have you been since morning?"
+
+"Behind a screen in the great hall. The women are cruel."
+
+Klussman hated the women. He kissed his wife with the first kiss since
+their separation, and all the toils of war failed to unman him like that
+kiss.
+
+"But there was that child!" he groaned.
+
+"That was not my child," said Marguerite.
+
+"The baby brought here with you!"
+
+"It was not mine."
+
+"Whose was it?"
+
+"It was a drunken soldier's. His wife died. They made me take care of
+it," said Marguerite resentfully.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me that?" exclaimed Klussman. "You made me lie to
+my lady!"
+
+Marguerite had no answer. He understood her reticence, and the
+degradation which could not be excused.
+
+"Who made you take care of it?"
+
+"He did."
+
+"D'Aulnay?" Klussman uttered through his teeth.
+
+"Yes; I don't like him."
+
+"_I_ like him!" said the savage Swiss.
+
+"He is cruel," complained Marguerite, "and selfish."
+
+The Swiss pressed his cheek to her soft cheek.
+
+"I never was selfish and cruel to thee," he said, weakly.
+
+"No, you never were."
+
+"Then why," burst out the husband afresh, "did you leave me to follow
+that beast of prey?"
+
+Marguerite brought a sob from her breast which was like a sword through
+Klussman. He smoothed and smoothed her hair.
+
+"But what did I ever do to thee, Marguerite?"
+
+"I always liked you best," she said. "But he was a great lord. The women
+in barracks are so hateful, and a common soldier is naught."
+
+"You would be the lady of a seignior," hissed Klussman.
+
+"Thou knowest I was fit for that," retorted Marguerite with spirit.
+
+"I know thou wert. It is marrying me that has been thy ruin." He groaned
+with his head hanging.
+
+"We are not ruined yet," she said, "if you care for me."
+
+"That was a stranger child?" he repeated.
+
+"All the train knew it to be a motherless child. He had no right to
+thrust it on me."
+
+"I demand no testimony of D'Aulnay's followers," said Klussman roughly.
+
+He let her go from his arms, and stepped to the battlements. His gaze
+moved over the square of the fortress, and eastward to that blur of
+whiteness which hinted the enemy's tents, the hint being verified by a
+light or two.
+
+"I have a word to tell you," said Marguerite, leaning beside her
+husband.
+
+"I have this to tell thee," said the Swiss. "We must leave Acadia." His
+arm again fondled her, and he comforted his sore spirit with an
+instant's thought of home and peace somewhere.
+
+"Yes. We can go to Penobscot," she said.
+
+"Penobscot?" he repeated with suspicion.
+
+"The king will give you a grant of Penobscot."
+
+"The king will give it to--me?"
+
+"Yes. And it is a great seigniory."
+
+"How do you know the king will do that?"
+
+"He told me to tell you; he promised it."
+
+"The king? You never saw the king."
+
+"No."
+
+"D'Aulnay?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I would I had him by the throat!" burst out Klussman. Marguerite leaned
+her cheek on the stone and sighed. The bay seemed full of salty spice.
+It was a night in which the human soul must beat against casements to
+break free and roam the blessed dark. All of spring was in the air.
+Directly overhead stood the north star, with slow constellations
+wheeling in review before him.
+
+"So D'Aulnay sent you to spy on my lord, as my lord believed?"
+
+"You shall not call me a spy. I came to my husband. I hate him," she
+added in a resentful burst. "He made me walk the marshes, miles and
+miles alone, carrying that child."
+
+"Why the child?"
+
+"Because the people from St. John would be sure to pity it."
+
+"And what word did he send you to tell me?" demanded Klussman. "Give me
+that word."
+
+Marguerite waited with her face downcast.
+
+"It was kind of him to think of me," said the Swiss; "and to send you
+with the message!"
+
+She felt mocked, and drooped against the wall. And in the midst of his
+scorn he took her face in his hands with a softness he could not master.
+
+"Give me the word," he repeated. Marguerite drew his neck down and
+whispered, but before she finished whispering Klussman flung her against
+the cannon with an oath.
+
+"I thought it would be, betray my lord's fortress to D'Aulnay de
+Charnisay! Go down stairs, Marguerite Klussman. When I have less matter
+in hand, I will flog thee! Hast thou no wit at all? To come from a man
+who broke faith with thee, and offer his faith to me! Bribe me with
+Penobscot to betray St. John to him!"
+
+Marguerite sat on the floor. She whispered, gasping,--
+
+"Tell not the whole fortress."
+
+Klussman ceased to talk, but his heels rung on the stone as he paced the
+turret. He felt himself grow old as silence became massive betwixt his
+wife and him. The moon rose, piercing the cannon embrasure, and showed
+Marguerite weeping against the wall. The mass of silence drove him
+resistless before her will. That soft and childlike shape did not
+propose treason to him. He understood that she thought only of herself
+and him. It was her method of bringing profit out of the times. He heard
+his relief stumble at the foot of the turret stairs, and went down the
+winding darkness to stop and send the soldier back to bed.
+
+"I am not sleepy," said Klussman. "I slept last night. Go and rest till
+daybreak." And the man willingly went. Marguerite had not moved a fold
+of her gown when her husband again came into the lighted tower. The
+Swiss lifted her up and made her stand beside him while he stanched her
+tears.
+
+"You hurt me when you threw me against the cannon," she said.
+
+"I was rough. But I am too foolish fond to hold anger. It has worn me
+out to be hard on thee. I am not the man I was."
+
+Marguerite clung around him. He dumbly felt his misfortune in being
+thralled by a nature of greater moral crudity than his own. But she was
+his portion in the world.
+
+"You flung me against the cannon because I wanted you made a seignior."
+
+"It was because D'Aulnay wanted me made a traitor."
+
+"What is there to do, indeed?" murmured Marguerite. "He said if you
+would take the sentinels off the wall on the entrance side of the fort,
+at daybreak any morning, he will be ready to scale that wall."
+
+"But how will he know I have taken the sentinels off?"
+
+"You must hold up a ladder in your hands."
+
+"The tower is between that side of the fort and D'Aulnay's camp. No one
+would see me standing with a ladder in my hands."
+
+"When you set the ladder against the outside wall, it is all you have to
+do, except to take me with you as you climb down. It is their affair to
+see the signal."
+
+"So D'Aulnay plans an ambush between us and the river? And suppose I did
+all that and the enemy failed to see the signal? I should go down there
+to be hung, or my lady would have me thrown into the keep here, and
+perhaps shot. I ought to be shot."
+
+"They will see the signal," insisted Marguerite. "I know all that is to
+be done. He made me say it over until I tired of it. You must mount the
+wall where the gate is: that side of the fort toward the river, the camp
+being on another side."
+
+Klussman again smoothed her hair and argued with her as with a child.
+
+"I cannot betray my lady. You see how madame trusts me."
+
+She grieved against his hard breastplate with insistence which pierced
+even that.
+
+"I am indeed not fit to be thought on beside the lady!"
+
+"I would do anything for thee but betray my lady."
+
+"And when you have held her fort for her will she advance you by so much
+as a handful of land?"
+
+"I was made lieutenant since the last siege."
+
+"But now you may be a seignior with a holding of your own," repeated
+Marguerite. So they talked the night away. She showed him on one hand a
+future of honor and plenty which he ought not to withhold from her; and
+on the other, a wandering forth to endless hardships. D'Aulnay had
+worked them harm; but this was in her mind an argument that he should
+now work them good. Being a selfish lord, powerful and cruel, he could
+demand this service as the condition of making her husband master of
+Penobscot; and the service itself she regarded as a small one compared
+to her lone tramping of the marshes to La Tour's stockade. D'Aulnay was
+certain to take Fort St. John some time. He had the king and all France
+behind him; the La Tours had nobody. Marguerite was a woman who could
+see no harm in advancing her husband by the downfall of his mere
+employers. Her husband must be advanced. She saw herself lady of
+Penobscot.
+
+The Easter dawn began to grow over the world. Klussman remembered what
+day it was, and lifted her up to look over the battlements at light
+breaking from the east.
+
+Marguerite turned her head from point to point of the dewy world once
+more rising out of chaos. She showed her husband a new trench and a line
+of breastworks between the fort and the river. These had been made in
+the night, and might have been detected by him if he had guarded his
+post. The jutting of rocks probably hid them from sentinels below.
+
+"D'Aulnay is coming nearer," said the Swiss, looking with haggard
+indifferent eyes at these preparations, and an occasional head venturing
+above the fresh ridge. Marguerite threw her arms around her husband's
+neck, and hung on him with kisses.
+
+"Come on, then," he said, speaking with the desperate conviction of a
+man who has lost himself. "I have to do it. You will see me hang for
+this, but I'll do it for you."
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+A SOLDIER.
+
+
+Marie felt herself called through the deepest depths of sleep, and sat
+up in the robe of fur which she had wrapped around her for her night
+bivouac. There was some alarm at her door. The enemy might be on the
+walls. She tingled with the intense return of life, and was opening the
+door without conscious motion. Nobody stood outside in the hall except
+the dwarf, whose aureole of foxy hair surrounded features pinched by
+anxiety.
+
+"Madame Marie--Madame Marie! The Swiss has gone to give up the fort to
+D'Aulnay."
+
+"Has gone?"
+
+"He came down from the turret with his wife, who persuaded him. I
+listened all night on the stairs. D'Aulnay is ready to mount the wall
+when he gives the signal. I had to hide me until the woman and the Swiss
+passed below. They are now going to the wall to give the signal."
+
+Through Marie passed that worst shock of all human experience. To see
+your trusted ally transmuted into your secret most deadly foe, sickens
+the heart as death surely cannot sicken it. Like many a pierced wretch
+who has collapsed suddenly into the dust while the stab yet held the
+knife, she whispered feebly,--
+
+"He could not do that!"
+
+The stern blackness of her eyes seemed to annihilate all the rest of her
+face. Was rock itself stable under-foot? Why should one care to prolong
+life, when life only proved how cruel and worthless are the people for
+whom we labor?
+
+"Madame Marie, he is now doing it. He was to hold up a ladder on the
+wall."
+
+"Which wall?"
+
+"This one--where the gate is."
+
+Marie looked through the glass in her door which opened toward the
+battlements, rubbed aside moisture, and looked again. While one breath
+could be drawn Klussman was standing in the dawn-light with a ladder
+raised overhead. She caught up a pair of long pistols which had lain
+beside her all night.
+
+"Rouse the men below--quick!" she said to Le Rossignol, and ran up the
+steps to the wall. No sentinels were there. The Swiss had already
+dropped down the ladder outside and was out of sight, and she heard the
+running, climbing feet of D'Aulnay's men coming to take the advantage
+afforded them. Sentinels in the other two bastions turned with surprise
+at her cry. They had seen Klussman relieving the guard, but his subtle
+action escaped their watch-worn eyes. They only noticed that he had the
+strange woman with him.
+
+D'Aulnay's men were at the foot of the wall planting ladders. They were
+swarming up. Marie met them with the sentinels joining her and the
+soldiers rushing from below. The discharge of firearms, the clash of
+opposing metals, the thuds of falling bodies, cries, breathless
+struggling, clubbed weapons sweeping the battlements--filled one vast
+minute. Ladders were thrown back to the stones, and D'Aulnay's repulsed
+men were obliged to take once more to their trench, carrying the stunned
+and wounded. A cannon was trained on their breastworks, and St. John
+belched thunder and fire down the path of retreat. The Swiss's treason
+had been useless to the enemy. The people of the fort saw him hurried
+more like a prisoner than an ally towards D'Aulnay's camp, his wife
+beside him.
+
+"Oh, Klussman," thought the lady of St. John, as she turned to station
+guards at every exposed point and to continue that day's fight, "you
+knew in another way what it is to be betrayed. How could you put this
+anguish upon me?"
+
+The furious and powder-grimed men, her faithful soldiers, hooted at the
+Swiss from their bastions, not knowing what a heart he carried with
+him. He turned once and made them a gesture of defiance, more pathetic
+than any wail for pardon, but they saw only the treason of the man, and
+shot at him with a good will. Through smoke and ball-plowed earth,
+D'Aulnay's soldiers ran into camp, and his batteries answered. Artillery
+echoes were scattered far through the woods, into the very depths of
+which that untarnished Easter weather seemed to stoop, coaxing growths
+from the swelling ground.
+
+Advancing and pausing with equal caution, a man came out of the northern
+forest toward St. John River. No part of his person was covered with
+armor. And instead of the rich and formal dress then worn by the
+Huguenots even in the wilderness, he wore a complete suit of hunter's
+buckskin which gave his supple muscles a freedom beautiful to see. His
+young face was freshly shaved, showing the clean fine texture of the
+skin. For having nearly finished his journey from the head of Fundy
+Bay, he had that morning prepared himself to appear what he was in Fort
+St. John--a man of good birth and nurture. His portables were rolled
+tightly in a blanket and strapped to his shoulders. A hunting-knife and
+two long pistols armed him. His head was covered with a cap of beaver
+skin, and he wore moccasins. Not an ounce of unnecessary weight hampered
+him.
+
+The booming of cannon had met him so far off on that day's march that he
+understood well the state of siege in which St. John would be found; and
+long before there was any glimpse of D'Aulnay's tents and earthworks,
+the problem of getting into the fort occupied his mind. For D'Aulnay's
+guards might be extended in every direction. But the first task in hand
+was to cross the river. One or two old canoes could be seen on the other
+side; cast-off property of the Etchemin Indians who had broken camp.
+Being on the wrong bank these were as useless to him as dream canoes.
+But had a ferryman stood in waiting, it was perilous to cross in open
+day, within possible sight of the enemy. So the soldier moved carefully
+down to a shelter of rocks below the falls, opposite that place where
+Van Corlaer had watched the tide sweep up and drown the rapids. From
+this post he got a view of La Tour's small ship, yet anchored and safe
+at its usual moorings. No human life was visible about it.
+
+"The ship would afford me good quarters," said the soldier to himself,
+"had I naught to do but rest. But I must get into the fort this night;
+and how is it to be done?"
+
+All the thunders of war, and all the effort and danger to be undertaken,
+could not put his late companions out of his mind. He lay with hands
+clasped under his head, and looked back at the trees visibly leafing in
+the warm Easter air. They were much to this man in all their differences
+and habits, their whisperings and silences. They had marched with him
+through countless lone long reaches, passing him from one to another
+with friendly recommendation. It hurt him to notice a broken or deformed
+one among them; but one full and nobly equipped from root to top crown
+was Nature's most triumphant shout. There is a glory of the sun and a
+glory of the moon, but to one who loves them there is another glory of
+the trees.
+
+"In autumn," thought the soldier, "I have seen light desert the skies
+and take to the trees and finally spread itself beneath them, a material
+glow, flake on flake. But in the spring, before their secret is spoken,
+when they throb, and restrain the force driving through them, then have
+I most comfort with them, for they live as I live."
+
+Shadows grew on the river, and ripples were arrested and turned back to
+flow up stream. There was but one way for him to cross the river, and
+that was to swim. And the best time to swim was when the tide brimmed
+over the current and trembled at its turn, a broad and limpid expanse
+of water, cold, dangerous, repellent to the chilled plunging body; but
+safer and more easily paddled through than when the current, angular as
+a skeleton, sought the bay at its lowest ebb.
+
+Fortunately tide and twilight favored the young soldier together. He
+stripped himself and bound his weapons and clothes in one tight packet
+on his head. At first it was easy to tread water: the salt brine upheld
+him. But in the middle of the river it was wise to sink close to the
+surface and carry as small a ripple as possible; for D'Aulnay's guards
+might be posted nearer than he knew. The water, deceptive at its outer
+edges in iridescent reflection of warm clouds, was cold as glacier
+drippings in midstream. He swam with desperate calmness, guarding
+himself by every stroke against cramp. The bundle oppressed him. He
+would have cast it off, but dared not change by a thought of variation
+the routine of his struggle. Hardy and experienced woodsman as he was,
+he staggered out on the other side and lay a space in the sand, too
+exhausted to move.
+
+The tide began to recede, leaving stranded seaweed in green or brown
+streaks, the color of which could be determined only by the dullness or
+vividness of its shine through the dusk. As soon as he was able, the
+soldier sat up, shook out his blanket and rolled himself in it. The
+first large stars were trembling out. He lay and smelled gunpowder
+mingling with the saltiness of the bay and the evening incense of the
+earth.
+
+There was a moose's lip in his wallet, the last spoil of his wilderness
+march, taken from game shot the night before and cooked at his morning
+fire. He ate it, still lying in the sand. Lights began to appear in the
+direction of D'Aulnay's camp, but the fort held itself dark and close.
+He thought of the grassy meadow rivulet which was always empty at low
+tide, and that it might afford him some shelter in his nearer approach
+to the fort. He dressed and put on his weapons, but left everything else
+except the blanket lying where he had landed. In this venture little
+could be carried except the man and his life. The frontier graveyard
+outlined itself dimly against the expanse of landscape. The new-turned
+clay therein gave him a start. He crept over the border of stones, went
+close, and leaned down to measure the length of the fresh grave with his
+outstretched hands. A sigh of relief which was as strong as a sob burst
+from the soldier.
+
+"It is only that child we found at the stockade," he murmured, and
+stepped on among the older mounds and leaped the opposite boundary, to
+descend that dip of land which the tide invaded. Water yet shone there
+on the grass. Too impatient to wait until the tide ran low, he found the
+log, and moved carefully forward, through increasing dusk, on hands and
+knees within closer range of the fort. Remembering that his buckskin
+might make an inviting spot on the slope, he wrapped his dark blanket
+around him. The chorus of insect life and of water creatures, which had
+scarcely been tuned for the season, began to raise experimental notes.
+And now a splash like the leap of a fish came from the river. The moon
+would be late; he thought of that with satisfaction. There was a little
+mist blown aloft over the stars, yet the night did not promise to be
+cloudy.
+
+The whole environment of Fort St. John was so familiar to the young
+soldier that he found no unusual stone in his way. That side toward the
+garden might be the side least exposed to D'Aulnay's forces at night. If
+he could reach the southwest bastion unseen, he could ask for a ladder.
+There was every likelihood of his being shot before the sentinels
+recognized him, yet he might be more fortunate. Balancing these chances,
+he moved toward that angle of shadow which the fortress lifted against
+the southern sky. Long rays of light within the walls were thrown up and
+moved on darkness like the pulsing motions of the aurora.
+
+"Who goes there?" said a voice.
+
+The soldier lay flat against the earth. He had imagined the browsing
+sound of cattle near him. But a standing figure now condensed itself
+from the general dusk, some distance up the slope betwixt him and the
+bastion. The challenger was entirely apart from the fort. As he
+flattened himself in breathless waiting for a shot which might follow, a
+clatter began at his very ears, some animal bounded over him with a
+glancing cut of its hoof, and galloped toward the trench below St.
+John's gate. He heard another exclamation,--this rapid traveler had
+probably startled another sentinel. The man who had challenged him
+laughed softly in the darkness. All the Sable Island ponies must be
+loose upon the slope. D'Aulnay's men had taken possession of the stable
+and cattle, and the wild and frightened ponies were scattered. As his
+ear lay so near the ground the soldier heard other little hoofs startled
+to action, and a snort or two from suspicious nostrils. He crept away
+from the sentinel without further challenge. It was evident that
+D'Aulnay had encompassed the fort with guards.
+
+The young soldier crept slowly down the rocky hillock, avoided another
+sentinel, and, after long caution and self-restraint and polishing the
+earth with his buckskin, crawled into the empty trench. The Sable Island
+ponies continually helped him. They were so nervous and so agile that
+the sentinels ceased to watch moving shadows.
+
+The soldier looked up at St. John and its tower, knowing that he must
+enter in some manner before the moon rose. He dreaded the red brightness
+of moon-dawn, when guards whom he could discern against the stony ascent
+might detect his forehead above the breastwork. Behind him stretched an
+alluvial flat to the river's sands. The tide was running swiftly out,
+and under starlight its swirls and long muscular sweeps could be
+followed by a practiced eye.
+
+As the soldier glanced warily in every direction, two lights left
+D'Aulnay's camp and approached him, jerking and flaring in the hands of
+men who were evidently walking over irregular ground. They might be
+coming directly to take possession of the trench. But why should they
+proclaim their intention with torches to the batteries of Fort St. John?
+He looked around for some refuge from the advancing circle of smoky
+shine, and moved backwards along the bottom of the trench. The light
+stretched over and bridged him, leaving him in a stream of deep shadow,
+protected by the breastwork from sentinels above. He could therefore
+lift a cautious eye at the back of the trench, and scan the group now
+moving betwixt him and the river. There were seven persons, only one of
+whom strode the stones with reckless feet. This man's hands were tied
+behind his back, and a rope was noosed around his neck and held at the
+other end by a soldier.
+
+"It is Klussman, our Swiss!" flashed through the soldier in the trench,
+with a mighty throb of rage and shame, and anxiety for the lady in the
+fort. If Klussman had been taken prisoner, the guns of St. John would
+surely speak in his behalf when he was about to be hanged before its
+very gate. Such a parade of the act must be discovered on the walls. It
+was plain that Klussman had deserted to D'Aulnay, and was now enjoying
+D'Aulnay's gratitude.
+
+"The tree that doth best front the gates," said one of the men, pointing
+with his torch to an elm in the alluvial soil: "my lord said the tree
+that doth best front the gates."
+
+"That hath no fit limbs," objected another.
+
+"He said the tree that doth best front the gates," insisted the first
+man. "Besides this one, what shrub hereabouts is tall enough for our
+use?"
+
+They moved down towards the elm. A stool carried by one man showed its
+long legs grotesquely behind his back. There were six persons besides
+the prisoner, all soldiers except one, who wore the coarse, long,
+cord-girdled gown of a Capuchin. His hood was drawn over his face, and
+the torches imperfectly showed that he was of the bare-footed order and
+wore only sandals. He held up a crucifix and walked close beside
+Klussman. But the Swiss gazed all around the dark world which he was so
+soon to leave, and up at the fortress he had attempted to betray, and
+never once at the murmuring friar.
+
+The soldier in the trench heard a breathing near him, and saw that a
+number of the ponies, drawn by the light, had left their fitful grazing
+and were venturing step by step beyond the end of the trench. Some
+association of this scene with soldiers who used to feed them at night,
+after a hard day of drawing home the winter logs, may have stirred
+behind their shaggy foreheads. He took his hunting-knife with sudden and
+desperate intention, threw off his moccasins, cut his leggins short at
+the middle of the leg, and silently divided his blanket into strips.
+
+Preparations were going forward under the elm. One of the soldiers
+climbed the tree and crept out upon an arched limb, catching the rope
+end thrown up to him. Both torches were given to one man, that all the
+others might set themselves to the task. Klussman stood upon the stool,
+which they had brought for the purpose from the cook's galley in one of
+their ships. His blond face, across which all his thoughts used to
+parade, was cast up by the torches like a stiffened mask, hopeless yet
+fearless in its expression.
+
+"Come, Father Vincent," said the man who had made the knot, sliding down
+the tree. "This is a Huguenot fellow, and good words are lost on him. I
+wonder that my lord let him have a friar to comfort him."
+
+"Retire, Father Vincent," said the men around the stool, with more
+roughness than they would have shown to a favorite confessor of
+D'Aulnay's. The Capuchin turned and walked toward the trench.
+
+The soldier in the trench could not hear what they said, but he had time
+for no further thought of Klussman. He had been watching the ponies
+with the conviction that his own life hung on what he might drive them
+to do. They alternately snuffed at Klussman's presence and put their
+noses down to feel for springing grass. Before they could start and
+wheel from the friar, the soldier had thrown his hunting-knife. It
+struck the hind leg of the nearest pony and a scampering and snorting
+hurricane swept down past the elm. Klussman's stool and the torch-bearer
+were rolled together. Both lights were stamped out by the panic-struck
+men, who thought a sally had been made from the fort. Father Vincent saw
+the knife thrown, and turned back, but the man in the trench seized him
+with steel muscles and dragged him into its hollow. If the good father
+uttered cry against such violence, there was also noise under the elm,
+and the wounded pony yet galloped and snorted toward the river. The
+young soldier fastened his mouth shut with a piece of blanket, stripped
+off his capote and sandals and tied him so that he could not move.
+Having done all most securely and put the capote and sandals upon
+himself, the soldier whispered at the friar's ear an apology which must
+have amused them both,--
+
+"Pardon my roughness, good father. Perhaps you will lend me your
+clothes?"
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+THE CAMP.
+
+
+D'Aulnay's sentinels about the walls, understanding that all this
+confusion was made by a stampede of ponies, kept the silence which had
+been enjoined on them. But some stir of inquiry seemed to occur in the
+bastions. Father Vincent, lying helpless in the trench, and feeling the
+chill of lately opened earth through his shaven head and partly nude
+body, wondered if he also had met D'Aulnay's gratitude for his recent
+inquiry into D'Aulnay's fitness to receive the sacraments.
+
+"But I will tell my lord of Charnisay the truth about his sins," thought
+Father Vincent, unable to form any words with a pinioned mouth, "though
+he should go the length of procuring my death."
+
+The soldier with his buckskin covered by Father Vincent's capote stepped
+out into the starlight and turned his cowled face toward the fort. He
+intended to tell the sentinels that D'Aulnay had sent him with a message
+to the commandant of St. John. The guards, discerning his capote, would
+perhaps obey a beckoning finger, and believe that he had been charged
+with silence; for not having heard the churchman's voice he dared not
+try to imitate it, and must whisper. But that unforeseen element which
+the wisest cannot rule out of their fate halted him before he took a
+dozen steps up the hill.
+
+"Where is Father Vincent de Paris?" called some impatient person below
+the trench. Five figures coming from the tree gained distinctness as
+they advanced, but it was a new-comer who demanded again,--
+
+"Where is Father Vincent de Paris? Did he not leave the camp with you?"
+
+The soldier went down directly where his gray capote might speak for
+itself to the eye, and the man who carried the stool pointed with it
+toward the evident friar.
+
+"There stands the friar behind thee. He hath been tumbled into the
+trench, I think."
+
+"Is your affair done?"
+
+"And well done, except that some cattle ran mad among us but now, and we
+thought a sally had been made, so we put out our torches."
+
+"With your stupid din," said the messenger from camp, "you will wake up
+the guns of the fort at the very moment when Sieur D'Aulnay would send
+his truce bearer in."
+
+"I thank the saints I am not like to be used for his agent," said the
+man who had been upset with the torches, "if the walls are to be stormed
+as they were this morning."
+
+"He wants Father Vincent de Paris," said the under officer from camp.
+"Good father, you took more license in coming hither than my lord
+intended."
+
+The soldier made some murmured noise under his cowl. He walked beside
+the officer and heard one man say to another behind him,--
+
+"These holy folks have more courage than men-at-arms. My lord was minded
+to throw this one out of the ship when he sailed from Port Royal."
+
+"The Sieur D'Aulnay hath too much respect to his religion to do that,"
+answered the other.
+
+"You had best move in silence," said the officer, turning his head
+toward them, and no further words broke the march into camp. D'Aulnay's
+camp was well above the reach of high tide, yet so near the river that
+soft and regular splashings seemed encroaching on the tents. The soldier
+noticed the batteries on their height, and counted as ably as he could
+for the cowl and night dimness the number of tents holding this little
+army. Far beyond them the palpitating waters showed changeful surfaces
+on Fundy Bay.
+
+The capote was long for him. He kept his hands within the sleeves.
+Before the guard-line was passed he saw in the middle of the camp an
+open tent. A long torch stood in front of it with the point stuck in the
+ground. The floating yellow blaze showed the tent's interior, its simple
+fittings for rest, the magnificent arms and garments of its occupant,
+and first of all, D'Aulnay de Charnisay himself, sitting with a rude
+camp table in front of him. He was half muffled in a furred cloak from
+the balm of that Easter night. Papers and an ink-horn were on the table,
+and two officers stood by, receiving orders.
+
+This governor of Acadia had a triangular face with square temples and
+pointed beard, its crisp fleece also concealing his mouth except the
+thin edges of his lips. It was a handsome nervous face of black tones;
+one that kept counsel, and was not without humor. He noticed his
+subordinate approaching with the friar. The men sent to execute Klussman
+were dispersed to their tents.
+
+"The Swiss hath suffered his punishment?" he inquired.
+
+"Yes, my lord D'Aulnay. I met the soldiers returning."
+
+"Did he say anything further concerning the state of the fort?"
+
+"I know not, my lord. But I will call the men to be questioned."
+
+"Let it be. He hath probably not lied in what he told me to-day of its
+weak garrison. But help is expected soon with La Tour. Perhaps he told
+more to the friar in their last conference."
+
+"Heretics do not confess, my lord."
+
+"True enough; but these churchmen have inquisitive minds which go into
+men's affairs without confession," said the governor of Acadia with a
+smile which lengthened slightly the thread-lines of his lips. D'Aulnay
+de Charnisay had an eye with a keen blue iris, sorting not at all with
+the pigments of his face. As he cast it on the returned friar his mere
+review deepened to a scrutiny used to detecting concealments.
+
+"Hath this Capuchin shrunk?" exclaimed D'Aulnay. "He is not as tall as
+he was."
+
+All present looked with quickened attention at the soldier, who expected
+them to pull off his cowl and expose a head of thrifty clusters which
+had never known the tonsure. His beaver cap lay in the trench with the
+real Father Vincent.
+
+He folded his arms on his breast with a gesture of patience which had
+its effect. D'Aulnay's followers knew the warfare between their seignior
+and Father Vincent de Paris, the only churchman in Acadia who insisted
+on bringing him to account; and who had found means to supplant a
+favorite priest on this expedition, for the purpose of watching him.
+D'Aulnay bore it with assumed good-humor. He had his religious scruples
+as well as his revenges and ambitions. But there were ways in which an
+intruding churchman could be martyred by irony and covert abuse, and by
+discomfort chargeable to the circumstances of war. Father Vincent de
+Paris, on his part, bore such martyrdom silently, but stinted no word of
+needed rebuke. A woman's mourning in the dusky tent next to D'Aulnay's
+now rose to such wildness of piteous cries as to divert even him from
+the shrinkage of Father Vincent's height. No other voice could be heard,
+comforting her. She was alone with sorrow in the midst of an army of
+fray-hardened men. A look of embarrassment passed over De Charnisay's
+face, and he said to the officer nearest him,--
+
+"Remove that woman to another part of the camp."
+
+"The Swiss's wife, my lord?"
+
+"The Swiss's widow, to speak exactly." He turned again with a frowning
+smile to the silent Capuchin. "By the proofs she gives, my kindness hath
+not been so great to that woman that the church need upbraid me."
+
+Marguerite came out of the tent at a peremptory word given by the
+officer at its opening. She did not look toward D'Aulnay de Charnisay,
+the power who had made her his foolish agent to the destruction of the
+man who loved her. Muffling her heartbroken cries she followed the
+subaltern away into darkness--she who had meant at all costs to be
+mistress of Penobscot. When distance somewhat relieved their ears,
+D'Aulnay took up a paper lying before him on the table and spoke in some
+haste to the friar.
+
+"You will go with escort to the walls of the fort, Father Vincent, and
+demand to speak with Madame La Tour. She hath, it appears, little
+aversion to being seen on the walls. Give into her hand this paper."
+
+The soldier under the cowl, dreading that his unbroken silence might be
+noted against him, made some muttering remonstrance, at which D'Aulnay
+laughed while tying the packet.
+
+"When churchmen go to war, Father Vincent, they must expect to share its
+risks, at least in offices of mediation. Look you: they tell me the
+Jesuits and missionaries of Quebec and Montreal are ever before the
+soldier in the march upon this New World. But Capuchins are a lazy,
+selfish order. They would lie at their ease in a monastery, exerting
+themselves only to spy upon their neighbors."
+
+He held out the packet. The soldier in the capote had to step forward to
+receive it, and D'Aulnay's eye fell upon the sandal advanced near the
+torch.
+
+"Come, this is not our Capuchin," he exclaimed grimly. "This man hath a
+foot whiter than my own!"
+
+The feeling that he was detected gave the soldier desperate boldness and
+scorn of all further caution. He stood erect and lifted his face. Though
+the folds of the cowl fell around it, the governor caught his
+contemptuous eye.
+
+"Wash thy heart as I have washed my feet, and it also will be white,
+D'Aulnay de Charnisay!"
+
+"There spoke the Capuchin," said D'Aulnay with a nod. His close face
+allowed itself some pleasure in baiting a friar, and if he had suspected
+Father Vincent of changed identity, his own men were not sure of his
+suspicion the next instant.
+
+"Our friar hath washed his feet," he observed insolently, pointing out
+the evident fact. "Such penance and ablution he hath never before put
+upon himself since he came to Acadia! I will set it down in my
+dispatches to the king, for his majesty will take pleasure in such
+news:--'Father Vincent de Paris, on this blessed Pâques day of the year
+1645, hath washed his feet.'"
+
+The men laughed in a half ashamed way which apologized to the holy man
+while it deferred to the master, and D'Aulnay dismissed his envoy with
+seriousness. The two officers who had taken his orders lighted another
+torch at the blaze in front of the tent, and led away the willing friar.
+D'Aulnay watched them down the avenue of lodges, and when their figures
+entered blurred space, watched the moving star which indicated their
+progress. The officer who had brought Father Vincent to this conference,
+also stood musing after them with unlaid suspicion.
+
+"Close my tent," said D'Aulnay, rising, "and set the table within."
+
+"My lord," spoke out the subordinate, "I did not tell you the men were
+thrown into confusion around the Swiss."
+
+"Well, monsieur?" responded D'Aulnay curtly, with an attentive eye.
+
+"There was a stampede of the cattle loosened from the stable. Father
+Vincent fell into the empty trench. They doubtless lost sight of him
+until he came out again."
+
+"Therefore, monsieur?"
+
+"It seemed to me as your lordship said, that this man scarce had the
+bearing of a friar, until, indeed, he spoke out in denunciation, and
+then his voice sounded a deeper tone than I ever heard in it before."
+
+"Why did you not tell me this directly?"
+
+"My lord, I had not thought it until he showed such readiness to move
+toward yon fort."
+
+"Did you examine the trench?"
+
+"No, my lord. I hurried the friar hither at your command."
+
+"It was the part of a prudent soldier," sneered his master, "to leave a
+dark trench possibly full of La Tour's recruits, and trot a friar into
+camp."
+
+"But the sentinels are there, monsieur, and they gave no alarm."
+
+"The sentinels are like you. They will think of giving an alarm
+to-morrow sunrise, when the fort is strengthened by a new garrison. Take
+a company of men, surround that trench, double the guards, send me back
+that friar, and do all with such haste as I have never seen thee show in
+my service yet."
+
+"Yes, my lord."
+
+While the officer ran among the tents, D'Aulnay walked back and forth
+outside, nervously impatient to have his men gone. He whispered with a
+laugh in his beard, "Charles de Menou, D'Aulnay de Charnisay, are you to
+be twice beaten by a woman? If La Tour hath come back with help and
+entered the fort, the siege may as well be raised to-morrow."
+
+The cowled soldier taxed his escort in the speed he made across that
+dark country separating camp and fortress.
+
+"Go softly, good father," remonstrated one of the officers, stumbling
+among stones. "The Sieur D'Aulnay meant not that we should break our
+necks at this business."
+
+But he led them with no abatement and a stern and offended mien;
+wondering secretly if the real Father Vincent would by this time be able
+to make some noise in the trench. Unaccountable night sounds startled
+the ear. He turned to the fortress ascent while the trench yet lay
+distant.
+
+"There is an easier way, father," urged one of the men, obliged,
+however, to follow him and bend to the task of climbing. The discomfort
+of treading stony soil in sandals, and the sensibility of his uncovered
+shins to even that soft night air, made him smile under the cowl. A
+sentinel challenged them and was answered by his companions. Passing on,
+they reached the wall near the gate. Here the hill sloped less abruptly
+than at the towered corner. The rocky foundation of Fort St. John made
+a moat impossible. Guards on the wall now challenged them, and the
+muzzles of three guns looked down, distinct eyes in the lifted
+torchlight, but at the sign of truce these were withdrawn.
+
+"The Sieur D'Aulnay de Charnisay sends this friar with dispatches to the
+lady of the fort," said one of the officers. "Call your lady to receive
+them into her own hand. These are our orders."
+
+"And put down a ladder," said the other officer, "that he may ascend
+with them."
+
+"We put down no ladders," answered the man leaning over the wall. "We
+will call our lady, but you must yourselves find an arm long enough to
+lift your dispatches to her."
+
+During this parley, the rush of men coming from the camp began to be
+heard. The guards on the wall listened, and two of them promptly trained
+the cannon in that direction.
+
+"You have come to surprise us again," taunted the third guard, leaning
+over the wall; "but the Swiss is not here now!"
+
+The soldier saw his escape was cut off, and desperately casting back his
+monk's hood, he shouted upwards,--
+
+"La Tour! La Tour! Put down the ladder--it is Edelwald!"
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+AN ACADIAN PASSOVER.
+
+
+At that name, down came a ladder as if shot from a catapult. Edelwald
+sprung up the rounds and both of D'Aulnay's officers seized him. He had
+drawn one of his long pistols and he clubbed it on their heads so that
+they staggered back. The sentinels and advancing men fired on him, but
+by some muscular flash he was flat upon the top of the wall, and the
+cannon sprung with a roar at his enemies. They were directly in its
+track, and they took to the trench. Edelwald, dragging the ladder up
+after him, laughed at the state in which they must find Father Vincent.
+The entire garrison rushed to the walls, and D'Aulnay's camp stirred
+with the rolling of drums. Then there was a pause, and each party
+waited further aggression from the other. The fort's gun had spoken but
+once. Perhaps some intelligence passed from trench to camp. Presently
+the unsuccessful company ventured from their breastwork and moved away,
+and both sides again had rest for the night.
+
+Madame La Tour stood in the fort, watching the action of her garrison
+outlined against the sky. She could no longer ascend the wall by her
+private stairs. Cannon shot had torn down her chimney and piled its rock
+in a barricade against the door. Sentinels were changed, and the
+relieved soldiers descended from the wall and returned to that great
+room of the tower which had been turned into a common camp. It seemed
+under strange enchantment. There was a hole beside the portrait of
+Claude La Tour, and through its tunnel starlight could be seen and the
+night air breathed in. The carved buffet was shattered. The usual log,
+however, burned in cheer, and families had reunited in distinct nests. A
+pavilion of tapestry was set up for Lady Dorinda and all her treasures,
+near the stairs: the southern window of her chamber had been made a
+target.
+
+Le Rossignol sat on a table, with the four expectant children still
+dancing in front of her. Was it not Pâques evening? The alarm being over
+she again began her merriest tunes. Irregular life in a besieged
+fortress had its fascination for the children. No bedtime laws could be
+enforced where the entire household stirred. But to Shubenacadie such
+turmoil was scandalous. He also lived in the hall during the day, and as
+late at night as his mistress chose, but he lived a retired life,
+squatted in a corner, hissing at all who passed near him. Perhaps he
+pined for water whereon to spread his wings and sail. Sometimes he
+quavered a plaintive remark on society as he found it, and sometimes he
+stretched up his neck to its longest length, a sinuous white serpent,
+and gazed wrathfully at the paneled ceiling. The firelight revealed him
+at this moment a bundle of glistening satin, wrapped in sleep and his
+wings from the alarms of war.
+
+Marie stood at the hearth to receive Edelwald. He came striding from
+among her soldiers, his head showing like a Roman's above the cowl. It
+was dark-eyed, shapely of feature, and with a mouth and inward curve
+above the chin so beautiful that their chiseled strength was always a
+surprise. As he faced the lady of the fortress he stood no taller than
+she did, but his contour was muscular.
+
+After dropping on his knee to kiss her hand, he stood up to bear the
+search of her eyes. They swept down his friar's dress and found it not
+so strange that it should supplant her immediate inquiry,--
+
+"Your news? My lord is well?"
+
+"Yes, my lady."
+
+"Is he without?"
+
+"My lady, he is at the outpost at the head of Fundy Bay."
+
+Her face whitened terribly. She knew what this meant. La Tour could get
+no help. Nicholas Denys denied him men. There was no hope of rescue for
+Fort St. John. He was waiting in the outpost for his ship to bring him
+home--the home besieged by D'Aulnay. The blood returned to her face with
+a rush, her mouth quivered, and she sobbed two or three times without
+tears. La Tour could have taken her in his arms. But Edelwald folded his
+empty arms across his breast.
+
+"My lady, I would rather be shot than bring you this message."
+
+"Klussman betrayed us, Edelwald! and I know I hurt men, hurt them with
+my own hands, striking and shooting on the wall!"
+
+She threw herself against the settle and shook with weeping. It was the
+revolt of womanhood. The soldier hung his head. It relieved him to
+declare savagely,--
+
+"Klussman hath his pay. D'Aulnay's followers have just hanged him below
+the fort."
+
+"Hanged him! Hanged poor Klussman? Edelwald, I cannot have
+Klussman--hanged!"
+
+Le Rossignol had stopped her mandolin, and the children clustered near
+Edelwald waiting for his notice. One of them now ran with the news to
+her.
+
+"Klussman is hanged," she repeated, changing her position on the table
+and laying the mandolin down. "Faith, we are never satisfied with our
+good. I am in a rage now because they hanged not the woman in his
+stead."
+
+Marie wiped off her tears. The black rings of sleeplessness around her
+eyes emphasized her loss of color, but she was beautiful.
+
+"How foolish doth weariness make a woman! I expected no help from
+Denys--yet rested my last hope on it. You must eat, Edelwald. By your
+dress and the alarm raised you have come into the fort through danger
+and effort."
+
+"My lady, if, you will permit me first to go to my room, I will find
+something which sorts better with a soldier than this churchman's gown.
+My buckskin, I was obliged to mutilate to make me a proper friar."
+
+"Go, assuredly. But I know not what rubbish the cannon of D'Aulnay have
+battered down in your room. The monk's frock will scarce feel lonesome
+in that part of our tower now: we have had two Jesuits to lodge there
+since you left."
+
+"Did they carry away Madame Bronck? I do not see her among your women."
+
+"She is fortunate, Edelwald. A man loved her, and traveled hither from
+the Orange settlement. They were wed five days ago, and set out with the
+Jesuits to Montreal."
+
+Marie did not lift her heavy eyelids while she spoke, and anguish passed
+unseen across Edelwald's face. Whoever was loved and fortunate, he stood
+outside of such experience. He was young, but there was to be no wooing
+for him in the world, however long war might spare him. The women of the
+fort waited with their children for his notice. His stirring to turn
+toward them rustled a paper under his capote.
+
+"My lady," he said pausing, "D'Aulnay had me in his camp and gave me
+dispatches to you."
+
+"You were there in this friar's dress?"
+
+Marie looked sincerely the pride she took in his simple courage.
+
+"Yes, my lady, though much against my will. I was obliged to knock down
+a reverend shaveling and strip him. But the gown hath served fairly for
+the trouble."
+
+"Hath D'Aulnay many men?"
+
+"He is well equipped."
+
+Edelwald took the packet from his belt and gave it to her. Marie broke
+the thread and sat down on the settle, spreading D'Aulnay's paper to the
+firelight. She read it in silence, and handed it to Edelwald. He leaned
+toward the fire and read it also.
+
+D'Aulnay de Charnisay demanded the surrender of Fort St. John with all
+its stores, ammunition, moneys and plate, and its present small
+garrison. When Edelwald looked up, Marie extended her hand for the
+dispatch and threw it into the fire.
+
+"Let that be his answer," said Edelwald.
+
+"If we surrender," spoke the lady of the fort, "we will make our own
+terms."
+
+"My lady, you will not surrender."
+
+As she looked at Edelwald, the comfort of having him there softened the
+resolute lines of her face into childlike curves. Being about the same
+age she felt always a youthful comradeship with him. Her eyes again
+filled.
+
+"Edelwald, we have lost ten men."
+
+"D'Aulnay has doubtless lost ten or twenty times as many."
+
+"What are men to him? Cattle, which he can buy. But to us, they are
+priceless. To say nothing of your rank, Edelwald, you alone are worth
+more than all the armies D'Aulnay can muster."
+
+He sheltered his face with one hand as if the fire scorched him.
+
+"My lady, Sieur Charles would have us hold this place. Consider: it is
+his last fortress except that stockade."
+
+"You mistake him, Edelwald. He would save the garrison and let the fort
+go. If he or you had not come to-night I must have died of my
+troubles."
+
+She conquered some sobbing, and asked, "How does he bear this despair,
+Edelwald? for he knew it must come to this without help."
+
+"He was heartsick with anxiety to return, my lady."
+
+She leaned against the back of the settle.
+
+"Do not say things to induce me to sacrifice his men for his fort."
+
+"Do you think, my lady, that D'Aulnay would spare the garrison if he
+gets possession of this fort?"
+
+"On no other condition will he get the fort. He shall let all my brave
+men go out with the honors of war."
+
+"But if he accepts such terms--will he keep them?"
+
+"Is not any man obliged to keep a written treaty?"
+
+"Kings are scarce obliged to do that."
+
+"I see what you would do," said Marie, "and I tell you it is useless.
+You would frighten me with D'Aulnay into allowing you, our only
+officer, and these men, our only soldiers, to ransom this fort with your
+lives. It comes to that. We might hold out a few more days and end by
+being at his mercy."
+
+"Let the men themselves be spoken to," entreated Edelwald.
+
+"They will all, like you, beg to give themselves to the holding of
+Charles La Tour's property. I have balanced these matters night and day.
+We must surrender, Edelwald. We must surrender to-morrow."
+
+"My lady, I am one more man. And I will now take charge of the defense."
+
+"And what could I say to my lord if you were killed?--you, the friend of
+his house, the soldier who lately came with such hopes to Acadia. Our
+fortunes do you harm enough, Edelwald. I could never face my lord again
+without you and his men."
+
+"Sieur Charles loves me well enough to trust me with his most dangerous
+affairs, my lady. The keeping of this fortress shall be one of them."
+
+"O Edelwald, go away from me now!" she cried out piteously. He dropped
+his head and turned on the instant. The women met him and the children
+hung to him; and that little being who was neither woman nor child so
+resented the noise which they made about him as he approached her table
+that she took her mandolin and swept them out of her way.
+
+"How fares Shubenacadie?" he inquired over the claw she presented to
+him.
+
+"Shubenacadie's feathers are curdled. He hath greatly soured. Confess me
+and give me thy benediction, Father Edelwald for I have sinned."
+
+"Not since I took these orders, I hope," said Edelwald. "As a Capuchin I
+am only an hour old."
+
+"Within the hour, then, I have beaten my swan, bred a quarrel amongst
+these spawn of the common soldier, and wished a woman hanged."
+
+"A naughty list," said Edelwald.
+
+"Yes, but lying is worse than any of these. Lying doth make the soul
+sick."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"I have tried it," said Le Rossignol. "Many a time have I tried it.
+Scarce half an hour ago I told her forlorn old highness that the fort
+was surely taken this time, and I think she hath buried herself in her
+chest."
+
+"Edelwald," said a voice from the tapestried pavilion. Lady Dorinda's
+head and hand appeared, with the curtains drawn behind them.
+
+As the soldier bent to his service upon the hand of the old maid of
+honor, she exclaimed whimsically,--
+
+"What, Edelwald! Are our fortunes at such ebb that you are taking to a
+Romish cloister?"
+
+"No cloister for me. Your ladyship sees only a cover which I think of
+rendering to its owner again. He may not have a second capote in the
+world, being friar extraordinary to D'Aulnay de Charnisay, who is
+notable for seizing other men's goods."
+
+"Edelwald, you bring ill news?"
+
+"There was none other to bring."
+
+"Is Charles La Tour then in such straits that we are to have no relief
+in this fortress?"
+
+"We can look for nothing, Lady Dorinda."
+
+"Thou seest now, Edelwald, how France requites his service. If he had
+listened to his father he might to-day be second to none in Acadia, with
+men and wealth in abundance."
+
+"Yet, your ladyship, we love our France!"
+
+"Oh, you do put me out of patience! But the discomforts and perils of
+this siege have scarce left me any. We are walled together here like
+sheep."
+
+"It is trying, your ladyship, but if we succeed in keeping the butcher
+out we may do better presently."
+
+Marie sent her woman for writing tools, and was busy with them when
+Edelwald returned in his ordinary rich dark dress. She made him a place
+beside her on the settle, and submitted the paper to his eye. The women
+and children listened. They knew their situation was desperate.
+Whispering together they decided with their lady that she would do best
+to save her soldiers and sacrifice the fort.
+
+Edelwald read the terms she intended to demand, and then looked aside at
+the beautiful and tender woman who had borne the hardships of war. She
+should do anything she wished. It was worth while to surrender if
+surrendering decreased her care. All Acadia was nothing when weighed
+against her peace of mind. He felt his rage mounting against Charles La
+Tour for leaving her exposed in this frontier post, the instrument of
+her lord's ambition and political feud. In Edelwald's silent and
+unguessed warfare with his secret, he had this one small half hour's
+truce. Marie sat under his eyes in firelight, depending on the comfort
+of his presence. Rapture opened its sensitive flower and life
+culminated for him. Unconscious of it, she wrote down his suggestions,
+bending her head seriously to the task.
+
+Edelwald himself finally made a draft of the paper for D'Aulnay. The
+weary men had thrown themselves down to sleep, and heard no colloquy.
+But presently the cook was aroused from among them and bid to set out
+such a feast as he had never before made in Fort St. John.
+
+"Use of our best supplies," directed Marie. "To-morrow we may give up
+all we have remaining to the enemy. We will eat a great supper together
+this Pâques night."
+
+The cook took an assistant and labored well. Kettles and pans multiplied
+on coals raked out for their service. Marie had the men bring such doors
+as remained from the barracks and lay them from table to table, making
+one long board for her household; and this the women dressed in the best
+linen of the house. They set on plate which had been in La Tour's
+family for generations. Every accumulation of prosperity was brought out
+for this final use. The tunnel in the wall was stopped with blankets,
+and wax candles were lighted everywhere. Odors of festivity filled the
+children with eagerness. It was like the new year when there was always
+merry-making in the hall, yet it was also like a religious ceremony. The
+men rose from their pallets and set aside screens, and the news was
+spread when sentinels were changed.
+
+Marie called Zélie up to her ruined apartment, and standing amidst stone
+and plaster, was dressed in her most magnificent gown and jewels. She
+appeared on the stairs in the royal blackness of velvet whitened by
+laces and sparkling with points of tinted fire. Edelwald led her to the
+head of the long board, and she directed her people to range themselves
+down its length in the order of their families.
+
+"My men," said Madame La Tour to each party in turn as they were
+relieved on the walls to sit down at the table below her, "we are
+holding a passover supper this Pâques night because it may be our last
+night in Fort St. John. You all understand how Sieur de la Tour hath
+fared. We are reduced to the last straits. Yet not to the last straits,
+my men, if we can keep you. With such followers your lord can make some
+stand elsewhere. D'Aulnay has proposed a surrender. I refused his terms,
+and have set down others, which will sacrifice the fort but save the
+garrison. Edelwald, our only officer, is against surrender, because he,
+like yourselves, would give the greater for the less, which I cannot
+allow."
+
+"My lady," spoke Glaud Burge, a sturdy grizzled man, rising to speak for
+the first squad, "we have been talking of this matter together, and we
+think Edelwald is right. The fort is hard beset, and it is true there
+are fewer of us than at first, but we may hold out somehow and keep the
+walls around us. We have no stomach to strike flag to D'Aulnay de
+Charnisay."
+
+"My lady," spoke Jean le Prince, the youngest man in the fortress, who
+was appointed to speak for the second squad when their turn came to sit
+down at the table, "we also think Edelwald is right in counseling you
+not to give up Fort St. John. We say nothing of D'Aulnay's hanging
+Klussman, for Klussman deserved it. But we would rather be shot down man
+by man than go out by the grace of D'Aulnay."
+
+She answered both squads,--
+
+"Do not argue against surrender, my men. We can look for no help. The
+fort must go in a few more days anyhow, and by capitulating we can make
+terms. My lord can build other forts, but where will he find other
+followers like you? You will march out not by the grace of D'Aulnay but
+with the honors of war. Now speak of it no more, and let us make this a
+festival."
+
+So they made it a festival. With guards coming and going constantly,
+every man took the pleasure of the hall while the walls were kept.
+
+Such a night was never before celebrated in Fort St. John. A heavier
+race might have touched the sadness underlying such gayety; or have
+fathomed moonlight to that terrible burden of the elm-tree down the
+slope. But this French garrison lent themselves heartily to the hour,
+enjoying without past or future. Stories were told of the New World and
+of France, tales of persecuted Huguenots, legends which their fathers
+had handed down to them, and traditions picked up among the Indians.
+Edelwald took the dwarf's mandolin and stood up among them singing the
+songs they loved, the high and courageous songs, loving songs, and songs
+of faith. Lady Dorinda, having shut her curtain for the night, declined
+to take any part in this household festivity, though she contributed
+some unheard sighs and groans of annoyance during its progress. A
+phlegmatic woman, fond of her ease, could hardly keep her tranquillity,
+besieged by cannon in the daytime, and by chattering and laughter, the
+cracking of nuts and the thump of soldiers' feet half the night.
+
+But Shubenacadie came out of his corner and lifted his wings for battle.
+Le Rossignol first soothed him and then betrayed him into shoes of birch
+bark which she carried in her pocket for the purpose of making
+Shubenacadie dance. Shubenacadie began to dance in a wild untutored trot
+most laughable to see. He varied his paddling on the flags by sallies
+with bill and wings against the dear mistress who made him a spectacle;
+and finally at Marie's word he was relieved, and waddled back to his
+corner to eat and doze and mutter swan talk against such orgies in Fort
+St. John. The children had long fallen asleep with rapturous fatigue,
+when Marie stood up and made her people follow her in a prayer. The
+waxlights were then put out, screens divided the camp, and quiet
+followed.
+
+Of all nights in Le Rossignol's life this one seemed least likely to be
+chosen as her occasion for a flight. The walls were strictly guarded,
+and at midnight the moon spread its ghostly day over all visible earth.
+Besides, if the fortress was to be surrendered, there was immediate
+prospect of a voyage for all the household.
+
+The dwarf's world was near the ground, to which the thinking of the tall
+men and women around her scarcely stooped. But she seized on and weighed
+and tried their thoughts, arriving at shrewd issues. Nobody had asked
+her advice about the capitulation. Without asking anybody's advice she
+decided that the Hollandais Van Corlaer and the Jesuit priest Father
+Jogues would be wholesome checks upon D'Aulnay de Charnisay when her
+lady opened the fort to him. The weather must have prevented Van Corlaer
+from getting beyond the sound of cannon, and neither he nor the priest
+could indifferently leave the lady of St. John to her fate, and Madame
+Antonia would refuse to do it. Le Rossignol believed the party that had
+set out early in the week must be encamped not far away.
+
+Edelwald mounted a bastion with the sentinels. That weird light of the
+moon which seems the faded and forgotten ghost of day, rested
+everywhere. The shadow of the tower fell inward, and also partly covered
+the front wall. This enchanted land of night cooled Edelwald. He threw
+his arms upward with a passionate gesture to which the soldiers had
+become accustomed in their experience of the young chevalier.
+
+"What is that?" exclaimed the man nearest him, for there was disturbance
+in the opposite bastion. Edelwald moved at once across the interval of
+wall and found the sentinels in that bastion divided between laughter
+and superstitious awe.
+
+"She's out again," said one.
+
+"Who is out?" demanded Edelwald.
+
+"The little swan-riding witch."
+
+"You have not let the dwarf scale this wall? If she could do that
+unobserved, my men, we are lax."
+
+"She is one who will neither be let nor hindered. We are scarce sure we
+even saw her. There was but the swoop of wings."
+
+"Why, Renot, my lad," insisted Edelwald, "we could see her white swan
+now in this noon of moonlight, if she were abroad. Besides, D'Aulnay has
+sentinels stationed around this height. They will check her."
+
+"They will check the wind across Fundy Bay first," said the other man.
+
+"You cannot think Le Rossignol has risen in the air on her swan's back?
+That is too absurd," said Edelwald. "No one ever saw her play such
+pranks. And you could have winged the heavy bird as he rose."
+
+"I know she is out of Fort St. John at this minute," insisted Renot
+Babinet. "And how are you to wing a bird which gets out of sight before
+you know what has happened?"
+
+"I say it is no wonder we have trouble in this seigniory," growled the
+other man. "Our lady never could see a mongrel baby or a witch dwarf or
+a stray black gown anywhere, but she must have it into the fort and make
+it free of the best here."
+
+"And God forever bless her," said Edelwald, baring his head.
+
+"Amen," they both responded with force.
+
+The silent cry was mighty behind Edelwald's lips;--the cry which he
+intrusted not even to his human breath--
+
+"My love--my love! My royal lady! God, thou who alone knowest my secret,
+make me a giant to hold it down!"
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+THE SONG OF EDELWALD.
+
+
+At daybreak a signal on the wall where it could be seen from D'Aulnay's
+camp brought an officer and his men to receive Madame La Tour's
+dispatches. Glaud Burge handed them, down at the end of a ramrod.
+
+"But see yonder," he said to François Bastarack his companion, as they
+stood and watched the messengers tramp away. He pointed to Klussman
+below the fort--poor Klussman whom the pearly vapors of morning could
+not conceal. "I could have done that myself in first heat, but I like
+not treating with a man who did it coolly."
+
+Parleying and demurring over the terms of surrender continued until
+noon. All that time ax, saw and hammer worked in D'Aulnay's camp as if
+he had suddenly taken to ship-building. But the pastimes of a victorious
+force are regarded with dull attention by the vanquished. Finally the
+papers were handed up bearing D'Aulnay's signature. They guaranteed to
+Madame La Tour the safety of her garrison, who were to march out with
+their arms and personal belongings, the household goods of her people;
+and La Tour's ship with provisions enough to stock it for a voyage. The
+money, merchandise, stores, jewels and ordnance fell to D'Aulnay with
+the fort.
+
+D'Aulnay marched directly on his conquest. His drums approached, and the
+garrison ran to throw into a heap such things as they and their families
+were to take away. Spotless weather and a dimpled bay adorned this lost
+seigniory. It was better than any dukedom in France to these first
+exiled Acadians. Pierre Doucett's widow and another bereaved woman knelt
+to cry once more over the trench by the powder-house. Her baby, hid in a
+case like a bolster, hung across her shoulder. Lady Dorinda's
+belongings, numbered among the goods of the household, were also placed
+near the gate. She sat within the hall, wrapped for her journey,
+composed and silent. For when the evil day actually overtook Lady
+Dorinda, she was too thorough a Briton to cringe. She met her second
+repulse from Acadia as she had met her first, when Claude La Tour found
+her his only consolation. In this violent uprooting of family life so
+long grown to one place, Le Rossignol was scarcely missed. Each one
+thought of the person dearest to himself and of that person's comfort.
+Marie noted her absence, but the dwarf never came to harm. She was
+certain to rejoin the household somewhere, and who could blame her for
+avoiding the capitulation if she found it possible? The little
+Nightingale could not endure pain. Edelwald drew the garrison up in line
+and the gates were opened.
+
+D'Aulnay entered the fort with his small army. He was splendidly
+dressed, and such pieces of armor as he wore dazzled the eye. As he
+returned the salute of Edelwald and the garrison, he paused and whitened
+with chagrin. Klussman had told him something of the weakness of the
+place, but he had not expected to find such a pitiful remnant of men.
+Twenty-three soldiers and an officer! These were the precious creatures
+who had cost him so much, and whom their lady was so anxious to save! He
+smiled at the disproportionate preparations made by his hammers and
+saws, and glanced back to see if the timbers were being carried in. They
+were, at the rear of his force, but behind them intruded Father Vincent
+de Paris wrapped in a blanket which one of the soldiers had provided for
+him. The scantiness of this good friar's apparel should have restrained
+him in camp. But he was such an apostle as stalks naked to duty if need
+be, and he felt it his present duty to keep the check of religion upon
+the implacable nature of D'Aulnay de Charnisay.
+
+D'Aulnay ordered the gates shut. He would have shut out Father Vincent,
+but it could not be managed without great discourtesy, and there are
+limits to that with a churchman. The household and garrison ready to
+depart saw this strange action with dismay, and Marie stepped directly
+down from her hall to confront her enemy. D'Aulnay had seen her at Port
+Royal when he first came to Acadia. He remembered her motion in the
+dance, and approved of it. She was a beautiful woman, though her
+Huguenot gown and close cap now gave her a widowed look--becoming to a
+woman of exploits. But she was also the woman to whom he owed one defeat
+and much humiliation.
+
+He swept his plume at her feet.
+
+"Permit me, Madame La Tour, to make my compliments to an amazon. My own
+taste are women who stay in the house at their prayers, but the Sieur de
+la Tour and I differ in many things."
+
+"Doubtless, my lord De Charnisay," responded Marie with the dignity
+which cannot taunt, though she still believed the outcast child to be
+his. "But why have you closed on us the gates which we opened to you?"
+
+"Madame, I have been deceived in the terms of capitulation."
+
+"My lord, the terms of capitulation were set down plainly and I hold
+them signed by your hand."
+
+"But a signature is nothing when gross advantage hath been taken of one
+of the parties to a treaty."
+
+The mistake she had made in trusting to the military honor of D'Aulnay
+de Charnisay swept through Marie. But she controlled her voice to
+inquire,--
+
+"What gross advantage can there be, my lord D'Aulnay--unless you are
+about to take a gross advantage of us? We leave you here ten thousand
+pounds of the money of England, our plate and jewels and furs, and our
+stores except a little food for a journey. We go out poor; yet if our
+treaty is kept we shall complain of no gross advantage."
+
+"Look at those men," said D'Aulnay, shaking his glove at her soldiers.
+
+"Those weary and faithful men," said Marie: "I see them."
+
+"You will see them hanged as traitors, madame. I have no time to
+parley," exclaimed D'Aulnay. "The terms of capitulation are not
+satisfactory to me. I do not feel bound by them. You may take your women
+and withdraw when you please, but these men I shall hang."
+
+While he spoke he lifted and shook his hand as if giving a signal, and
+the garrison was that instant seized, by his soldiers. Her women
+screamed. There was such a struggle in the fort as there had been upon
+the wall, except that she herself stood blank in mind, and pulseless.
+The actual and the unreal shimmered together. But there stood her
+garrison, from Edelwald to Jean le Prince, bound like criminals,
+regarding their captors with that baffled and half ashamed look of the
+surprised and overpowered. Above the mass of D'Aulnay's busy soldiery
+timber uprights were reared, and hammers and spikes set to work on the
+likeness of a scaffold. The preparations of the morning made the
+completion of this task swift and easy. D'Aulnay de Charnisay intended
+to hang her garrison when he set his name to the paper securing their
+lives. The ringing of hammers sounded far off to Marie.
+
+"I don't understand these things," she articulated. "I don't understand
+anything in the world!"
+
+D'Aulnay gave himself up to watching the process, in spite of Father
+Vincent de Paris, whose steady remonstrances he answered only by shrugs.
+In that age of religious slaughter the Capuchin could scarcely object to
+decreasing heretics, but he did object as a man and a priest to such
+barbarous treachery toward men with whom a compact had been made. The
+refined nurture of France was not recent in D'Aulnay's experience, but
+he came of a great and honorable house, and the friar's appeal was made
+to inherited instincts.
+
+"Good churchman," spoke out Jean le Prince, the lad, shaking his hair
+back from his face, "your capote and sandals lie there by the door of
+the tower, where Edelwald took thought to place them for you. But you
+who have the soldier's heart should wear the soldier's dress, and hide
+D'Aulnay de Charnisay under the cowl."
+
+"You men-at-arms," Glaud Burge exhorted the guards drawn up, on each
+side of him and his fellow-prisoners, "will you hang us up like dogs? If
+we must die we claim the death of soldiers. You have your pieces in your
+hands; shoot us. Do us such grace as we would do you in like extremity."
+
+The guards looked aside at each other and then at their master, shamed
+through their peasant blood by the outrage they were obliged to put upon
+a courageous garrison. But Edelwald said nothing. His eyes were upon
+Marie. He would not increase her anguish of self-reproach by the change
+of a muscle in his face. The garrison was trapped and at the mercy of a
+merciless enemy. His most passionate desire was to have her taken away
+that she might not witness the execution. Why was Sieur Charles La Tour
+sitting in the stockade at the head of Fundy Bay while she must endure
+the sight of this scaffold?
+
+Marie's women knelt around her crying. Her slow distracted gaze traveled
+from Glaud Burge to Jean le Prince, from Renot Babinet to François
+Bastarack, from Ambroise Tibedeaux along the line of stanch faces to
+Edelwald. His calm uplifted countenance--with the horrible platform of
+death growing behind it--looked, as it did when he happily met the sea
+wind or went singing through trackless wilderness. She broke from her
+trance and the ring of women, and ran before D'Aulnay de Charnisay.
+
+"My lord," said Marie--and she was so beautiful in her ivory pallor, so
+wonderful with fire moving from the deep places of her dilated black
+eyes that he felt satisfaction in attending to her--"it is useless to
+talk to a man like you."
+
+"Quite, madame," said D'Aulnay. "I never discuss affairs with a woman."
+
+"But you may discuss them with the king when he learns that you have
+hanged with other soldiers of a ransomed garrison a young officer of the
+house of De Born."
+
+D'Aulnay ran his eye along the line. The unrest of Edelwald at Marie's
+slightest parley with D'Aulnay reminded the keen governor of the face he
+had last night seen under the cowl.
+
+"The king will be obliged to me," he observed, "when one less heretical
+De Born cumbers his realm."
+
+"The only plea I make to you, my lord D'Aulnay, is that you hang me
+also. For I deserve it. My men had no faith in your military honor, and
+I had."
+
+"Madame, you remind me of a fact I desired to overlook. You are indeed a
+traitor deserving death. But of my clemency, and not because you are a
+woman, for you yourself have forgotten that in meddling with war, I will
+only parade you upon the scaffold as a reprieved criminal. Bring hither
+a cord," called D'Aulnay, "and noose it over this lady's head." Edelwald
+raged in a hopeless tearing at his bonds. The guards seized him, but he
+struggled with unconquered strength to reach and protect his lady.
+Father Vincent de Paris had taken his capote and sandals at Jean le
+Prince's hint, and entered the tower. He clothed himself behind one of
+the screens of the hall, and thought his absence short, but during that
+time Marie was put upon the finished scaffold. A skulking reluctant
+soldier of D'Aulnay's led her by a cord. She walked the long rough
+planks erect. Her garrison to a man looked down, as they did at
+funerals, and Edelwald sobbed in his fight against the guards, the tears
+starting from under his eyelids as he heard her foot-fall pass near him.
+Back and forth she trod, and D'Aulnay watched the spectacle. Her
+garrison felt her degradation as she must feel their death. The grizzled
+lip of Glaud Burge moved first to comfort her.
+
+"My lady, though our hands be tied, we make our military salute to you,"
+he said.
+
+"Fret not, my lady," said Renot Babinet.
+
+"Edelwald can turn all these mishaps into a song, my lady," declared
+Jean le Prince. Marie had that sensation of lost identity which has
+confused us all. In her walk she passed the loops dangling ready for her
+men. A bird, poised for one instant on the turret, uttered a sweet long
+trill. She could hear the river. It was incredible that all those
+unknown faces should be swarming below her; that the garrison was
+obliged to stand tied; that Lady Dorinda had braved the rabble of
+soldiery and come out to wait weeping at the scaffold end. Marie looked
+at the row of downcast faces. The bond between these faithful soldiers
+and herself was that instant sublime.
+
+"I crave pardon of you all," said Marie as she came back and the rustle
+of her gown again passed them, "for not knowing how to deal with the
+crafty of this world. My foolishness has brought you to this scaffold."
+
+"No, my lady," said the men in full chorus.
+
+"We desire nothing better, my lady," said Edelwald, "since your walking
+there has blessed it."
+
+Father Vincent's voice from the tower door arrested the spectacle. His
+cowl was pushed back to his shoulders, baring the astonishment of his
+lean face.
+
+"This is the unworthiest action of your life, my son De Charnisay," he
+denounced, shaking his finger and striding down at the governor, who
+owned the check by a slight grimace.
+
+"It is enough," said D'Aulnay. "Let the scaffold now be cleared for the
+men."
+
+He submitted with impatience to a continued parley with the Capuchin.
+Father Vincent de Paris was angry. And constantly as D'Aulnay walked
+from him he zealously followed.
+
+The afternoon sunlight sloped into the walls, leaving a bank of shadow
+behind the timbered framework, which extended an etching of itself
+toward the esplanade. The lengthened figures of soldiers passed also in
+cloudy images along the broken ground, for a subaltern's first duty had
+been to set guards upon the walls. The new master of Fort St. John was
+now master of all southern and western Acadia; but he had heard nothing
+which secured him against La Tour's return with fresh troops.
+
+"My friends," said D'Aulnay, speaking to the garrison, "this good friar
+persuades in me more softness than becomes a faithful servant of the
+king. One of your number I will reprieve."
+
+"Then let it be Jean le Prince," said Edelwald, speaking for the first
+time to D'Aulnay de Charnisay. "The down has not yet grown on the lad's
+lip."
+
+"But I pardon him," continued the governor, "on condition that he hangs
+the rest of you."
+
+"Hang thyself!" cried the boy. "Thou art the only man on earth I would
+choke with a rope."
+
+"Will no one be reprieved?"
+
+D'Aulnay's eye, traveled from scorn to scorn along the row.
+
+"It is but the pushing aside of a slab. They are all stubborn heretics,
+Father Vincent. We waste time. I should be inspecting the contents of
+this fort."
+
+The women and children were flattening themselves like terrified
+swallows against the gate; for through the hum of stirring soldiery
+penetrated to them from outside a hint of voices not unknown. The
+sentinels had watched a party approaching; but it was so small, and
+hampered, moreover, by a woman and some object like a tiny gilded sedan
+chair, that they did not notify the governor. One of the party was a
+Jesuit priest by his cassock, and another his donné. These never came
+from La Tour. Another was a tall Hollandais; and two servants lightly
+carried the sedan up the slope. A few more people seemed to wait behind
+for the purpose of making a camp, and there were scarce a dozen of the
+entire company.
+
+Marie had borne without visible exhaustion the labors of this siege, the
+anguish of treachery and disappointment, her enemy's breach of faith and
+cruel parade of her. The garrison were ranged ready upon the plank; but
+she held herself in tense control, and waited beside Lady Dorinda, with
+her back toward the gate, while her friends outside parleyed with her
+enemy. D'Aulnay refused to admit any one until he had dealt with the
+garrison. The Jesuit was reported to him as Father Isaac Jogues, and the
+name had its effect, as it then had everywhere among people of the Roman
+faith. No soldier would be surprised at meeting a Jesuit priest anywhere
+in the New World. But D'Aulnay begged Father Jogues to excuse him while
+he finished a moment's duty, and he would then come out and escort his
+guest into the fortress.
+
+The urgent demand, however, of a missionary to whom even the king had
+shown favor, was not to be denied. D'Aulnay had the gates set ajar; and
+pushing through their aperture came in Father Jogues with his donné and
+two companions.
+
+The governor advanced in displeasure. He would have put out all but the
+priest, but the gates were slammed to prevent others from entering, and
+slammed against the chair in which the sentinels could see a red-headed
+dwarf. The weird melody of her screaming threats kept them dubious while
+they grinned. The gates being shut, Marie fled through ranks of
+men-at-arms to Antonia, clung to her and gave Father Jogues and Van
+Corlaer no time to stand aghast at the spectacle they saw. Crying and
+trembling, she put back the sternness of D'Aulnay de Charnisay, and the
+pity of Father Vincent de Paris, and pleaded with Father Jogues and the
+Hollandais for the lives of her garrison as if they had come with
+heavenly authority.
+
+"You see them with ropes around their necks, Monsieur Corlaer and
+Monsieur Jogues, when here is the paper the governor signed,
+guaranteeing to me their safety. Edelwald is scarce half a year from
+France. Speak to the governor of Acadia; for you, Monsieur Corlaer, are
+a man of affairs, and this good missionary is a saint--you can move
+D'Aulnay de Charnisay to see it is not the custom, even in warfare with
+women, to trap and hang a garrison who has made honorable surrender."
+
+A man may resolve that he will not meddle with his neighbor's feuds, or
+involve a community dependent on him with any one's formidable enemy.
+Yet he will turn back from his course the moment an appeal is made for
+his help, and face that enemy as Van Corlaer faced the governor of
+Acadia, full of the fury roused by outrage. But what could he and Father
+Jogues and the persevering Capuchin say to the parchment which the
+governor now deigned to pass from hand to hand among them in reply?--the
+permission of Louis XIII. to his beloved D'Aulnay de Charnisay (whom God
+hold in His keeping) to take the Fort of St. John and deal with its
+rebellious garrison as seemed to him fit, for which destruction of
+rebels his sovereign would have him in loving remembrance.
+
+During all this delay Edelwald stood with his beautiful head erect above
+the noose, and his self-repressed gaze still following Marie. The wives
+of other soldiers were wailing for their husbands. But he must die
+without wife, without love. He saw Antonia holding her and weeping with
+her. His blameless passion filled him like a great prayer. That changing
+phantasm which we call the world might pass from before his men and him
+at the next breath; yet the brief last song of the last troubadour burst
+from his lips to comfort the lady of Fort St. John.
+
+There was in this jubilant cry a gush and grandeur of power outmastering
+force of numbers and brute cunning. It reached and compelled every
+spirit in the fortress. The men in line with him stood erect and lifted
+their firm jaws, and gazed forward with shining eyes. Those who had
+faded in the slightest degree from their natural flush of blood felt the
+strong throbs which paint a man's best on his face. They could not sing
+the glory of death in duty, the goodness of God who gave love and valor
+to man; but they could die with Edelwald.
+
+The new master of Fort St. John was jealous of such dying as the song
+ceased and he lifted his hand to signal his executioners. Father Jogues
+turned away praying with tremulous lips. The Capuchin strode toward the
+hall. But Van Corlaer and Lady Dorinda and Antonia held with the
+strength of all three that broken-hearted woman who struggled like a
+giantess with her arms stretched toward the scaffold.
+
+"I _will_ save them--I _will_ save them! My brave Edelwald--all my brave
+soldiers shall not die!--Where are my soldiers, Antonia? It is dark. I
+cannot see them any more!"
+
+
+
+
+POSTLUDE.
+
+A TIDE-CREEK.
+
+
+When ordinary days had settled flake on flake over this tragedy in
+Acadia until memory looked back at it as at the soft outlines of a
+snow-obliterated grave, Madame Van Corlaer stood one evening beside the
+Hudson River, and for half an hour breathed again the salt breath of
+Fundy Bay. Usually she was abed at that hour. But Mynheer had been
+expected all day on a sailing vessel from New Amsterdam, and she could
+not resist coming down once more through her garden to the wharf.
+
+Van Corlaer's house, the best stone mansion in Rensselaerswyck--that
+overflow of settlement around the stockade of Fort Orange--stood up the
+slope, and had its farm appended. That delight of Dutchmen, an ample
+garden, extended its central path almost like an avenue to the river.
+Antonia need scarcely step off her own domain to meet her husband at the
+wharf. She had lingered down the garden descent; for sweet herbs were
+giving their souls to the summer night there; and not a cloud of a sail
+yet appeared on the river. Some fishing-boats lay at the wharf, but no
+men were idling around under the full moon. It was pleasanter to visit
+and smoke from door to door in the streets above.
+
+Antonia was not afraid of any savage ambush. Her husband kept the
+Iroquois on friendly terms with the settlement. The years through which
+she had borne her dignity of being Madame Van Corlaer constantly
+increased her respect for that colonial statesman. The savages in the
+Mohawk valley used the name Corlaer when they meant governor. Antonia
+felt sure that the Jesuit missionary, Father Isaac Jogues, need not have
+died a martyr's death if Van Corlaer had heard in time of his return to
+the Mohawks.
+
+At the bottom of her garden she rested her hands upon a gate in the low
+stone wall. The mansion behind her was well ordered and prosperous. No
+drop of milk was spilled in Antonia's domain without her knowledge. She
+had noted, as she came down the path, how the cabbages were rounding
+their delicately green spheres. Antonia was a housewife for whom maids
+labored with zeal. She could manipulate so deftly the comfort-making
+things of life. Neither sunset nor moonrise quite banished the dreamy
+blue light on these rolling lands around the head-waters of the Hudson.
+Across her tranquil commonplace happiness blew suddenly that ocean
+breath from Fundy Bay; for the dwarf of Fort St. John, leading a white
+waddling bird, whose feathers even in that uncertain light showed soil,
+appeared from the screening masonry of the wall.
+
+She stood still and looked at Antonia; and Antonia inside the gate
+looked at her. That instant was a bubble full of revolving dyes. It
+brought a thousand pictures to Antonia's sight. Thus silently had that
+same dwarf with her swan appeared to a camp in the Acadian woods,
+announcing trouble at Fort St. John.
+
+Again Antonia lived through confusion which was like pillage of the
+fort. Again she sat in her husband's tent, holding Marie's dying head on
+her arm while grief worked its swift miracle in a woman formed to such
+fullness of beauty and strength. Again she saw two graves and a long
+trench made in the frontier graveyard for Marie and her officer Edelwald
+and her twenty-three soldiers, all in line with her child. Once more
+Antonia saw the household turn from that spot weeping aloud; and De
+Charnisay's ships already sailing away with the spoil of the fort to
+Penobscot; and his sentinels looking down from the walls of St. John.
+She saw her husband dividing his own party, and sending all the men he
+could spare to navigate La Tour's ship and carry the helpless women and
+children to the head of Fundy Bay. All these things revolved before
+her, in that bubble of an instant, before her own voice broke it,
+saying,--
+
+"Is this you, Le Rossignol?"
+
+"Shubenacadie and I," responded the dwarf, lilting up sweetly.
+
+"Where do you come from?" inquired Antonia, feeling the weirdness of her
+visitor as she had never felt it in the hall at Fort St. John.
+
+"Port Royal. I have come from Port Royal on purpose to speak with you."
+
+"With me?"
+
+"With you, Madame Antonia."
+
+"You must then go directly to the house and eat some supper," said
+Antonia, speaking her first thought but reserving her second: "Our
+people will take to the fields when they see the poor little creature by
+daylight, and as for the swan, it is worse than a drove of Mynheer's
+Indians."
+
+"I am not eating to-night, I am riding," answered Le Rossignol, bold in
+mystery while the moon made half uncertain the draggled state of
+Shubenacadie's feathers. She placed her hands on his back and pressed
+him downward, as if his plumage foamed up from an over-full
+packing-case. Shubenacadie waddled a step or two reluctantly, and
+squatted, spreading his wings and curving his head around to look at
+her. The dwarf sat upon him as upon a throne, stroking his neck with her
+right hand while she talked. She seemed a part of the river's whisper,
+or of that world of summer night insects which shrilled around.
+
+"I have come to tell you about the death of D'Aulnay de Charnisay," said
+this pigmy.
+
+"We have long had that news," responded Antonia, "and worse which
+followed it."
+
+Madame Van Corlaer despised Charles La Tour for repossessing himself of
+all he had lost and becoming the first power in Acadia by marrying
+D'Aulnay's widow.
+
+"No ear," declared the dwarf, "hath ever heard how D'Aulnay de Charnisay
+died."
+
+"He was stuck in a bog," said Antonia.
+
+"He was stuck in no bog," said Le Rossignol, "for I alone was beside him
+at the time. And I ride from Port Royal to tell thee the whole of it and
+free my mind, lest I be obliged to fling it in my new lady's face the
+next time she speaks of his happy memory. Widows who take second
+husbands have no sense about the first one."
+
+Antonia slightly coughed. It is not pleasant to have your class
+disapproved of, even by a dwarf. And she did still secretly respect her
+first husband's prophecy. Had it not been fulfilled on the friend she
+best loved, if not on the husband she took?
+
+"Mynheer Van Corlaer will soon be home from New Amsterdam, whither he
+made a voyage to confer with the governor," said Antonia. "Let me take
+you to the house, where we can talk at our ease."
+
+"I talk most at my ease on Shubenacadie's back," answered Le Rossignol,
+holding her swan's head and rubbing her cheek against his bill. "You
+will not keep me a moment at Fort Orange. I fell out of patience with
+every place while we lived so long in poverty at that stockade at the
+head of Fundy Bay."
+
+"Did you live there long?" inquired Antonia.
+
+"Until D'Aulnay de Charnisay died out of my lord's way. What could my
+lord do for us, indeed, with nothing but a ship and scarce a dozen men?
+He left some to keep the stockade and took the rest to man his ship when
+he started to Newfoundland to send her forlorn old highness back to
+England. Her old highness hath had many a dower fee from us since that
+day."
+
+"Your lord hath mended his fortunes," remarked Antonia without approval.
+
+"Yes, we are now the greatest people in Acadia; we live in grand state
+at Port Royal. You would never know him for the careworn man he
+was--except once, indeed, when he came from viewing the ruins of Fort
+St. John. It is no longer maintained as a fortress. But I like not all
+these things. I rove more now than when Madame Marie lived."
+
+Silence was kept a moment after Madame La Tour's name, between Antonia
+and her illusive visitor. The dwarf seemed clad in sumptuous garments. A
+cap of rich velvet could be discerned on her flaring hair instead of the
+gull-breast covering she once made for herself.
+
+"Yet I roved much out of the peasants' way at the stockade," she
+continued, sending the night sounds again into background. "Peasants who
+have no master over them become like swine. We had two goats, and I
+tended them, and sat ages upon ages on the bank of a tide-creek which
+runs up among the marshes at the head of Fundy Bay. Madame Antonia, you
+should see that tide-creek. It shone like wet sleek red carnelian when
+the water was out of it. I loved its basin; and the goats would go down
+to lick the salt. They had more sense than D'Aulnay de Charnisay, for
+they knew where to venture. I thought D'Aulnay de Charnisay was one of
+our goats by his bleat, until I looked down and saw him part sunk in a
+quicksand at the bottom of the channel. The tide was already frothing in
+like yeast upon him. How gloriously the tide shoots up that tide-creek!
+It hisses. It comes like thousands of horses galloping one behind the
+other and tumbling over each other,--fierce and snorting spray, and
+climbing the banks, and still trampling down and flying over the ones
+who have galloped in first."
+
+"But what did D'Aulnay de Charnisay do?" inquired Antonia.
+
+"He stuck in the quicksand," responded Le Rossignol.
+
+"But did he not call for help?"
+
+"He did nothing else, indeed, until the tide's horses trampled him
+under."
+
+"But what did you do?"
+
+"I sat down and watched him," said the dwarf.
+
+"How could you?" shuddered Antonia, feeling how little this tiny being's
+humanity was developed.
+
+"We had some chat," said Le Rossignol. "He promised me a seigniory if I
+would run and call some men with ropes. 'I heard a Swiss's wife say
+that you promised him a seigniory,' quoth I. 'And you had enough ropes
+then.' He pledged his word and took oath to make me rich if I would get
+him only a priest. 'You pledged your word to the lady of Fort St. John,'
+said I. The water kept rising and he kept stretching his neck above it,
+and crying and shouting, and I took his humor and cried and shouted with
+him, naming the glorious waves as they rode in from the sea:--
+
+"'Glaud Burge!'
+
+"'Jean le Prince!'
+
+"'Renot Babinet!'
+
+"'Ambroise Tibedeaux!'
+
+"And so on until François Bastarack the twenty-third roller flowed over
+his head, and Edelwald did not even know he was beneath."
+
+Antonia dropped her face upon her hands.
+
+"So that is the true story," said Le Rossignol. "He died a good salt
+death, and his men pulled him out before the next tide."
+
+Presently Antonia looked up. Her eye was first caught by a coming sail
+on the river. It shone in the moonlight, moving slowly, for there was so
+little wind. Her husband must be there. She turned to say so to Le
+Rossignol; who was gone.
+
+Antonia opened the gate and stepped outside, looking in every direction
+for dwarf and swan. She had not even noticed a rustle, or the pat of
+Shubenacadie's feet upon sand. But Le Rossignol and her familiar had
+disappeared in the wide expanse of moonlight; whether deftly behind tree
+or rock, or over wall, or through air above, Antonia had no mind to find
+out.
+
+Even the approaching sail took weirdness. The ship was too distant for
+her to yet hear the hiss of water around its prow. But in that, Van
+Corlaer and the homely good happiness of common life was approaching.
+With the dwarf had disappeared that misty sweet sorrowful Acadian world.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LADY OF FORT ST. JOHN***
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Lady of Fort St. John, by Mary Hartwell
+Catherwood</h1>
+<pre>
+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 <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Lady of Fort St. John</p>
+<p>Author: Mary Hartwell Catherwood</p>
+<p>Release Date: June 19, 2006  [eBook #18631]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LADY OF FORT ST. JOHN***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Stacy Brown, Robert Cicconetti,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net/">http://www.pgdp.net/</a>)<br />
+    from page images generously made available by<br />
+    Early Canadiana Online<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.canadiana.org/eco/index.html">http://www.canadiana.org/eco/index.html</a>)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="10" style="background-color: #ccccff;">
+  <tr>
+    <td valign="top">
+      Note:
+    </td>
+    <td>
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Early Canadiana Online. See
+      <a href="http://www.canadiana.org/ECO/ItemRecord/09719?id=773b7c56888b994b">
+      http://www.canadiana.org/ECO/ItemRecord/09719?id=773b7c56888b994b</a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>THE</h2>
+
+<h1>LADY OF FORT ST. JOHN</h1>
+
+<h3 class="padtop">BY</h3>
+
+<h2 style="margin-bottom: .8em;">MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD</h2>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: .8em;">AUTHOR OF "THE ROMANCE OF DOLLARD"</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4 class="padtop">BOSTON AND NEW YORK<br />
+HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY<br />
+The Riverside Press, Cambridge<br />
+1891</h4>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="padtop center" style="font-weight: bold; font-size: 85%;">
+Copyright, 1891,<br />
+<span class="smcap">By</span> MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD.<br />
+<br />
+<i>All rights reserved.</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.</i><br />
+Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton &amp; Co.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="padtop center" style="font-size: 90%;">
+This book I dedicate<br />
+<br />
+TO<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 110%;">TWO ACADIANS OF THE PRESENT DAY;</span><br />
+<br />
+NATIVES OF NOVA SCOTIA WHO REPRESENT THE LEARNING<br />
+AND GENTLE ATTAINMENTS OF THE<br />
+NEW ORDER:<br />
+<br />
+DR. JOHN-GEORGE BOURINOT, C. M. G., ETC.<br />
+CLERK OF THE CANADIAN HOUSE OF COMMONS, OF<br />
+OTTAWA; AND<br />
+<br />
+DR. GEORGE STEWART,<br />
+OF QUEBEC.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>How can we care for shadows and types, when we may go back through
+history and live again with people who actually lived?</p>
+
+<p>Sitting on the height which is now topped by a Martello tower, at St.
+John in the maritime province of New Brunswick, I saw&mdash;not the opposite
+city, not the lovely bay; but this tragedy of Marie de la Tour, the
+tragedy "which recalls" (says the Abb&eacute; Casgrain in his "P&egrave;lerinage au
+pays d'Evang&eacute;line") "the romances of Walter Scott, and forces one to own
+that reality is stranger than fiction."</p>
+
+<p>In "Papers relating to the rival chiefs, D'Aulnay and La Tour," of the
+Massachusetts Historical Collection, vol. vii., may be found these
+prefatory remarks:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"There is a romance of History as well as a History of Romance. To the
+former class belong many incidents in the early periods of New England
+and its adjacent colonies. The following papers ... refer to two
+persons, D'Aulnay and La Tour, ... individuals of respectable intellect
+and education, of noble families and large fortune. While the first was
+a zealous and efficient supporter of the Roman Church, the second was
+less so, from his frequent connection with others of a different faith.
+The scene of their ... prominent actions, their exhibition of various
+passions and talents, their conquests and defeats, their career and end,
+as exerting an influence on their associates as well as themselves, on
+other communities as well as their own&mdash;was laid in Nova Scotia. This
+phrase then comprised a territory vastly more extensive than it does
+now as a British Province. It embraced not only its present boundaries,
+which were long termed Acadia, but also about two thirds of the State of
+Maine."</p>
+
+<p>It startles the modern reader, in examining documents of the French
+archives relating to the colonies, to come upon a letter from Louis
+XIII. to his beloved D'Aulnay de Charnisay, thanking that governor of
+Acadia for his good service at Fort St. John. Thus was that great race
+who first trod down the wilderness on this continent continually and
+cruelly hampered by the man who sat on the throne in France.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<table summary="toc"><tbody>
+<tr>
+<td class="tr"><span class="smcap">Prelude.</span></td> <td class="tl"><span class="smcap">At the Head of the Bay of Fundy</span></td>      <td class="tvr"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="tr">I.</td> <td class="tl"><span class="smcap">An Acadian Fortress</span></td>          <td class="tvr"><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="tr">II.</td> <td class="tl"><span class="smcap">Le Rossignol</span></td>         <td class="tvr"><a href="#Page_21">21</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="tr">III.</td> <td class="tl"><span class="smcap">Father Isaac Jogues</span></td>       <td class="tvr"><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="tr">IV.</td> <td class="tl"><span class="smcap">The Widow Antonia</span></td>        <td class="tvr"><a href="#Page_55">55</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="tr">V.</td> <td class="tl"><span class="smcap">Jonas Bronck's Hand</span></td>       <td class="tvr"><a href="#Page_64">64</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="tr">VI.</td> <td class="tl"><span class="smcap">The Mending</span></td>        <td class="tvr"><a href="#Page_73">73</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="tr">VII.</td> <td class="tl"><span class="smcap">A Frontier Graveyard</span></td>       <td class="tvr"><a href="#Page_82">82</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="tr">VIII.</td> <td class="tl"><span class="smcap">Van Corlaer</span></td>          <td class="tvr"><a href="#Page_96">96</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="tr">IX.</td> <td class="tl"><span class="smcap">The Turret</span></td>         <td class="tvr"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="tr">X.</td> <td class="tl"><span class="smcap">An Acadian Poet</span></td>      <td class="tvr"><a href="#Page_121">121</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="tr">XI.</td> <td class="tl"><span class="smcap">Marguerite</span></td>        <td class="tvr"><a href="#Page_133">133</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="tr">XII.</td> <td class="tl"><span class="smcap">D'Aulnay</span></td>      <td class="tvr"><a href="#Page_143">143</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="tr">XIII.</td> <td class="tl"><span class="smcap">The Second Day</span></td>        <td class="tvr"><a href="#Page_155">155</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="tr">XIV.</td> <td class="tl"><span class="smcap">The Struggle between Powers</span></td>       <td class="tvr"><a href="#Page_173">173</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="tr">XV.</td> <td class="tl"><span class="smcap">A Soldier</span></td>       <td class="tvr"><a href="#Page_191">191</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="tr">XVI.</td> <td class="tl"><span class="smcap">The Camp</span></td>       <td class="tvr"><a href="#Page_211">211</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="tr">XVII.</td> <td class="tl"><span class="smcap">An Acadian Passover</span></td>      <td class="tvr"><a href="#Page_227">227</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="tr">XVIII.</td> <td class="tl"><span class="smcap">The Song of Edelwald</span></td>      <td class="tvr"><a href="#Page_252">252</a></td>
+</tr><tr>
+<td class="tr"><span class="smcap">Postlude.</span></td> <td class="tl"><span class="smcap">A Tide-Creek</span></td>             <td class="tvr"><a href="#Page_273">273</a></td>
+</tr>
+</tbody></table>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LADY_OF_FORT_ST_JOHN" id="LADY_OF_FORT_ST_JOHN"></a>LADY OF FORT ST. JOHN.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="PRELUDE" id="PRELUDE"></a>PRELUDE.</h2>
+
+<h3>AT THE HEAD OF THE BAY OF FUNDY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The Atlantic rushed across a mile or two of misty beach, boring into all
+its channels in the neck of Acadia. Twilight and fog blurred the
+landscape, but the eye could trace a long swell of earth rising
+gradually from the bay, through marshes, to a summit with a small
+stockade on its southern slope. Sentinels pacing within the stockade
+felt the weird influence of that bald land. The guarded spot seemed an
+island in a sea of vapor and spring night was bringing darkness upon it.</p>
+
+<p>The stockade inclosed a single building of rough logs clumsily put
+together, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> chinked with the hard red soil. An unhewn wall divided
+the house into two rooms, and in one room were gathered less than a
+dozen men-at-arms. Their officer lay in one of the cupboard-like bunks,
+with his hands clasped under his head. Some of the men were already
+asleep; others sat by the hearth, rubbing their weapons or spreading
+some garment to dry. A door in the partition opened, and the wife of one
+of the men came from the inner room.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, madame," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, Z&eacute;lie," answered a voice within.</p>
+
+<p>"If you have further need of me, you will call me, madame?"</p>
+
+<p>"Assuredly. Get to your rest. To-morrow we may have stormy weather for
+our voyage home."</p>
+
+<p>The woman closed the door, and the face of the one who had hearkened to
+her turned again to the fireplace. It was a room repeating the men's
+barrack in hewed floor, loophole windows, and rough joists.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This frontier outpost on the ridge since called Beausejour was merely a
+convenient halting-place for one of the lords of Acadia. It stood on a
+detached spot of his large seigniory, which he had received with other
+portions of western Acadia in exchange for his grant of Cape Sable.</p>
+
+<p>Though in his early thirties, Charles de la Tour had seen long service
+in the New World. Seldom has a man from central France met the northern
+cold and sea air with so white a favor. His clean-shaven skin and the
+sunny undecided color of his hair were like a child's. Part of his armor
+had been unbuckled, and lay on the floor near him. He sat in a chair of
+twisted boughs, made of refuse from trees his men had dragged out of the
+neighboring forest for the building of the outpost. His wife sat on a
+pile of furs beside his knee. Her Huguenot cap lay on the shelf above
+the fire. She wore a black gown slashed in the sleeves with white, and a
+kerchief of lace pushed from her throat. Her black hair,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> which Z&eacute;lie
+had braided, hung down in two ropes to the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"How soon, monsieur," she asked, "can you return to Fort St. John?"</p>
+
+<p>"With all speed possible, Marie. Soon, if we can work the miracle of
+moving a peace-loving man like Denys to action."</p>
+
+<p>"Nicholas Denys ought to take part with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet he will scarce do it."</p>
+
+<p>"The king-favored governor of Acadia will some time turn and push him as
+he now pushes you."</p>
+
+<p>"D'Aulnay hath me at sore straits," confessed La Tour, staring at the
+flame, "since he has cut off from me the help of the Bostonnais."</p>
+
+<p>"They were easily cut off," said Marie. "Monsieur, those Huguenots of
+the colonies were never loving friends of ours. Their policy hath been
+to weaken this province by helping the quarrel betwixt D'Aulnay and you.
+Now that D'Aulnay has strength at court, and has persuaded the king to
+de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>clare you an outlaw, the Bostonnais think it wise to withdraw their
+hired soldiers from you. We have not offended the Bostonnais as allies;
+we have only gone down in the world."</p>
+
+<p>La Tour stirred uneasily.</p>
+
+<p>"I dread that D'Aulnay may profit by this hasty journey I make to
+northern Acadia, and again attack the fort in my absence."</p>
+
+<p>"He hath once found a woman there who could hold it," said Marie,
+checking a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>La Tour moved his palm over her cheek. Within his mind the province of
+Acadia lay spread from Penobscot River to the Island of Sable, and from
+the southern tip of the peninsula now called Nova Scotia nearly to the
+mouth of the St. Lawrence. This domain had been parceled in grants: the
+north to Nicholas Denys; the centre and west to D'Aulnay de Charnisay;
+and the south, with posts on the western coast, to Charles de la Tour.
+Being Protestant in faith, La<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> Tour had no influence at the court of
+Louis XIII. His grant had been confirmed to him from his father. He had
+held it against treason to France; and his loyal service, at least, was
+regarded until D'Aulnay de Charnisay became his enemy. Even in that year
+of grace 1645, before Acadia was diked by home-making Norman peasants or
+watered by their parting tears, contending forces had begun to trample
+it. Two feudal barons fought each other on the soil of the New World.</p>
+
+<p>"All things failing me"&mdash;La Tour held out his wrists, and looked at them
+with a sharp smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Let D'Aulnay shake a warrant, monsieur. He must needs have you before
+he can carry you in chains to France."</p>
+
+<p>She seized La Tour's hands, with a swift impulse of atoning to them for
+the thought of such indignity, and kissed his wrists. He set his teeth
+on a trembling lip.</p>
+
+<p>"I should be a worthless, aimless vagrant without you, Marie. You are
+young, and I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> give you fatigue and heart-sickening peril instead of
+jewels and merry company."</p>
+
+<p>"The merriest company for us at present, monsieur, are the men of our
+honest garrison. If Edelwald, who came so lately, complains not of this
+New World life, I should endure it merrily enough. And you know I seldom
+now wear the jewels belonging to our house. Our chief jewel is buried in
+the ground."</p>
+
+<p>She thought of a short grave wrapped in fogs near Fort St. John; of fair
+curls and sweet childish limbs, and a mouth shouting to send echoes
+through the river gorge; of scamperings on the flags of the hall; and of
+the erect and princely carriage of that diminutive presence the men had
+called "my little lord."</p>
+
+<p>"But it is better for the boy that he died, Marie," murmured La Tour.
+"He has no part in these times. He might have survived us to see his
+inheritance stripped from him."</p>
+
+<p>They were silent until Marie said, "You<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> have a long march before you
+to-morrow, monsieur."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; we ought to throw ourselves into these mangers," said La Tour.</p>
+
+<p>One wall was lined with bunks like those in the outer room. In the lower
+row travelers' preparations were already made for sleeping.</p>
+
+<p>"I am yet of the mind, monsieur," observed Marie, "that you should have
+made this journey entirely by sea."</p>
+
+<p>"It would cost me too much in time to round Cape Sable twice. Nicholas
+Denys can furnish ship as well as men, if he be so minded. My lieutenant
+in arms next to Edelwald," said La Tour, smiling over her, "my equal
+partner in troubles, and my lady of Fort St. John will stand for my
+honor and prosperity until I return."</p>
+
+<p>Marie smiled back.</p>
+
+<p>"D'Aulnay has a fair wife, and her husband is rich, and favored by the
+king, and has got himself made governor of Acadia in your stead. She
+sits in her own hall at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> Port Royal: but poor Madame D'Aulnay! She has
+not thee!"</p>
+
+<p>At this La Tour laughed aloud. The ring of his voice, and the clang of
+his breastplate which fell over on the floor as he arose, woke an
+answering sound. It did not come from the outer room, where scarcely a
+voice stirred among the sleepy soldiery, but from the top row of bunks.
+Marie turned white at this child wail soothed by a woman's voice.</p>
+
+<p>"What have we here?" exclaimed La Tour.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur, it must be a baby!"</p>
+
+<p>"Who has broken into this post with a baby? There may be men concealed
+overhead."</p>
+
+<p>He grasped his pistols, but no men-at-arms appeared with the haggard
+woman who crept down from her hiding-place near the joists.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you some spy sent from D'Aulnay?" inquired La Tour.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur, how can you so accuse a poor outcast mother!" whispered
+Marie.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The door in the partition was flung wide, and the young officer appeared
+with men at his back.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you found an ambush, Sieur Charles?"</p>
+
+<p>"We have here a listener, Edelwald," replied La Tour, "and there may be
+more in the loft above."</p>
+
+<p>Several men sprang up the bunks and moved some puncheons overhead. A
+light was raised under the dark roof canopy, but nothing rewarded its
+search. The much-bedraggled woman was young, with falling strands of
+silken hair, which she wound up with one hand while holding the baby.
+Marie took the poor wailer from her with a divine motion and carried it
+to the hearth.</p>
+
+<p>"Who brought you here?" demanded La Tour of the girl.</p>
+
+<p>She cowered before him, but answered nothing. Her presence seemed to him
+a sinister menace against even his obscurest holdings in Acadia. The
+stockade was easily entered, for La Tour was unable to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> maintain a
+garrison there. All that open country lay sodden with the breath of the
+sea. From whatever point she had approached, La Tour could scarcely
+believe her feet came tracking the moist red clay alone.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you give no account of yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"You must answer monsieur," encouraged Marie, turning, from her cares
+with the child. It lay unwound from its misery on Marie's knees,
+watching the new ministering power with accepting eyes. Feminine and
+piteous as the girl was, her dense resistance to command could only vex
+a soldier.</p>
+
+<p>"Put her under guard," he said to his officer.</p>
+
+<p>"And Z&eacute;lie must look to her comfort," added Marie.</p>
+
+<p>"Whoever she may be," declared La Tour, "she hath heard too much to go
+free of this place. She must be sent in the ship to Fort St. John, and
+guarded there."</p>
+
+<p>"What else could be done, indeed?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> asked Marie. "The child would die of
+exposure here."</p>
+
+<p>The prisoner was taken to the other hearth; and the young officer, as he
+closed the door, half smiled to hear his lady murmur over the wretched
+little outcast, as she always murmured to ailing creatures,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Let mother help you."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I.</h2>
+
+<h3>AN ACADIAN FORTRESS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>At the mouth of the river St. John an island was lashed with drift, and
+tide-terraces alongshore recorded how furiously the sea had driven upon
+the land. There had been a two days' storm on the Bay of Fundy,
+subsiding to the clearest of cool spring evenings. An amber light lay on
+the visible world. The forest on the west was yet too bare of leaf buds
+to shut away sunset.</p>
+
+<p>A month later the headlands would be lined distinctly against a blue and
+quickening sky by freshened air and light and herbage. Two centuries and
+a half later, long streaks of electric light would ripple on that
+surface, and great ships stand at ease there, and ferry-boats rush back
+and forth. But in this closing dusk it reflected<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> only the gray and
+yellow vaporous breath of April, and shaggy edges of a wilderness. The
+high shores sank their shadows farther and farther from the water's
+edge.</p>
+
+<p>Fort St. John was built upon a gradual ascent of rocks which rose to a
+small promontory on the south side of the river. There were four
+bastions guarded with cannon, the northeast bastion swelling above its
+fellows in a round turret topped with battlements. On this tower the
+flag of France hung down its staff against the evening sky, for there
+was scarcely any motion of the air. That coast lay silent like a
+pictured land, except a hint of falls above in the river. It was ebb
+tide; the current of the St. John set out toward the sea instead of
+rushing back on its own channel; and rocks swallowed at flood now broke
+the surface.</p>
+
+<p>A plume of smoke sprang from one bastion, followed by the rolling
+thunder of a cannon shot. From a small ship in the bay a gun replied to
+this salute. She stood, gradually clear of a headland, her sails<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+hanging torn and one mast broken, and sentinel and cannoneer in the
+bastion saw that she was lowering a boat. They called to people in the
+fortress, and all voices caught the news:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Madame has come at last!"</p>
+
+<p>Life stirred through the entire inclosure with a jar of closing doors
+and running feet.</p>
+
+<p>Though not a large fortification, St. John was well and compactly built
+of cemented stone. A row of hewed log-barracks stood against the
+southern wall, ample for all the troops La Tour had been able to muster
+in prosperous times. There was a stone vault for ammunition. A well, a
+mill and great stone oven, and a storehouse for beaver and other skins
+were between the barracks and the commandant's tower built massively
+into the northeast bastion. This structure gave La Tour the advantage of
+a high lookout, though it was much smaller than a castle he had formerly
+held at La H&egrave;ve. The interior accommodated itself to such compactness,
+the lower floor having only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> one entrance, and windows looking into the
+area of the fort, while the second floor was lighted through deep
+loopholes.</p>
+
+<p>A drum began to beat, a tall fellow gave the word of command, and the
+garrison of Fort St. John drew up in line facing the gate. A sentinel
+unbarred and set wide both inner and outer leaves, and a cheer burst
+through the deep-throated gateway, and was thrown back from the opposite
+shore, from forest and river windings. Madame La Tour, with two women
+attendants, was seen coming up from the water's edge, while two men
+pushed off with the boat.</p>
+
+<p>She waved her hand in reply to the shout.</p>
+
+<p>The tall soldier went down to meet her, and paused, bareheaded, to make
+the salutation of a subaltern to his military superior. She responded
+with the same grave courtesy. But as he drew nearer she noticed him
+whitening through the dusk.</p>
+
+<p>"All has gone well, Klussman, at Fort St. John, since your lord left?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Madame," he said with a stammer, "the storm made us anxious about you."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you seen D'Aulnay?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, madame."</p>
+
+<p>"You look haggard, Klussman."</p>
+
+<p>"If I look haggard, madame, it must come from seeing two women follow
+you, when I should see only one."</p>
+
+<p>He threw sharp glances behind her, as he took her hand to lead her up
+the steep path. Marie's attendant was carrying the baby, and she lifted
+it for him to look at, the hairs on her upper lip moved by a
+good-natured smile. Klussman's scowl darkened his mountain-born
+fairness.</p>
+
+<p>"I would rather, indeed, be bringing more men to the fort instead of
+more women," said his lady, as they mounted the slope. "But this one
+might have perished in the stockade where we found her, and your lord
+not only misliked her, as you seem to do, but he held her in suspicion.
+In a manner, therefore, she is our prisoner, though never went prisoner
+so helplessly with her captors."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, any one might take such a creature," said Klussman.</p>
+
+<p>"Those are no fit words to speak, Klussman."</p>
+
+<p>He was unready with his apology, however, and tramped on without again
+looking behind. Madame La Tour glanced at her ship, which would have to
+wait for wind and tide to reach the usual mooring.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you tell me you had news?" she was reminded to ask him.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame, I have some news, but nothing serious."</p>
+
+<p>"If it be nothing serious, I will have a change of garments and my
+supper before I hear it. We have had a hard voyage."</p>
+
+<p>"Did my lord send any new orders?"</p>
+
+<p>"None, save to keep this poor girl about the fort; and that is easily
+obeyed, since we can scarce do otherwise with her."</p>
+
+<p>"I meant to ask in the first breath how he fared in the outset of his
+expedition."</p>
+
+<p>"With a lowering sky overhead, and wet red clay under-foot. But I
+thanked Heaven,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> while we were tossing with a broken mast, that he was
+at least on firm land and moving to his expectations."</p>
+
+<p>They entered the gateway, Madame La Tour's cheeks tingling richly from
+the effort of climbing. She saluted her garrison, and her garrison
+saluted her, each with a courteous pride in the other, born of the joint
+victory they had won over D'Aulnay de Charnisay when he attacked the
+fort. Not a man broke rank until she entered her hall. There was a
+tidiness about the inclosure peculiar to places inhabited by women. It
+added grace even to military appointments.</p>
+
+<p>"You miss the swan, madame," noted Klussman. "Le Rossignol is out
+again."</p>
+
+<p>"When did she go?"</p>
+
+<p>"The night after my lord and you sailed northward. She goes each time in
+the night, madame."</p>
+
+<p>"And she is still away?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, madame."</p>
+
+<p>"And this is all you know of her?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, madame. She went, and has not yet come back."</p>
+
+<p>"But she always comes back safely. Though I fear," said Madame La Tour
+on the threshold, "the poor maid will some time fall into harm."</p>
+
+<p>He opened the door, and stood aside, saying under his breath, "I would
+call a creature like that a witch instead of a maid."</p>
+
+<p>"I will send for you, Klussman, when I have refreshed myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, madame."</p>
+
+<p>The other women filed past him, and entered behind his lady.</p>
+
+<p>The Swiss soldier folded his arms, staring hard at that crouching
+vagrant brought from Beausejour. She had a covering over her face, and
+she held it close, crowding on the heels in front of her as if she dared
+not meet his eye.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II.</h2>
+
+<h3>LE ROSSIGNOL.</h3>
+
+
+<p>A girlish woman was waiting for Marie within the hall, and the two
+exchanged kisses on the cheek with sedate and tender courtesy.</p>
+
+<p>"Welcome home, madame."</p>
+
+<p>"Home is more welcome to me because I find you in it, Antonia. Has
+anything unusual happened in the fortress while I have been setting
+monsieur on his way?"</p>
+
+<p>"This morning, about dawn, I heard a great tramping of soldiers in the
+hall. One of the women told me prisoners had been brought in."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. The Swiss said he had news. And how has the Lady Dorinda fared?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, indeed. She has described to me three times the gorgeous pageant
+of her marriage."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They had reached the fireplace, and Marie laughed as she warmed her
+hands before a pile of melting logs.</p>
+
+<p>"Give our sea-tossed bundle and its mother a warm seat, Z&eacute;lie," she said
+to her woman.</p>
+
+<p>The unknown girl was placed near the hearth corner, and constrained to
+take upon her knees an object which she held indifferently. Antonia's
+eyes rested on her, detecting her half-concealed face, with silent
+disapproval.</p>
+
+<p>"We found a child on this expedition."</p>
+
+<p>"It hath a stiffened look, like a papoose," observed Antonia. "Is it
+well in health?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; poor baby. Attend to the child," said Marie sternly to the mother;
+and she added, "Z&eacute;lie must go directly with me to my chests before she
+waits on me, and bring down garments for it to this hearth."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me this time be your maid," said Antonia.</p>
+
+<p>"You may come with me and be my resolution, Antonia; for I have to set
+about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> the unlocking of boxes which hold some sacred clothes."</p>
+
+<p>"I never saw you lack courage, madame, since I have known you."</p>
+
+<p>"Therein have I deceived you then," said Marie, throwing her cloak on
+Z&eacute;lie's arm, "for I am a most cowardly creature in my affections, Madame
+Bronck."</p>
+
+<p>They moved toward the stairs. Antonia was as perfect as a slim and
+blue-eyed stalk of flax. She wore the laced bodice and small cap of New
+Holland. Her exactly spoken French denoted all the neat appointments of
+her life. This Dutch gentlewoman had seen much of the world; having
+traveled from Fort Orange to New Amsterdam, from New Amsterdam to
+Boston, and from Boston with Madame La Tour to Fort St. John in Acadia.
+The three figures ascended in a line the narrow stairway which made a
+diagonal band from lower to upper corner of the remote hall end. Z&eacute;lie
+walked last, carrying her lady's cloak. At the top a little light fell
+on them through a loophole.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Was Mynheer La Tour in good heart for his march?" inquired Antonia,
+turning from the waifs brought back to the expedition itself.</p>
+
+<p>"Stout-hearted enough; but the man to whom he goes is scarce to be
+counted on. We Protestant French are all held alien by Catholics of our
+blood. Edelwald will move Denys to take arms with us, if any one can. My
+lord depends much upon Edelwald. This instant," said Marie with a laugh,
+"I find the worst of all my discomforts these disordered garments."</p>
+
+<p>The stranger left by the fire gazed around the dim place, which was
+lighted only by high windows in front. The mighty hearth, inclosed by
+settles, was like a roseate side-chamber to the hall. Outside of this
+the stone-paved floor spread away unevenly. She turned her eyes from the
+arms of La Tour over the mantel to trace seamed and footworn flags, and
+noticed in the distant corner, at the bottom of the stairs, that they
+gave way to a trapdoor of timbers. This<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> was fastened down with iron
+bars, and had a huge ring for its handle. Her eyes rested on it in fear,
+betwixt the separated settles.</p>
+
+<p>But it was easily lost sight of in the fire's warmth. She had been so
+chilled by salt air and spray as to crowd close to the flame and court
+scorching. Her white face kindled with heat. She threw back her
+mufflers, and the comfort of the child occurring to her, she looked at
+its small face through a tunnel of clothing. Its exceeding stillness
+awoke but one wish, which she dared not let escape in words.</p>
+
+<p>These stone walls readily echoed any sound. So scantily furnished was
+the great hall that it could not refrain from echoing. There were some
+chairs and tables not of colonial pattern, and a buffet holding silver
+tankards and china; but these seemed lost in space. Opposite the
+fireplace hung two portraits,&mdash;one of Charles La Tour's father, the
+other of a former maid of honor at the English court. The ceiling of
+wooden panels had been brought from La Tour's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> castle at Cape Sable; it
+answered the flicker of the fire with lines of faded gilding.</p>
+
+<p>The girl dropped her wrappings on the bench, and began to unroll the
+baby, as if curious about its state.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe it <i>is</i> dead!" she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>But the clank of a long iron latch which fastened the outer door was
+enough to deflect her interest from the matter. She cast her cloak over
+the baby, and held it loosely on her knees, with its head to the fire.
+When the door shut with a crash, and some small object scurried across
+the stone floor, the girl looked out of her retreat with fear. Her
+eyelids and lips fell wider apart. She saw a big-headed brownie coming
+to the hearth, clad, with the exception of its cap, in the dun tints of
+autumn woods. This creature, scarcely more than two feet high, had a
+woman's face, of beak-like formation, projecting forward. She was as
+bright-eyed and light of foot as any bird. Moving within the inclosure
+of the settles, she hopped up with a singular power of vault<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>ing, and
+seated herself, stretching toward the fire a pair of spotted seal
+moccasins. These were so small that the feet on which they were laced
+seemed an infant's, and sorted strangely with the mature keen face above
+them. Youth, age, and wise sylvan life were brought to a focus in that
+countenance.</p>
+
+<p>To hear such a creature talk was like being startled by spoken words
+from a bird.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm Le Rossignol," she piped out, when she had looked at the vagrant
+girl a few minutes, "and I can read your name on your face. It's
+Marguerite."</p>
+
+<p>The girl stared helplessly at this midget seer.</p>
+
+<p>"You're the same Marguerite that was left on the Island of Demons a
+hundred years ago. You may not know it, but you're the same. I know that
+downward look, and soft, crying way, and still tongue, and the very baby
+on your knees. You never bring any good, and words are wasted on you.
+Don't smile under your sly mouth,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> and think you are hiding anything
+from Le Rossignol."</p>
+
+<p>The girl crouched deeper into her clothes, until those unwinking eyes
+relieved her by turning with indifference toward the chimney.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no pity for any Marguerite," Le Rossignol added, and she tossed
+from her head the entire subject with a cap made of white gull breasts.
+A brush of red hair stood up in thousands of tendrils, exaggerating by
+its nimbus the size of her upper person. Never had dwarf a sweeter
+voice. If she had been compressed in order to produce melody, her tones
+were compensation, enough. She made lilting sounds while dangling her
+feet to the blaze, as if she thought in music.</p>
+
+<p>Le Rossignol was so positive a force that she seldom found herself
+overborne by the presence of large human beings. The only man in the
+fortress who saw her without superstition was Klussman. He inclined to
+complain of her antics, but not to find magic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> in her flights and
+returns. At that period deformity was the symbol of witchcraft. Blame
+fell upon this dwarf when toothache or rheumatic pains invaded the
+barracks, especially if the sufferer had spoken against her unseen
+excursions with her swan. Protected from childhood by the family of La
+Tour, she had grown an autocrat, and bent to nobody except her lady.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is my clavier?" exclaimed Le Rossignol. "I heard a tune in the
+woods which I must get out of my clavier,&mdash;a green tune, the color of
+quickening lichens; a dropping tune with sap in it; a tune like the wind
+across inland lakes."</p>
+
+<p>She ran along the settle, and thrust her head around its high back.</p>
+
+<p>Z&eacute;lie, with white garments upon one arm, was setting solidly forth down
+the uncovered stairs, when the dwarf arrested her by a cry.</p>
+
+<p>"Go back, heavy-foot,&mdash;go back and fetch me my clavier."</p>
+
+<p>"Mademoiselle the nightingale has suddenly returned," muttered Z&eacute;lie,
+ill pleased.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Am I not always here when my lady comes home? I demand the box wherein
+my instrument is kept."</p>
+
+<p>"What doth your instrument concern me? Madame has sent me to dress the
+baby."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you bring my clavier?"</p>
+
+<p>The dwarf's scream was like the weird high note of a wind-harp. It had
+its effect on Z&eacute;lie. She turned back, though muttering against the
+overruling of her lady's commands by a creature like a bat, who could
+probably send other powers than a decent maid to bring claviers.</p>
+
+<p>"And where shall I find it?" she inquired aloud. "Here have I been in
+the fortress scarce half an hour, after all but shipwreck, and I must
+search out the belongings of people who do naught but idle."</p>
+
+<p>"Find it where you will. No one hath the key but myself. The box may
+stand in Madame Marie's apartment, or it may be in my own chamber. Such
+matters are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> blown out of my head by the wind along the coast. Make
+haste to fetch it so I can play when Madame Marie appears."</p>
+
+<p>Le Rossignol drew herself up the back of the settle, and perched at ease
+on the angle farthest from the fire. She beat her heels lightly against
+her throne, and hummed, with her face turned from the listless girl, who
+watched all her antics.</p>
+
+<p>Z&eacute;lie brought the instrument case, unlocked it, and handed up a
+crook-necked mandolin and its small ivory plectrum to her tyrant. At
+once the hall was full of tinkling melody. The dwarf's threadlike
+fingers ran along the neck of the mandolin, and as she made the ivory
+disk quiver among its strings her head swayed in rapturous singing.</p>
+
+<p>Z&eacute;lie forgot the baby. The garments intended for its use were spread
+upon the settle near the fire. She folded her arms, and wagged her head
+with Le Rossignol's. But while the dwarf kept an eye on the stairway,
+watching like a lover for the ap<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>pearance of Madame La Tour, the outer
+door again clanked, and Klussman stepped into the hall. His big presence
+had instant effect on Le Rossignol. Her music tinkled louder and faster.
+The playing sprite, sitting half on air, gamboled and made droll faces
+to catch his eye. Her vanity and self-satisfaction, her pliant gesture
+and skillful wild music, made her appear some soulless little being from
+the woods who mocked at man's tense sternness.</p>
+
+<p>Klussman took little notice of any one in the hall, but waited by the
+closed door so relentless a sentinel that Z&eacute;lie was reminded of her
+duty. She made haste to bring perfumed water in a basin, and turned the
+linen on the settle. She then took the child from its mother's limp
+hands, and exclaimed and muttered under her breath as she turned it on
+her knees.</p>
+
+<p>"What hast thou done to it since my lady left thee?" inquired Z&eacute;lie
+sharply. But she got no answer from the girl.</p>
+
+<p>Unrewarded for her minstrelsy by a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> single look from the Swiss, Le
+Rossignol quit playing, and made a fist of the curved instrument to
+shake at him, and let herself down the back of the settle. She sat on
+the mandolin box in shadow, vaguely sulking, until Madame La Tour, fresh
+from her swift attiring, stood at the top of the stairway. That instant
+the half-hid mandolin burst into quavering melodies.</p>
+
+<p>"Thou art back again, Nightingale?" called the lady, descending.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Madame Marie."</p>
+
+<p>"Madame!" exclaimed Klussman, and as his voice escaped repression it
+rang through the hall. He advanced, but his lady lifted her finger to
+hold him back.</p>
+
+<p>"Presently, Klussman. The first matter in hand is to rebuke this
+runaway."</p>
+
+<p>Marie's firm and polished chin, the contour of her glowing mouth, and
+the kindling beauty of her eyes were forever fresh delights to Le
+Rossignol. The dwarf watched the shapely and majestic woman moving down
+the hall.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Madame," besought Z&eacute;lie, looking anxiously around the end of the
+settle. But she also was obliged to wait. Marie extended a hand to the
+claws of Le Rossignol, who touched it with her beak.</p>
+
+<p>"Thou hast very greatly displeased me."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Madame Marie," said the culprit, with resignation.</p>
+
+<p>"How many times have you set all our people talking about these witch
+flights on the swan, and sudden returns after dark?"</p>
+
+<p>"I forget, Madame Marie."</p>
+
+<p>"In all seriousness thou shalt be well punished for this last," said the
+lady severely.</p>
+
+<p>"I was punished before the offense. Your absence punished me, Madame
+Marie."</p>
+
+<p>"A bit of adroit flattery will not turn aside discipline. The smallest
+vassal in the fort shall know that. A day in the turret, with a loaf of
+bread and a jug of water, may put thee in better liking to stay at
+home."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Madame Marie," assented the dwarf, with smiles.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And I may yet find it in my heart to have that swan's neck wrung."</p>
+
+<p>"Shubenacadie's neck! Oh, Madame Marie, wring mine! It would be the
+death of me if Shubenacadie died. Consider how long I have had him. And
+his looks, my lady! He is such a pretty bird."</p>
+
+<p>"We must mend that dangerous beauty of his. If these flights stop not, I
+will have his wings clipped."</p>
+
+<p>"His satin wings,&mdash;his glistening, polished wings," mourned Le
+Rossignol, "tipped with angel-finger feathers! Oh, Madame Marie, my
+heart's blood would run out of his quills!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is a serious breach in the discipline of this fortress for even you
+to disobey me constantly," said the lady, again severely, though she
+knew her lecture was wasted on the human brownie.</p>
+
+<p>Le Rossignol poked and worried the mandolin with antenn&aelig;-like fingers,
+and made up a contrite face.</p>
+
+<p>The dimness of the hall had not covered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> Klussman's large pallor. The
+emotions of the Swiss passed over the outside of his countenance, in
+bulk like himself. His lady often compared him to a noble young bullock
+or other well-conditioned animal. There was in Klussman much
+wholesomeness and excuse for existence.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Klussman," said Marie, meeting her lieutenant with the intentness
+of one used to sudden military emergencies. He trod straight to the
+fireplace, and pointed at the strange girl, who hid her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame, I have come in to speak of a thing you ought to know. Has that
+woman told you her name?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, she hath not. She hath kept a close tongue ever since we found her
+at the outpost."</p>
+
+<p>"She ever had a close tongue, madame, but she works her will in silence.
+It hath been no good will to me, and it will be no good will to the Fort
+of St. John."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is she, Klussman?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know not what name she bears now,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> but two years since she bore the
+name of Marguerite Klussman."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely she is not your sister?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, madame. She is only my wife." He lifted his lip, and his blue eyes
+stared at the muffled culprit.</p>
+
+<p>"We knew not you had a wife when you entered our service, Klussman."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor had I, madame. D'Aulnay de Charnisay had already taken her."</p>
+
+<p>"Then this woman does come from D'Aulnay de Charnisay?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, madame! And if you would have my advice, I say put her out of the
+gate this instant, and let her find shelter with our Indians above the
+falls."</p>
+
+<p>"Madame," exclaimed Z&eacute;lie, lifting the half-nude infant, and thrusting
+it before her mistress with importunity which could wait no longer, "of
+your kindness look at this little creature. With all my chafing and
+sprinkling I cannot find any life in it. That girl hath let it die on
+her knees, and hath not made it known!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Klussman's glance rested on the body with that abashed hatred which a
+man condemns in himself when its object is helpless.</p>
+
+<p>"It is D'Aulnay's child," he muttered, as if stating abundant reason for
+its taking off.</p>
+
+<p>"I have brought an agent from D'Aulnay and D'Aulnay's child into our
+fortress," said Madame La Tour, speaking toward Marguerite's silent
+cover, under which the girl made no sign of being more than a hidden
+animal. Her stern face traveled from mother back to tiny body.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing more touching than the emaciation of a baby. Its sunken
+temples and evident cheekbones, the line of its jaw, the piteous parted
+lips and thin neck were all reflected in Marie's eyes. Her entire figure
+softened, and passionate motherhood filled her. She took the still
+pliant shape from Z&eacute;lie, held it in her hands, and finally pressed it
+against her bosom. No sign of mourning came from the woman called its
+mother.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"This baby is no enemy of ours," trembled Madame La Tour. "I will not
+have it even reproached with being the child of our enemy. It is my
+little dead lad come again to my bosom. How soft are his dear limbs! And
+this child died for lack of loving while I went with empty arms! Have
+you suffered, dear? It is all done now. Mother will give you
+kisses,&mdash;kisses. Oh, baby,&mdash;baby!"</p>
+
+<p>Klussman turned away, and Z&eacute;lie whimpered. But Le Rossignol thrust her
+head around the settle to see what manner of creature it was over which
+Madame Marie sobbed aloud.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III.</h2>
+
+<h3>FATHER ISAAC JOGUES.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The child abandoned by La Tour's enemy had been carried to the upper
+floor, and the woman sent with a soldier's wife to the barracks; yet
+Madame La Tour continued to walk the stone flags, feeling that small
+skeleton on her bosom, and the pressure of death on the air.</p>
+
+<p>Her Swiss lieutenant opened the door and uttered a call. Presently, with
+a clatter of hoofs on the pavement, and a mighty rasping of the
+half-tree which they dragged, in burst eight Sable Island ponies, shaggy
+fellows, smaller than mastiffs, yet with large heads. The settles were
+hastily cleared away for them, and they swept their load to the hearth.
+As soon as their chain was unhooked, these fairy horses shot out again,
+and their joyful neighing could be heard as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> they scampered around the
+fort to their stable. Two men rolled the log into place, set a table and
+three chairs, and one returned to the cook-house while the other spread
+the cloth.</p>
+
+<p>Claude La Tour and his wife, the maid of honor, seemed to palpitate in
+their frames, with the flickering expressions of firelight. The silent
+company of these two people was always enjoyed by Le Rossignol. She knew
+their disappointments, and liked to have them stir and sigh. In the
+daytime, the set courtier smile was sadder than a pine forest. But the
+chimney's huge throat drew in the hall's heavy influences, and when the
+log was fired not a corner escaped its glow. The man who laid the cloth
+lighted candles in a silver candelabrum and set it on the table, and
+carried a brand to waxlights which decorated the buffet.</p>
+
+<p>These cheerful preparations for her evening meal recalled Madame La Tour
+to the garrison's affairs. Her Swiss lieutenant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> yet stood by, his arms
+and chin settled sullenly on his breast; reluctant to go out and pass
+the barrack door where his wife was sheltered.</p>
+
+<p>"Are sentinels set for the night, Klussman?" inquired the lady.</p>
+
+<p>He stood erect, and answered, "Yes, madame."</p>
+
+<p>"I will not wait for my supper before I hear your news. Discharge it
+now. I understand the grief you bear, my friend. Your lord will not
+forget the faithfulness you show toward us."</p>
+
+<p>"Madame, if I may speak again, put that woman out of the gate. If she
+lingers around, I may do her some hurt when I have a loaded piece in my
+hand. She makes me less a man."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Klussman, the Sieur de la Tour, whose suspicions of her you have
+justified, strictly charged that we restrain her here until his return.
+She has seen and heard too much of our condition."</p>
+
+<p>"Our Indians would hold her safe enough, madame."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yet she is a soft, feeble creature, and much exhausted. Could she bear
+their hard living?"</p>
+
+<p>"Madame, she will requite whoever shelters her with shame and trouble.
+If D'Aulnay has turned her forth, she would willingly buy back his favor
+by opening this fortress to him. If he has not turned her forth, she is
+here by his command. I have thought out all these things; and, madame, I
+shall say nothing more, if you prefer to risk yourself in her hands
+instead of risking her with the savages."</p>
+
+<p>The dwarf's mandolin trembled a mere whisper of sound. She leaned her
+large head against the settle and watched the Swiss denounce his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"You speak good military sense," said the lady, "yet there is monsieur's
+command. And I cannot bring myself to drive that exhausted creature to a
+cold bed in the woods. We must venture&mdash;we cannot do less&mdash;to let her
+rest a few days under guard. Now let me hear your news."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It was only this, madame. Word was brought in that two priests from
+Montreal were wandering above the falls and trying to cross the St. John
+in order to make their way to D'Aulnay's fort at Penobscot. So I set
+after them and brought them in, and they are now in the keep, waiting
+your pleasure."</p>
+
+<p>"Doubtless you did right," hesitated Madame La Tour. "Even priests may
+be working us harm, so hated are we of Papists. But have them out
+directly, Klussman. We must not be rigorous. Did they bear any papers?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, madame; and they said they had naught to do with D'Aulnay, but were
+on a mission to the Abenakis around Penobscot, and had lost their course
+and wandered here. One of them is that Father Isaac Jogues who was
+maimed by the Mohawks, when he carried papistry among them, and the
+other his donn&eacute;&mdash;a name these priests give to any man who of his own
+free will goes with them to be servant of the mission."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Bring them out of the keep," said Madame La Tour.</p>
+
+<p>The Swiss walked with ringing foot toward the stairway, and dropped upon
+one knee to unbar the door in the pavement. He took a key from his
+pocket and turned it in the lock, and, as he lifted the heavy leaf of
+beams and crosspieces, his lady held over the darkness a candle, which
+she had taken from one of the buffet sconces. Out of the vault rose a
+chill breath from which the candle flame recoiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur," she spoke downward, "will you have the goodness to come up
+with your companion?"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice resounded in the hollow; and some movement occurred below as
+soft-spoken answer was made:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"We come, madame."</p>
+
+<p>A cassocked Jesuit appeared under the light, followed by a man wearing
+the ordinary dress of a French colonist. They ascended the stone steps,
+and Klussman replaced the door with a clank which echoed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> around the
+hall. Marie gave him the candle, and with clumsy touch he fitted it to
+the sconce while she led her prisoners to the fire. The Protestant was
+able to dwell with disapproval on the Jesuit's black gown, though it
+proved the hard service of a missionary priest; the face of Father
+Jogues none but a savage could resist.</p>
+
+<p>His downcast eyelids were like a woman's, and so was his delicate mouth.
+The cheeks, shading inward from their natural oval, testified to a life
+of hardship. His full and broad forehead, bordered by a fringe of hair
+left around his tonsure, must have overbalanced his lower face, had that
+not been covered by a short beard, parted on the upper lip and peaked at
+the end. His eyebrows were well marked, and the large-orbed eyes seemed
+so full of smiling meditation that Marie said to herself, "This lovely,
+woman-looking man hath the presence of an angel, and we have chilled him
+in our keep!"</p>
+
+<p>"Peace be with you, madame," spoke Father Jogues.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur, I crave your pardon for the cold greeting you have had in
+this fortress. We are people who live in perils, and we may be
+over-suspicious."</p>
+
+<p>"Madame, I have no complaint to bring against you."</p>
+
+<p>Both men were shivering, and she directed them to places on the settle.
+They sat where the vagrant girl had huddled. Father Jogues warmed his
+hands, and she noticed how abruptly serrated by missing or maimed
+fingers was their tapered shape. The man who had gone out to the
+cook-house returned with platters, and in passing the Swiss lieutenant
+gave him a hurried word, on which the Swiss left the hall. The two men
+made space for Father Jogues at their lady's board, and brought forward
+another table for his donn&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>"Good friends," said Marie, "this Huguenot fare is offered you heartily,
+and I hope you will as heartily take it, thereby excusing the hunger of
+a woman who has just come in from seafaring."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Madame," returned the priest, "we have scarcely seen civilized food
+since leaving Montreal, and we need no urging to enjoy this bounty. But,
+if you permit, I will sit here beside my brother Lalande."</p>
+
+<p>"As you please," she answered, glancing at the plain young Frenchman in
+colonial dress with suspicion that he was made the excuse for separating
+Romanist and Protestant.</p>
+
+<p>Father Jogues saw her glance and read her thought, and silently accused
+himself of cowardice for shrinking, in his maimed state, from her table
+with the instincts of a gentle-born man. He explained, resting his hand
+upon the chair which had been moved from the lady's to his servant's
+table:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"We have no wish to be honored above our desert, madame. We are only
+humble missionaries, and often while carrying the truth have been
+thankful for a meal of roots or berries in the woods."</p>
+
+<p>"Your humility hurts me, monsieur. On the Acadian borders we have bitter
+enmi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>ties, but the fort of La Tour shelters all faiths alike. We can
+hardly atone to so good a man for having thrust him into our keep."</p>
+
+<p>Father Jogues shook his head, and put aside this apology with a gesture.
+The queen of France had knelt and kissed his mutilated hands, and the
+courtiers of Louis had praised his martyrdom. But such ordeals of
+compliment were harder for him to endure than the teeth and knives of
+the Mohawks.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as Le Rossignol saw the platters appearing, she carried her
+mandolin to the lowest stair step and sat down to play: a quaint
+minstrel, holding an instrument almost as large as herself. That part of
+the household who lingered in the rooms above owned this accustomed
+signal and appeared on the stairs: Antonia Bronck, still disturbed by
+the small skeleton she had seen Z&eacute;lie dressing for its grave; and an
+elderly woman of great bulk and majesty, with sallow hair and face, who
+wore, enlarged, one of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> the court gowns which her sovereign, the queen
+of England, had often praised. Le Rossignol followed these two ladies
+across the hall, alternately aping the girlish motion of Antonia and her
+elder's massive progress. She considered the Dutch gentlewoman a sweet
+interloper who might, on occasions, be pardoned; but Lady Dorinda was
+the natural antagonist of the dwarf in Fort St. John. Marie herself
+seated her mother-in-law, with the graceful deference of youth to middle
+age and of present power to decayed grandeur. Lady Dorinda was not easy
+to make comfortable. The New World was hardly her sphere. In earlier
+life, she had learned in the school of the royal Stuarts that some
+people are, by divine right, immeasurably better than others,&mdash;and
+experience had thrust her down among those unfortunate others.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing there were strange men in the hall, Antonia divined that the
+prisoners from the keep had been brought up to supper. But Lady Dorinda
+settled her chin upon her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> necklace, and sighed a large sigh that
+priests and rough men-at-arms should weary eyes once used to revel in
+court pageantry. She looked up at the portrait of her dead husband,
+which hung on the wall. He had been created the first knight of Acadia;
+and though this honor came from her king, and his son refused to inherit
+it after him, Lady Dorinda believed that only the misfortunes of the La
+Tours had prevented her being a colonial queen.</p>
+
+<p>"Our chaplain being absent in the service of Sieur de la Tour," spoke
+Marie, "will monsieur, in his own fashion, bless this meal?"</p>
+
+<p>Father Jogues spread the remnant of his hands, but Antonia did not hear
+a word he breathed. She was again in Fort Orange. The Iroquois stalked
+up hilly paths and swarmed around the plank huts of Dutch traders. With
+the savages walked this very priest, their patient drudge until some of
+them blasphemed, when he sternly and fearlessly denounced the sinners.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Supper was scarcely begun when the Swiss lieutenant came again into the
+hall and saluted his lady.</p>
+
+<p>"What troubles us, Klussman?" she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a stranger outside."</p>
+
+<p>"What does he want?"</p>
+
+<p>"Madame, he asks to be admitted to Fort St. John."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he alone? Hath he a suspicious look?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, madame. He bears himself openly and like a man of consequence."</p>
+
+<p>"How many followers has he?"</p>
+
+<p>"A dozen, counting Indians. But all of them he sends back to camp with
+our Etchemins."</p>
+
+<p>"And well he may. We want no strange followers in the barracks. Have you
+questioned him? Whence does he come?"</p>
+
+<p>"From Fort Orange, in the New Netherlands, madame."</p>
+
+<p>"He is then Hollandais." Marie turned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> to Antonia Bronck, and was jarred
+by her blanching face.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Antonia? You have no enemy to follow you into Acadia?"</p>
+
+<p>The flaxen head was shaken for reply.</p>
+
+<p>"But what brings a man from Fort Orange here?"</p>
+
+<p>"There be nearly a hundred men in Fort Orange," whispered Antonia.</p>
+
+<p>"He says," announced the Swiss, "that he is cousin and agent of the
+seignior they call the patroon, and his name is Van Corlaer."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know him, Antonia?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And is he kindly disposed to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was the friend of my husband, Jonas Bronck," trembled Antonia.</p>
+
+<p>"Admit him," said Marie to her lieutenant.</p>
+
+<p>"Alone, madame?"</p>
+
+<p>"With all his followers, if he wills it. And bring him as quickly as you
+can to this table."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We need Edelwald to manage these affairs," added the lady of the fort,
+as her subaltern went out. "The Swiss is faithful, but he has manners as
+rugged as his mountains."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE WIDOW ANTONIA.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Antonia sat in tense quiet, though whitened even across the lips where
+all the color of her face usually appeared; and a stalwart and courtly
+man presented himself in the hall. Some of the best blood of the Dutch
+Republic had evidently gone to his making. He had the vital and reliable
+presence of a master in affairs, and his clean-shaven face had firm
+mouth-corners. Marie rose up without pause to meet him. He was freshly
+and carefully dressed in clothes carried for this purpose across the
+wilderness, and gained favor even with Lady Dorinda, as a man bearing
+around him in the New World the atmosphere of Europe. He made his
+greeting in French, and explained that he was passing through Acadia on
+a journey to Montreal.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We stand much beholden to monsieur," said Marie with a quizzical face,
+"that he should travel so many hundred leagues out of his way to visit
+this poor fort. I have heard that the usual route to Montreal is that
+short and direct one up the lake of Champlain."</p>
+
+<p>Van Corlaer's smile rested openly on Antonia as he answered,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Madame, a man's most direct route is the one that leads to his object."</p>
+
+<p>"Doubtless, monsieur. And you are very welcome to this fort. We have
+cause to love the New Netherlanders."</p>
+
+<p>Marie turned to deliver Antonia her guest, but Antonia stood without
+word or look for him. She seemed a scared Dutch child, bending all her
+strength and all her inherited quiet on maintaining self-control. He
+approached her, searching her face with his near-sighted large eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Had Madame Bronck no expectation of seeing Arendt Van Corlaer in
+Acadia?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, mynheer," whispered Antonia.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But since I have come have you nothing to say to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope I see you well, mynheer."</p>
+
+<p>"You might see me well," reproached Van Corlaer, "if you would look at
+me."</p>
+
+<p>She lifted her eyes and dropped them again.</p>
+
+<p>"This Acadian air has given you a wan color," he noted.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you leave Teunis and Marytje Harmentse well?" quavered Antonia,
+catching at any scrap. Van Corlaer stared, and answered that Teunis and
+Marytje were well, and would be grateful to her for inquiring.</p>
+
+<p>"For they also helped to hide this priest from the Mohawks," added
+Antonia without coherence. Marie could hear her heart laboring.</p>
+
+<p>"What priest?" inquired Van Corlaer, and as he looked around his eyes
+fell on the cassocked figure at the other table.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur Corlaer," spoke Father Jogues, "I was but waiting fit
+opportunity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> to recall myself and your blessed charity to your memory."</p>
+
+<p>Van Corlaer's baffled look changed to instant glad recognition.</p>
+
+<p>"That is Father Jogues!"</p>
+
+<p>He met the priest with both hands, and stood head and shoulders taller
+while they held each other like brothers.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought to find you in Montreal, Father Jogues, and not here, where
+in my dim fashion I could mistake you for the chaplain of the fort."</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur Corlaer, I have not forgot one look of yours. I was a great
+trouble to you with, my wounds, and my hiding and fever. And what pains
+you took to put me on board the ship in the night! It would be better
+indeed to see me at Montreal than ever in such plight again at Fort
+Orange, Monsieur Corlaer!"</p>
+
+<p>"Glad would we be to have you at Fort Orange again, without pain to
+yourself, Father Jogues."</p>
+
+<p>"And how is my friend who so much enjoyed disputing about religion?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Our dominie is well, and sent by my hand his hearty greeting to that
+very learned scholar Father Jogues. We heard you had come back from
+France."</p>
+
+<p>Van Corlaer dropped one hand on the donn&eacute;'s shoulder and leaned down to
+examine his smiling face.</p>
+
+<p>"It is my brother Lalande, the donn&eacute; of this present mission," said the
+priest.</p>
+
+<p>"My young monsieur," said Van Corlaer, "keep Father Jogues out of the
+Mohawks' mouths henceforth. They have really no stomach for religion,
+though they will eat saints. It often puzzles a Dutchman to handle that
+Iroquois nation."</p>
+
+<p>"Our lives are not our own," said the young Frenchman.</p>
+
+<p>"We must bear the truth whether it be received or not," said Father
+Jogues.</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever errand brought you into Acadia," said Van Corlaer, turning
+back to the priest, "I am glad to find you here, for I shall now have
+your company back to Montreal."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Impossible, Monsieur Corlaer. For I have set out to plant a mission
+among the Abenakis. They asked for a missionary. Our guides deserted us,
+and we have wandered off our course and been obliged to throw away
+nearly all the furniture of our mission. But we now hope to make our way
+along the coast."</p>
+
+<p>"Father Jogues, the Abenakis are all gone northward. We passed through
+their towns on the Penobscot."</p>
+
+<p>"But they will come back?"</p>
+
+<p>"Some time, though no man at Penobscot would be able to say when."</p>
+
+<p>Father Jogues' perplexed brows drew together. Wanderings, hunger, and
+imprisonment he could bear serenely as incidents of his journey. But to
+have his flock scattered before he could reach it was real calamity.</p>
+
+<p>"We must make shift to follow them," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"How will you follow them without supplies, and without knowing where
+they may turn in the woods?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I see we shall have to wait for them at Penobscot," said Father Jogues.</p>
+
+<p>"Take a heretic's advice instead. For I speak not as the enemy of your
+religion when I urge you to journey with me back to Montreal. You can
+make another and better start to establish this mission."</p>
+
+<p>The priest shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not see my way. But my way will be shown to me, or word will come
+sending me back."</p>
+
+<p>Some sign from the lady of the fortress recalled Van Corlaer to his duty
+as a guest. The supper grew cold while he parleyed. So he turned quickly
+to take the chair she had set for him, and saw that Antonia was gone.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame Bronck will return," said Marie, pitying his chagrin, and
+searching her own mind for Antonia's excuse. "We brought a half-starved
+baby home from our last expedition, and it lies dead upstairs. Women
+have soft hearts, monsieur: they cannot see such sights unmoved. She
+hath lost command of herself to-night."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Van Corlaer's face lightened with tenderness. Bachelor though he was, he
+had held infants in his hands for baptism, and not only the children of
+Fort Orange but dark broods of the Mohawks often rubbed about his knees.</p>
+
+<p>"You brought your men into the fort, Monsieur Corlaer?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, madame. I sent them back to camp by the falls. We are well
+provisioned. And there was no need for them to come within the walls."</p>
+
+<p>"If you lack anything I hope you will command it of us."</p>
+
+<p>"Madame, you are already too bounteous; and we lack nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"The Sieur de la Tour being away, the conduct and honor of this fort are
+left in my hands. And he has himself ever been friendly to the people of
+the colonies."</p>
+
+<p>"That is well known, madame."</p>
+
+<p>Soft waxlight, the ample shine of the fire, trained service, and housing
+from the chill spring night, abundant food and flask,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> all failed to
+bring up the spirits of Van Corlaer. Antonia did not return to the
+table. The servingmen went and came betwixt hall and cook-house. Every
+time one of them opened the door, the world of darkness peered in, and
+over the night quiet of the fort could be heard the tidal up-rush of the
+river.</p>
+
+<p>"The men can now bring our ship to anchor," observed Marie. Father
+Jogues and his donn&eacute;, eating with the habitual self-denial of men who
+must inure themselves to hunger, still spoke with Van Corlaer about
+their mission. But during all his talk he furtively watched the
+stairway.</p>
+
+<p>The dwarf sat on her accustomed stool beside her lady, picking up bits
+from a well heaped silver platter on her knees; and she watched Van
+Corlaer's discomfiture when Lady Dorinda took him in hand and Antonia
+yet remained away.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V.</h2>
+
+<h3>JONAS BRONCK'S HAND.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The guests had deserted the hall fire and a sentinel was set for the
+night before Madame La Tour knocked at Antonia's door.</p>
+
+<p>Antonia was slow to open it. But she finally let Marie into her chamber,
+where the fire had died on the hearth, and retired again behind the
+screen to continue dabbing her face with water. The candle was also
+behind the screen, and it threw out Antonia's shadow, and showed her
+disordered flax-white hair flung free of its cap and falling to its
+length. Marie sat down in the little world of shadow outside the screen.
+The joists directly above Antonia flickered with the flickering light.
+One window high in the wall showed the misty darkness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> which lay upon
+Fundy Bay. The room was chilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur Corlaer is gone, Antonia," said Marie.</p>
+
+<p>Antonia's shadow leaped, magnifying the young Dutchwoman's start.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame, you have not sent him off on his journey in the night?"</p>
+
+<p>"I sent him not. I begged him to remain. But he had such cold welcome
+from his own countrywoman that he chose the woods rather than the
+hospitality of Fort St. John."</p>
+
+<p>Much as Antonia stirred and clinked flasks, her sobs grew audible behind
+the screen. She ran out with her arms extended and threw herself on the
+floor at Marie's knees, transformed by anguish. Marie in full compassion
+drew the girlish creature to her breast, repenting herself while Antonia
+wept and shook.</p>
+
+<p>"I was cruel to say Monsieur Corlaer is gone. He has only left the
+fortress to camp with his men at the falls. He will be here<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> two more
+days, and to-morrow you must urge him to stay our guest."</p>
+
+<p>"Madame, I dare not see him at all!"</p>
+
+<p>"But why should you not see Monsieur Corlaer?"</p>
+
+<p>Antonia settled to the floor and rested her head and arms on her
+friend's lap.</p>
+
+<p>"For you love him."</p>
+
+<p>"O madame! I did not show that I loved him? No. It would be horrible for
+me to love him."</p>
+
+<p>"What has he done? And it is plain he has come to court you."</p>
+
+<p>"He has long courted me, madame."</p>
+
+<p>"And you met him as a stranger and fled from him as a wolf!&mdash;this
+Hollandais gentleman who hath saved our French people&mdash;even
+priests&mdash;from the savages!"</p>
+
+<p>"All New Amsterdam and Fort Orange hold him in esteem," said Antonia,
+betraying pride. "I have heard he can do more with the Iroquois tribes
+than any other man of the New World." She uselessly wiped her eyes. She
+was weak from long crying.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Then why do you run from him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because he hath too witching a power on me, madame. I cannot spin or
+knit or sew when he is by; I must needs watch every motion of his if he
+once fastens my eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"I have noticed he draws one's heart," laughed Marie.</p>
+
+<p>"He does. It is like witchcraft. He sets me afloat so that I lose my
+feet and have scarce any will of my own. I never was so disturbed by my
+husband Jonas Bronck," complained Antonia.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you love your husband?" inquired Marie.</p>
+
+<p>"We always love our husbands, madame. Mynheer Bronck was very good to
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"You have never told me much of Monsieur Bronck, Antonia."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like to speak of him now, madame. It makes me shiver."</p>
+
+<p>"You are not afraid of the dead?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was never afraid of him living. I regarded him as a father."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But one's husband is not to be regarded as a father."</p>
+
+<p>"He was old enough to be my father, madame. I was not more than sixteen,
+besides being an orphan, and Mynheer Bronck was above fifty, yet he
+married me, and became the best husband in the colony. He was far from
+putting me in such states as Mynheer Van Corlaer does."</p>
+
+<p>"The difference is that you love Monsieur Corlaer."</p>
+
+<p>"Do not speak that word, madame."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you have him marry another woman?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," spoke Antonia in a stoical voice, "if that pleased him best. I
+should then be driven to no more voyages. He followed me to New
+Amsterdam; and I ventured on a long journey to Boston, where I had
+kinspeople, as you know. But there I must have broken down, madame, if I
+had not met you. It was fortunate for me that the English captain
+brought you out of your course. For mynheer set out to follow me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> there.
+And now he has come across the wilderness even to this fort!"</p>
+
+<p>"Confess," said Marie, giving her a little shake, "how pleased you are
+with such a determined lover!"</p>
+
+<p>But instead of doing this, Antonia burst again into frenzied sobbing and
+hugged her comforter.</p>
+
+<p>"O madame, you are the only person I dare love in the world!"</p>
+
+<p>Marie smoothed the young widow's damp hair with the quieting stroke
+which calms children.</p>
+
+<p>"Let mother help thee," she said; and neither of them remembered that
+she was scarcely as old as Antonia. In love and motherhood, in military
+peril, and contact with riper civilizations, to say nothing of inherited
+experience, the lady of St. John had lived far beyond Antonia Bronck.</p>
+
+<p>"Your husband made you take an oath not to wed again,&mdash;is it so?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, madame, he never did."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet you told me he left you his money?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes. He was very good to me. For I had neither father nor mother."</p>
+
+<p>"And he bound you by no promise?</p>
+
+<p>"None at all, madame."</p>
+
+<p>"What, then, can you find to break your heart upon in the suit of
+Monsieur Corlaer? You are free. Even as my lord&mdash;if I were dead&mdash;would
+be free to marry any one; not excepting D'Aulnay's widow."</p>
+
+<p>Marie smiled at that improbable union.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I do not feel free." Antonia shivered close to her friend's knees.
+"Madame, I cannot tell you. But I will show you the token."</p>
+
+<p>"Show me the token, therefore. And a sound token it must be, to hold you
+wedded to a dead man whom in life you regarded as a father."</p>
+
+<p>Antonia rose upon her feet, but stood dreading the task before her.</p>
+
+<p>"I have to look at it once every month," she explained, "and I have
+looked at it once this month already."</p>
+
+<p>The dim chill room with its one eye fixed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> on darkness was an eddy in
+which a single human mind resisted that century's current of
+superstition. Marie sat ready to judge and destroy whatever spell the
+cunning old Hollandais had left on a girl to whom he represented law and
+family.</p>
+
+<p>Antonia beckoned her behind the screen, and took from some ready
+hiding-place a small oak box studded with nails, which Marie had never
+before seen. How alien to the simple and open life of the Dutch widow
+was this secret coffer! Her face changed while she looked at it; grieved
+girlhood passed into sunken age. Her lips turned wax-white, and drooped
+at the corners. She set the box on a dressing-table beside the candle,
+unlocked it and turned back the lid. Marie was repelled by a faint odor
+aside from its breath of dead spices.</p>
+
+<p>Antonia unfolded a linen cloth and showed a pallid human hand, its stump
+concealed by a napkin. It was cunningly preserved, and shrunken only by
+the countless lines which denote approaching age. It was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> the right hand
+of a man who must have had imagination. The fingers were sensitively
+slim, with shapely blue nails, and without knobs or swollen joints. It
+was a crafty, firm-possessing hand, ready to spring from its nest to
+seize and eternally hold you.</p>
+
+<p>The lady of St. John had seen human fragments scattered by cannon, and
+sword and bullet had done their work before her sight. But a faintness
+beyond the touch of peril made her grasp the table and turn from that
+ghastly hand.</p>
+
+<p>"It cannot be, Antonia"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it is Mynheer Bronck's hand," whispered Antonia, subduing herself
+to take admonition from the grim digits.</p>
+
+<p>"Lock it up; and come directly away from it. Come out of this room. You
+have opened a grave here."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MENDING.</h3>
+
+
+<p>But Antonia delayed to set in order her hair and cap and all her
+methodical habits of life. When Jonas Bronck's hand was snugly locked in
+its case and no longer obliged her to look at it, she took a pensive
+pleasure in the relic, bred of usage to its company. She came out of her
+chamber erect and calm. Marie was at the stairs speaking to the soldier
+stationed in the hall below. He had just piled up his fire, and its
+homely splendor sent back to remoteness all human dreads. He hurried up
+the stairway to his lady.</p>
+
+<p>"Go knock at the door of the priest, Father Jogues, and demand his
+cassock," she said.</p>
+
+<p>The man halted, and asked,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"What shall I do with it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bring it hither to me."</p>
+
+<p>"But if he refuses to have it brought?"</p>
+
+<p>"The good man will not refuse. Yet if he asks why," said Madame La Tour
+smiling, "tell him it is the custom of the house to take away at night
+the cassock of any priest who stays here."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, madame."</p>
+
+<p>The soldier kept to himself his opinion of meddling with black gowns,
+and after some parleying at the door of Father Jogues' apartment,
+received the garment and brought it to his lady.</p>
+
+<p>"We will take our needles, and sit by the hall fire," said Marie to
+Antonia. "Did you note the raggedness of Father Jogues' cassock? I am an
+enemy to papists, especially D'Aulnay de Charnisay; but who can harden
+her heart against a saint because he patters prayers on a rosary? Thou
+and I will mend his black gown. I cannot see even a transient member of
+my household uncomfortable."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The soldier put two waxlights on the table by the hearth, and withdrew
+to the stairway. He was there to guard as prisoner the priest for whom
+his lady set herself to work. She drew her chair to Antonia's and they
+spread the cassock between them. It had been neatly beaten and picked
+clear of burrs, but the rents in it were astonishing. Even within
+sumptuous fireshine the black cloth taxed sight; and Marie paused
+sometimes to curtain her eyes with her hand, but Antonia worked on with
+Dutch steadiness. The touch of a needle within a woman's fingers cools
+all her fevers. She stitches herself fast to the race. There is safety
+and saneness in needlework.</p>
+
+<p>"This spot wants a patch," said Antonia.</p>
+
+<p>"Weave it together with stitches," said Marie. "Daughter of presumption!
+would you add to the gown of a Roman priest?"</p>
+
+<p>"Priest or dominie," commented Antonia, biting a fresh thread, "he would
+be none<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> the worse for a stout piece of cloth to his garment."</p>
+
+<p>"But we have naught to match with it. I would like to set in a little
+heresy cut from one of the Sieur de la Tour's good Huguenot doublets."</p>
+
+<p>The girlish faces, bent opposite, grew placid with domestic interest.
+Marie's cheeks ripened by the fire, but the whiter Hollandaise warmed
+only through the lips. This hall's glow made more endurable the image of
+Jonas Bronck's hand. "When was it cut off, Antonia?" murmured Marie,
+stopping to thread a needle.</p>
+
+<p>The perceptible blight again fell over Antonia's face as she replied,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"After he had been one day dead."</p>
+
+<p>"Then he did not grimly lop it off himself?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no," whispered Antonia with deep sighing. "Mynheer the doctor did
+that, on his oath to my husband. He was the most learned cunning man in
+medicine that ever came to our colony. He kept the hand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> a month in his
+furnace before it was ready to send to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Did Monsieur Bronck, before he died, tell you his intention to do
+this?" pressed Marie, feeling less interest in the Dutch embalmer's
+method than in the sinuous motive of a man who could leave such a
+bequest.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, madame."</p>
+
+<p>"I do marvel at such an act!" murmured the lady of St. John, challenging
+Jonas Bronck's loyal widow to take up his instant defense.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame, he was obliged to do it by a dream he had."</p>
+
+<p>"He dreamed that his hand would keep off intruders?" smiled Marie.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," responded Antonia innocently, "and all manner of evil fortune. I
+have to look at it once a month as long as I live, and carry it with me
+everywhere. If it should be lost or destroyed trouble and ruin would
+fall not only on me but on every one who loved me."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The woman of larger knowledge did not argue against this credulity.
+Antonia was of the provinces, bred out of their darkest hours of
+superstition and savage danger. But it was easy to see how Jonas
+Bronck's hand must hold his widow from second marriage. What lover could
+she ask to share her monthly gaze upon it, and thus half realize the
+continued fleshly existence of Jonas Bronck? The rite was in its nature
+a secret one. Shame, gratitude, the former usages of her life, and a
+thousand other influences, were yet in the grip of that rigid hand. And
+if she lost or destroyed it, nameless and weird calamity, foreseen by a
+dying man, must light upon the very lover who undertook to separate her
+from her ghastly company.</p>
+
+<p>"The crafty old Hollandais!" thought Marie. "He was cunning in his
+knowledge of Antonia. But he hath made up this fist at a younger
+Hollandais who will scarce stop for dead hands."</p>
+
+<p>The Dutch gentlewoman snuffed both wax<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>lights. Her lips were drawn in
+grieved lines. Marie glanced up at one of the portraits on the wall, and
+said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The agonies which men inflict on the beings they love best, must work
+perpetual astonishment in heaven. Look at the Sieur Claude de la Tour, a
+noble of France who could stoop to become the first English knight of
+Acadia, forcing his own son to take up arms against him."</p>
+
+<p>The elder La Tour frowned and flickered in his frame.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet he had a gracious presence," said Antonia. "Lady Dorinda says he
+was the handsomest man at the English court."</p>
+
+<p>"I doubt it not; the La Tours are a beautiful race. And it was that very
+graciousness which made him a weak prisoner in the hands of the English.
+They married him to one of the queen's ladies, and granted him all
+Acadia, which he had only to demand from his son, if he would turn it
+over to England and declare himself an English subject I can yet see his
+ships as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> they rounded Cape Sable; and the face of my lord when he read
+his father's summons to surrender the claims of France. We were to be
+loaded with honors. France had driven us out on account of our faith;
+England opened her arms. We should be enriched, and live forever a happy
+and united family, sole lords of Acadia."</p>
+
+<p>Marie broke off another thread.</p>
+
+<p>"The king of France, who has outlawed my husband and delivered him to
+his enemy, should have seen him then, Antonia. Sieur Claude La Tour put
+both arms around him and pleaded. It was, 'My little Charles, do not
+disgrace me by refusal;' and 'My father, I love you, but here I
+represent the rights of France.' 'The king of France is no friend of
+ours,' says Sieur Claude. 'Whether he rewards or punishes me,' says
+Charles, 'this province belongs to my country, and I will hold it while
+I have life to defend it.' And he was obliged to turn his cannon against
+His own father; and the ships were disabled and driven off."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Was the old mynheer killed?"</p>
+
+<p>"His pride was killed. He could never hold up his head in England again,
+and he had betrayed France. My lord built him a house outside our fort,
+yet neither could he endure Acadia. He died in England. You know I
+brought his widow thence with me last year. She should have her dower of
+lands here, if we can hold them against D'Aulnay de Charnisay."</p>
+
+<p>The lady of the fort shook out Father Jogues' cassock and rose from the
+mending. Antonia picked up their tools and flicked bits of thread from
+her skirt.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad it is done, madame, for you look heavy-eyed, as any one
+ought, after tossing two nights on Fundy Bay and sewing on a black gown
+until midnight cock-crow of the third."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not now fit to face a siege," owned Marie. "We must get to bed.
+Though first I crave one more look at the dead baby Z&eacute;lie hath in
+charge. There is a soft weakness in me which mothers even the outcast
+young of my enemy."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII.</h2>
+
+<h3>A FRONTIER GRAVEYARD.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The next morning was gray and transparent: a hemisphere of mist filled
+with light; a world of vapor palpitating with some indwelling spirit.
+That lonesome lap of country opposite Fort St. John could scarcely be
+defined. Scraps of its dawning spring color showed through the mobile
+winding and ascending veil. Trees rose out of the lowlands between the
+fort and the falls.</p>
+
+<p>Van Corlaer was in the gorge, watching that miracle worked every day in
+St. John River. The tide was racing inland. The steep rapids within
+their throat of rock were clear of fog. Foam is the flower of water; and
+white petal after white petal was swept under by the driving waves. As<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
+the tide rose the tumult of falls ceased. The channel filled. All rocks
+were drowned. For a brief time another ship could have passed up that
+natural lock, as La Tour's ship had passed on the cream-smooth current
+at flood tide the day before.</p>
+
+<p>Van Corlaer could not see its ragged sails around the breast of rock,
+but the hammering of its repairers had been in his ears since dawn; and
+through the subsiding wash of water he now heard men's voices.</p>
+
+<p>The Indians whose village he had joined were that morning breaking up
+camp to begin their spring pilgrimage down the coast along various
+fishing haunts; for agriculture was a thing unknown to these savages.
+They were a seafaring people in canoes. At that time even invading
+Europeans had gained little mastery of the soil. Camp and fortress were
+on the same side of the river. Lounging braves watched indifferently
+some figures wading fog from the fort, perhaps bringing them a farewell
+word, perhaps forbidding their departure. The Indian often<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> humored his
+invader's feudal airs, but he never owned the mastery of any white man.
+Squaws took down cone-shaped tents, while their half-naked babies
+sprawled in play upon the ashes of last winter's fires. Van Corlaer's
+men sauntered through the vanishing town, trying at times to strike some
+spark of information from Dutch and Etchemin jargon.</p>
+
+<p>Near the river bank, between camp and fort, was an alluvial spot in
+which the shovel found no rock. A rough line of piled stones severed it
+from surrounding lands, and a few trees stood there, promising summer
+shade, though, darkly moist along every budded twig, they now swayed in
+tuneless nakedness. Here the dead of Fort St. John were buried; and
+those approaching figures entered a gap of the inclosure instead of
+going on to the camp. Three of La Tour's soldiers, with Father Jogues
+and his donn&eacute;, had come to bury the outcast baby. One of the men was
+Z&eacute;lie's husband, and she walked beside him. Marguerite lay sulk<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>ing in
+the barracks. The lady had asked Father Jogues to consecrate with the
+rites of his church the burial of this little victim probably born into
+his faith. But he would have followed it in any case, with that instinct
+which drove him to baptize dying Indian children with rain-drops and
+attempt to pluck converts from the tortures of the stake.</p>
+
+<p>"Has this child been baptized?" he inquired of Z&eacute;lie on the path down
+from the fort.</p>
+
+<p>She answered, shedding tears of resentment against Marguerite, and with
+fervor she could not restrain,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I'll warrant me it never had so much as a drop of water on its head,
+and but little to its body, before my lady took it."</p>
+
+<p>"But hath it not believing parents?"</p>
+
+<p>"Our Swiss says," stated Z&eacute;lie, with a respectful heretic's sparing of
+this priest, "that it is the child of D'Aulnay de Charnisay." And she
+added no comment. The soldiers set their spades to last year's sod,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> cut
+an oblong wound, and soon had the earth heaped out and a grave made.
+Father Jogues, perplexed, and heavy of heart for the sins of his
+enlightened as well as his savage children, concluded to consecrate the
+baby's bed. The Huguenot soldiers stood sullenly by while a Romish
+service went on. They or their fathers had been driven out of France by
+the bitterness of that very religion which Father Jogues expressed in
+sweetness. They had not the broad sympathy of their lady, who could
+excuse and even stoop to mend a priest's cassock; and they made their
+pause as brief as possible.</p>
+
+<p>While the spat and clink of spades built up one child's hillock, Z&eacute;lie
+was on her knees beside another some distance from it, scraping away
+dead leaves. Her lady had bid her look how this grave fared, and she
+noticed fondly that fern was beginning to curl above the buried lad's
+head. The heir of the La Tours lay with his feet toward the outcast of
+the Charnisays, but this was a chance arrangement. Soldiers and
+ser<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>vants of the house were scattered about the frontier burial ground,
+and Z&eacute;lie noted to report to her lady that winter had partly effaced and
+driven below the surface some recent graves. Instead of being marked by
+a cross, each earthen door had a narrow frame of river stones built
+around it.</p>
+
+<p>Van Corlaer left the drowned falls and passed his own tents, and waited
+outside the knee-high inclosure for Father Jogues. The missionary, in
+his usual halo of prayer, dwelt upon the open breviary. Many a tree
+along the Mohawk valley yet bore the name of Jesu which he had carved in
+its bark, as well as rude crosses. Such marks helped him to turn the
+woods into one wide oratory. But unconverted savages, tearing with their
+teeth the hands lifted up in supplication for them, had scarcely taxed
+his heart as heretics and sinful believers taxed it now. The soldiers,
+having finished, took up their tools, and Van Corlaer joined Father
+Jogues as the party came out of the cemetery.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The day was brightening. Some sea-birds were spreading their white
+breasts and wing-linings like flashes of silver against shifting vapor.
+The party descended to a wrinkle in the land which would be dry at
+ebb-tide. Now it held a stream flowing inland upon grass&mdash;unshriveled
+long grass bowed flat and sleeked to this daily service. It gave
+beholders a delicious sensation to see the clean water rushing up so
+verdant a course. A log which would seem a misplaced and useless
+foot-bridge when the tide was out, was crossed by one after another; and
+as Van Corlaer fell back to step beside Father Jogues, he said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The Abenakis take to the woods and desert their fishing, and these
+Etchemins leave the woods and take to the coast. You never know where to
+have your savage. Did you note that the village was moving?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I saw that, Monsieur Corlaer; and I must now take leave of the
+lady of the fort and join myself to them."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"If you do you will give deep offense to La Tour," said the Dutchman,
+pushing back some strands of light hair which had fallen over his
+forehead, and turning his great near-sighted eyes on his friend. "These
+Indians are called Protestant. They are in La Tour's grant. Thou knowest
+that he and D'Aulnay de Charnisay have enough to quarrel about without
+drawing churchmen into their broil."</p>
+
+<p>Father Jogues trod on gently. He knew he could not travel with any
+benighted soul and not try to convert it. These poor Etchemins appealed
+to his conscience; but so did the gracious lady of the fort.</p>
+
+<p>"If I could mend the rents in her faith," he sighed, "as she hath mended
+the rents in my cassock!"</p>
+
+<p>Two of the soldiers turned aside with their spades to a slope behind the
+fortress, where there was a stable for the ponies and horned cattle, and
+where last year's garden beds lay blackened under last year's refuse
+growth. Having planted the immortal seed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> their next duty was to
+prepare for the trivial resurrections of the summer. Frenchmen love
+green messes in their soup. The garden might be trampled by besiegers,
+but there were other chances that it would yield something. Z&eacute;lie's
+husband climbed the height to escort the priest and report to his lady,
+but he had his wife to chatter beside him. Father Jogues' donn&eacute; walked
+behind Van Corlaer, and he alone overheard the Dutchman's talk.</p>
+
+<p>"This lady of Fort St. John, Father Jogues, so housed, and so ground
+between the millstones of La Tour and D'Aulnay&mdash;she hath wrought up my
+mind until I could not forbear this journey. It is well known through
+the colonies that La Tour can no longer get help, and is outlawed by his
+king. This fortress will be sacked. La Tour would best stay at home to
+defend his own. But what can any other man do? I am here to defend my
+own, and I will take it and defend it."</p>
+
+<p>Van Corlaer looked up at the walls, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> his chest swelled with a large
+breath of regret.</p>
+
+<p>"God He knoweth why so sweet a lady is set here to bear the brunts of a
+frontier fortress, where no man can aid her without espousing her
+husband's quarrel!&mdash;while hundreds of evil women degrade the courts of
+Europe. But I can only do mine errand and go. And you will best mend
+your own expedition at this time by a new start from Montreal, Father
+Jogues."</p>
+
+<p>The priest turned around on the ascent and looked toward the vanishing
+Indian camp. He was examining as self-indulgence his strong and
+gentlemanly desire not to involve Madame La Tour in further troubles by
+proselyting her people.</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever way is pointed out to me, Monsieur Corlaer," he answered,
+"that way I must take. For the mending of an expedition rests not in the
+hands of the poor instrument that attempts it."</p>
+
+<p>Their soldier signaled for the gates to be opened, and they entered the
+fort. Marie<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> was on her morning round of inspection. She had just given
+back to a guard the key of the powder magazine. Well, storehouse,
+fuel-house, barracks, were in military readiness. But refuse stuff had
+been thrown in spots which her people were now severely cleaning. She
+greeted her returning guests, and heard the report of Z&eacute;lie's husband. A
+lace mantle was drawn over her head and fastened under the chin,
+throwing out from its blackness the warm brown beauty of her face.</p>
+
+<p>"So our Indians are leaving the falls already?" she repeated, fixing
+Z&eacute;lie's husband with a serious eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, madame," witnessed Z&eacute;lie. "I myself saw women packing tents."</p>
+
+<p>"Have they heard any rumor which scared them off early,&mdash;our good lazy
+Etchemins, who hate fighting?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, madame," Van Corlaer answered, being the only person who came
+directly from the camp, "I think not, though their language is not clear
+to me like our western<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> tongues. It is simply an early spring, calling
+them out."</p>
+
+<p>"They have always waited until P&acirc;ques week heretofore," she remembered.
+But the wandering forth of an irresponsible village had little to do
+with the state of her fort. She was going upon the walls to look at the
+cannon, and asked her guests to go with her.</p>
+
+<p>The priest and his donn&eacute; and Van Corlaer ascended a ladder, and Madame
+La Tour followed.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not often climb like a sailor," she said, when Van Corlaer gave
+her his hand at the top. "There is a flight of steps from mine own
+chamber to the level of the walls. And here Madame Bronck and I have
+taken the air on winter days when we felt sure of its not blowing us
+away. But you need not look sad over our pleasures, monsieur. We have
+had many a sally out of this fort, and monsieur the priest will tell you
+there is great freedom on snowshoes."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Madame Bronck has allowed herself little freedom since I came to Fort
+St. John," observed Van Corlaer.</p>
+
+<p>They all walked the walls from bastion to bastion, and Marie examined
+the guns, and spoke with her soldiers. On the way back Father Jogues and
+Lalande paused to watch the Etchemins trail away, and to commune on what
+their duty directed them to do. Marie walked on with Van Corlaer toward
+the towered bastion, talking quickly, and ungloving her right hand to
+help his imagination with it. A bar of sunlight rested with a long slant
+through vapor on the fortress. Far blue distances were opened on the
+bay. The rippling full river had already begun to subside and sink line
+by line from its island.</p>
+
+<p>Van Corlaer gave no attention to the beautiful world. He listened to
+Madame La Tour with a broadening humorous face and the invincible port
+of a man who knows nothing of defeat. The sentinel trod back and forth
+without disturbing this intent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> conference, but other feet came rushing
+up the stone steps which let from Marie's room to the level of the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame&mdash;madame!" exclaimed Antonia Bronck; but her flaxen head was
+arrested in ascent beside Van Corlaer's feet, and her distressed eyes
+met in his a whimsical look which stung her through with suspicion and
+resentment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>VAN CORLAER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>"What is it, Antonia?" demanded Marie.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame, it is nothing."</p>
+
+<p>Antonia owned her suitor's baring of his head, and turned upon the
+stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"But some alarm drove you out."</p>
+
+<p>Marie leaned over the cell inclosing the stone steps. It was not easy to
+judge from Antonia's erect bearing what had so startled her. Her friend
+followed her to the door below, and the voices of the two women hummed
+indistinctly in that vault-like hollow.</p>
+
+<p>"You have told him," accused Antonia directly. "He is laughing about
+Mynheer Bronck's hand!"</p>
+
+<p>"He does take a cheerful view of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> matter," conceded the lady of the
+fort. Antonia looked at her with all the asperity which could be
+expressed in a fair Dutch face.</p>
+
+<p>"As long as I kept my trouble to myself I could bear it. But I show it
+to another, and the worst befalls me."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that hand lost, Antonia?"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot find it, or even the box which held it."</p>
+
+<p>"Never accuse me with your eye," said Marie with droll pathos. "If it
+were lost or destroyed by accident, I could bear without a groan to see
+you so bereaved. But the slightest thing shall not be filched in Fort
+St. John. When did you first miss it?"</p>
+
+<p>"A half hour since. I left the box on my table last night instead of
+replacing it in my chest;&mdash;being so disturbed."</p>
+
+<p>"Every room shall be searched," said Marie. "Where is Le Rossignol?"</p>
+
+<p>"She went after breakfast to call her swan in the fort."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I saw her not. And I have neglected to send her to the turret for her
+punishment. That little creature has a magpie's fondness for plunder.
+Perhaps she has carried off your box. I will send for her."</p>
+
+<p>Marie left the room. Antonia lingered to glance through a small square
+pane in the door&mdash;an eye which the commandants of the fort kept on their
+battlements. It had an inner tapestry, but this remained as Marie had
+pushed it aside that morning to take her early look at the walls. Van
+Corlaer was waiting on the steps, and as he detected Antonia in the
+guilty act of peeping at him, his compelling voice reached her in Dutch.
+She returned into the small stone cell formed by the stairs, and closed
+the door, submitting defiantly to the interview.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you sit here?" suggested Van Corlaer, taking off his cloak and
+making for her a cushion upon the stone. Antonia reflected that he would
+be chilly and therefore hold brief talk, so she made no objection, and
+sat down on one end of the step while<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> he sat down on the other. They
+spoke Dutch: with their formal French fell away the formal phases of
+this meeting in Acadia. The sentinel's walk moved almost overhead, and
+died away along the wall and returned again, but noises within the fort
+scarcely intruded to their rocky cell. They did not hear even the voices
+of Lalande and Father Jogues descending the ladder.</p>
+
+<p>"We have never had any satisfactory talk together, Antonia," began Van
+Corlaer.</p>
+
+<p>"No, mynheer," breathed the girlish relict of Bronck, feeling her heart
+labor as she faced his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"It is hard for a man to speak his mind to you."</p>
+
+<p>"It hath seemed easy enough for Mynheer Van Corlaer, seeing how many
+times he hath done so," observed Antonia, drawing her mufflings around
+her neck.</p>
+
+<p>"No. I speak always with such folly that you will not hear me. It is not
+so when I talk among men or work on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> minds of savages. Let us now
+begin reasonably. I do believe you like me, Antonia."</p>
+
+<p>"A most reasonable beginning," noted Antonia, biting her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I am a man in the stress and fury of mid-life, hard to turn from my
+purpose, and you well know my purpose. Your denials and puttings-off and
+flights have pleased me. But your own safety may waste no more good time
+in further play. I have not come into Acadia to tinkle a song under your
+window, but to wed you and carry you back to Fort Orange with me."</p>
+
+<p>Antonia stirred, to hide her trembling.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you cold?" inquired Van Corlaer.</p>
+
+<p>"No, mynheer."</p>
+
+<p>"If the air chills you I will warm your hands in mine."</p>
+
+<p>"My hands are well muffled, mynheer."</p>
+
+<p>He adjusted his back against the wall and again opened the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"I brought a young dominie with me. He wished to see Montreal. And I
+took care to have with him such papers as might be necessary to the
+marriage."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He had best get my leave," observed Madame Bronck.</p>
+
+<p>"That is no part of his duty. But set your mind at rest; he is a young
+dominie of credit. When I was in Boston I saw a rich sedan chair made
+for the viceroy of Mexico, but brought to the colonies for sale. It put
+a thought in my head, and I set skilled fellows to work, and they made
+and we have carried through the woods the smallest, most
+cunning-fashioned sedan chair that woman ever stepped into. I brought it
+for the comfortable journeying of Madame Van Corlaer."</p>
+
+<p>"That unknown lady will have much satisfaction in it," murmured Antonia.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so. And be better known than she was as Jonas Bronck's wife."</p>
+
+<p>She colored, but hid a smile within her muffling. Her good-humored
+suitor leaned toward her, resting his arms upon his knees.</p>
+
+<p>"Touching a matter which has never been mentioned between us;&mdash;was the
+curing of Bronck's hand well approved by you?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Mynheer, I am angry at Madame La Tour. Or did he," gasped Antonia, not
+daring to accuse by name the colonial doctor who had managed her dark
+secret, "did he show that to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Would the boldest chemist out of Amsterdam cut off and salt the member
+of any honest burgher without leave of the patroon?" suggested Van
+Corlaer. "Besides, my skill was needed, for I was once learned in
+chemistry."</p>
+
+<p>It was so surprising to see this man over-ride her terror that Antonia
+stared at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Mynheer, had you no dread of the sight?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; and had I known you would dread it the hand had spoiled in the
+curing. I thought less of Jonas Bronck, that he could bequeath a morsel
+of himself like dried venison."</p>
+
+<p>"Mynheer Bronck was a very good man," asserted Antonia severely.</p>
+
+<p>"But thou knowest in thy heart that I am a better one," laughed Van
+Corlaer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He was the best of husbands," she insisted, trembling with a woman's
+anxiety to be loyal to affection which she has not too well rewarded.
+"It was on my account that he had his hand cut off."</p>
+
+<p>"I will outdo Bronck," determined Van Corlaer. "I will have myself
+skinned at my death and spread out as a rug to your feet. So good a
+housekeeper as Antonia will beat my pelt full often, and so be obliged
+to think on me."</p>
+
+<p>Afloat in his large personality as she always was in his presence, she
+yet tried to resist him.</p>
+
+<p>"The relic that you joke about, Mynheer Van Corlaer, I have done worse
+with; I have lost it."</p>
+
+<p>"Bronck's hand?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. It hath been stolen."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I commend the taste of the thief!"</p>
+
+<p>"And misfortune is sure to follow."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, let misfortune and the hand go together."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It was not so said." She looked furtively at Bronck's powerful rival,
+loath to reveal to him the sick old man's prophecies.</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard of the hearts of heroes being sealed in coffers and
+treasured in the cities from which they sprung," said Van Corlaer,
+taking his hat from the step and holding it to shield his eyes from
+mounting light. "But Jonas was no hero. And I have heard of papists
+venerating little pieces of saints' bones. Father Jogues might do so,
+and I could behold him without smiling. But a Protestant woman should
+have no superstition for relics."</p>
+
+<p>"What I cannot help dreading," confessed Antonia, moving her hands
+nervously in their wrapping, "is what may follow this loss."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, let the hand go! What should follow its loss?"</p>
+
+<p>"Some trouble might befall the people who are kindest to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Because Bronck's hand has been mislaid?" inquired Van Corlaer with
+shrewd light in his eyes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, mynheer," hesitated Antonia. He burst into laughter and Antonia
+looked at him as if he had spoken against religion.</p>
+
+<p>She sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"It was my duty to open the box once every month."</p>
+
+<p>Van Corlaer threw his hat down again on the step above.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you cold, mynheer?" inquired Antonia considerately.</p>
+
+<p>"No. I am fired like a man in mid-battle. Will nothing move you to show
+me a little love, madame? Why, look you, there were French women among
+captives ransomed from the Mohawks who shed tears on these hands of
+mine. Strangers and alien people have some movement of feeling, but you
+have none."</p>
+
+<p>"Mynheer," pleaded Antonia, goaded to inconsistent and trembling
+asperity, "you make my case very hard. I could not tell you why I dare
+not wed again, but since you know, why do you cruelly blame me? A woman
+does not weep the night away<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> without some movement of feeling. Yes,
+mynheer, you have taunted me, and I will tell you the worst. I have
+thought of you more than of any other person in the world, and felt such
+satisfaction in your presence that I could hardly forego it. Yet holding
+me thus bound to you, you are by no means satisfied," sobbed Antonia.</p>
+
+<p>Van Corlaer glowed over her a moment with some smiling compunction, and
+irresistibly took her in his arms. From the instant that Antonia found
+herself there unstartled, her point of view was changed. She looked at
+her limitations no longer alone, but through Van Corlaer's eyes, and saw
+them vanishing. The sentinel, glancing down from time to time with a
+furtive cast of his eye, saw Antonia nodding or shaking her flaxen head
+in complete unison with Van Corlaer's nods and negations, and caught the
+sweet monotone of her voice repeating over and over:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, mynheer. Yes, mynheer."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE TURRET.</h3>
+
+
+<p>While Antonia continued her conference on the stone steps leading to the
+wall, the dwarf was mounting a flight which led to the turret. Klussman
+walked ahead, carrying her instrument and her ration for the day. There
+was not a loophole to throw glimmers upon the blackness. The ascent
+wound about as if carved through the heart of rock, and the tall Swiss
+stooped to its slope. Such a mountain of unseen terraces made Le
+Rossignol pant. She lifted herself from step to step, growing dizzy with
+the turns and holding to the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait for me," she called up the gloom, and shook her fist at the unseen
+soldier because he gave her no reply. Klussman stepped out on the turret
+floor and set down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> his load. Stretching himself from the cramp of the
+stairway, he stood looking over bay and forest and coast. The
+battlemented wall was quite as high as his shoulder. One small cannon,
+brought up with enormous labor, was here trained through an embrasure to
+command the mouth of the river.</p>
+
+<p>Le Rossignol emerged into the unroofed light and the sea air like a
+potentate, dragging a warm furred robe. She had fastened great hoops of
+gold in her ears, and they gave her peaked face a barbaric look. It was
+her policy to go in state to punishment. The little sovereign stalked
+with long steps and threw out her arm in command.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur the Swiss, stoop over and give me thy back until I mount the
+battlement."</p>
+
+<p>Klussman, full of his own bitter and confused thinking, looked blankly
+down at her heated countenance.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me thy back!" sang the dwarf in the melodious scream which anger
+never made harsh in her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Faith, yes, and my entire carcass," muttered the Swiss. "I care not
+what becomes of me now."</p>
+
+<p>"Madame Marie sent you to escort me to this turret. You have the honor
+because you are an officer. Now do your duty as lieutenant of this
+fortress, and make me a comfortable prisoner."</p>
+
+<p>Klussman set his hands upon his sides and smiled down upon his prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>"What is your will?"</p>
+
+<p>"Twice have I told you to stoop and give me your back, that I may mount
+from the cannon to the battlements. Am I to be shut up here without an
+outlook?"</p>
+
+<p>"May I be hanged if I do that," exclaimed Klussman. "Make a footstool of
+myself for a spoiled puppet like thee?"</p>
+
+<p>Le Rossignol ran towards him and kicked his boots with the heel of her
+moccasin. The Swiss, remonstrating and laughing, moved back before her.</p>
+
+<p>"Have some care&mdash;thou wilt break a deer-hoof on my stout leather. And
+why<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> mount the battlements? A fall from this turret edge would spread
+thee out like a raindrop. Though the fewer women there are in the world
+the better," added Klussman bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>"Presume not to call me a woman!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what art thou?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am the nightingale."</p>
+
+<p>"By thy red head thou art the woodpecker. Here is my back, clatterbill.
+Why should I not crawl the ground to be walked over? I have been worse
+used than that."</p>
+
+<p>He grinned fiercely as he bent down with his hands upon his knees. Le
+Rossignol mounted the cannon, and with a couple of light bounds, making
+him a perch midway, reached an embrasure and sat arranging her robes.</p>
+
+<p>"Now you may hand me my clavier," she said, "and then you shall have my
+thanks and my pardon."</p>
+
+<p>The Swiss handed her the instrument. His contempt was ruder than he
+knew. Le Rossignol pulled her gull-skin cap well down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> upon her ears,
+for though the day was now bright overhead, a raw wind came across the
+bay. She leaned over and looked down into the fortress to call her swan.
+The cook was drawing water from the well, and that soft sad note lifted
+his eyes to the turret. Le Rossignol squinted at him, and the man went
+into the barracks and told his wife that he felt shooting pains in his
+limbs that instant.</p>
+
+<p>"Come hither, gentle Swiss," said the dwarf striking the plectrum into
+her mandolin strings, "and I will reward thee for thy back and all thy
+courtly services."</p>
+
+<p>Klussman stepped to the wall and looked with her into the fort.</p>
+
+<p>"Take that sweet sight for my thanks," said Le Rossignol, pointing to
+Marguerite below. The miserable girl had come out of the barracks and
+was sitting in the sun beside the oven. She rested her head against it
+and met the sky light with half-shut eyes, lovely in silken hair and
+pallid flesh through all her sullenness and dejection. As Kluss<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>man saw
+her he uttered an oath under his breath, which the dwarf's hand on the
+mandolin echoed with a bang. He turned his back on the sight and betook
+himself to the stairway, the dwarf's laughter following him. She felt
+high in the world and played with a good spirit. The sentinel below
+heard her, but he took care to keep a steady and level eye. When the
+swan rose past him, spreading its wings almost against his face, he
+prudently trod the wall without turning his head.</p>
+
+<p>"H&eacute;, Shubenacadie," said the human morsel to her familiar as the wide
+wings composed themselves beside her. "We had scarce said good-morning
+when I must be haled before my lady for that box of the Hollandaise."
+The swan was a huge white creature of his kind, with fiery eyes. There
+was satin texture delightful to the touch in the firm and glistening
+plumage of his swelling breast. Le Rossignol smoothed it.</p>
+
+<p>"They have few trinkets in that barbarous Fort Orange in the west. I
+detest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> that Hollandaise more since she carries about such a casket. Let
+us be cozy. Kiss me, Shubenacadie."</p>
+
+<p>The swan's attachment and obedience to her were struggling against some
+swan-like instinct which made him rear a lofty head and twist it
+riverward.</p>
+
+<p>"Kiss me, I say! Shall I have to beat thee over the head with my clavier
+to teach thee manners?"</p>
+
+<p>Shubenacadie darted his snake neck downward and touched bills with her.
+She patted his coral nostrils.</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet. Before you take to the water we must have some talk. I am shut
+up here to stay this whole day. And for what? Not because of the casket,
+for they know not what I have done with it. But because thou and I
+sometimes go out without the password. Stick out thy toes and let me
+polish them."</p>
+
+<p>Shubenacadie resisted this mandate, and his autocrat promptly dragged
+one foot from under him, causing him to topple on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> the parapet. He
+hissed at her. Le Rossignol looked up at the threatening flat head and
+hissed back.</p>
+
+<p>"You are as bad as that Swiss," she laughed. "I will put a yoke on you.
+I will tie you to the settle in the hall. Why have all man creatures
+such tempers? Thank heaven I was not born to hose and doublet. Never did
+I see a mild man in my life except Edelwald. As for this Swiss, I am
+done with him. He hath a wife, Shubenacadie. She sits down there by the
+oven now; a miserable thing turned off by D'Aulnay de Charnisay. Have I
+told thee the Swiss had a soul above a common soldier and I picked him
+out to pay court to me? Beat me for it. Pull the red hair he condemned.
+I would have had him sighing for me that I might pity him. The populace
+is beneath us, but we must amuse ourselves. Beat me, I demand. Punish me
+well for abasing my eyes to that Swiss."</p>
+
+<p>Shubenacadie understood the challenge and the tone. He was used to
+rendering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> such service when his mistress repented of her sins. Yet he
+gave his tail feathers a slight flirt and quavered some guttural to
+sustain his part in the conversation, and to beg that he might be
+excused from holding the sword this time. As she continued to prod him,
+however, he struck her with his beak. Le Rossignol was human in never
+finding herself able to bear the punishment she courted. She flew at the
+swan, he spread his wings for ardent warfare, and they both dropped to
+the stone floor in a whirlwind of mandolin, arms, and feathers. The
+dwarf kept her hold on him until he cowered and lay with his neck along
+the pavement.</p>
+
+<p>"Thou art a Turk, a rascal, a horned beast!" panted Le Rossignol.
+Shubenacadie quavered plaintively, and all her wrath was gone. She
+spread out one of his wings and smoothed the plumes. She nursed his head
+in her lap and sung to him. Two of his feathers, plucked out in the
+contest, she put in her bosom. He flirted his tail and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> gathered himself
+again to his feet, and she broke her loaf and fed him and poured water
+into her palm for his bill.</p>
+
+<p>Le Rossignol esteemed the military dignity given to her imprisonment,
+and she was a hardy midget who could bear untold exposure when wandering
+at her own will. She therefore received with disgust her lady's summons
+to come down long before the day was spent, the messenger being only
+Z&eacute;lie.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah&mdash;h, mademoiselle," warned the maid, stumping ponderously out of the
+stone stairway, "are you about to mount that swan again?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who has ever seen me mount him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would be sworn there are a dozen men in the fort that have."</p>
+
+<p>"But you never have."</p>
+
+<p>"No. I have been absent with my lady."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you shall see me now."</p>
+
+<p>The dwarf flung herself on Shubenacadie's back, and thrust her feet down
+under his wings. He began to rise, and expanded,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> stretching his neck
+forward, and Z&eacute;lie uttered a yell of terror. The weird little woman
+leaped off and turned her laughing beak toward the terrified maid. Her
+ear-hoops swung as she rolled her mocking head.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if it frightens you I will not ride to-day," she said. Shubenacadie
+sailed across the battlements, and though they could no longer see him
+they knew he had taken to the river.</p>
+
+<p>"If I tell my lady this," shivered Z&eacute;lie, "she will never let you out of
+the turret. And she but this moment sent me to call you down out of the
+chill east wind."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell Madame Marie," urged the dwarf insolently.</p>
+
+<p>"And do you ride that way over bush and brier, through mirk and
+daylight?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was at Penobscot this week," answered Le Rossignol.</p>
+
+<p>Z&eacute;lie gazed with a bristling of even the hairs upon her lip.</p>
+
+<p>"It goeth past belief," she observed, set<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>ting her hands upon her sides.
+"And the swan, what else can he do besides carry thee like a dragon?"</p>
+
+<p>"He sings to me," boldly asserted Le Rossignol. "And many a good bit of
+advice have I taken from his bill."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be well if he turned his mind more to thinking and less to
+roving," respectfully hinted Z&eacute;lie. "I will go before you downstairs and
+leave the key in the turret door," she suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Take up these things and go when you please, and mind that I do not
+hear my clavier striking the wall."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you not felt the wind in this open donjon?"</p>
+
+<p>"The wind and I take no note of each other," answered the dwarf, lifting
+her chilled nose skyward. "But the cold water and bread have worked me
+most discomfort in this imprisonment. Go down and tell the cook for me
+that he is to make a hot bowl of the broth I like."</p>
+
+<p>"He will do it," said Z&eacute;lie.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he will do it," said the dwarf, "and the sooner he does it the
+better."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you eat it in the hall?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will eat it wherever Madame Marie is."</p>
+
+<p>"But that you cannot do. There is great business going forward and she
+is shut with Madame Bronck in our other lady's room."</p>
+
+<p>"I like it when you presume to know better than I do what is going
+forward in this fort!" exclaimed the dwarf jealously, a flush mounting
+her slender cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"I should best know what has happened since you left the hall,"
+contended Z&eacute;lie.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think so, poor heavy-foot? You can only hearken to what is
+whispered past your ear; but I can sit here on the battlements and read
+all the secrets below me."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you, Mademoiselle Nightingale? For instance, where is Madame
+Bronck's box?"</p>
+
+<p>The maid drew a deep breath at her own daring.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not about Madame Bronck's box that they confer. It is about the
+marriage<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> of the Hollandaise," answered Le Rossignol with a bold guess.
+"I could have told you that when you entered the turret."</p>
+
+<p>Z&eacute;lie experienced a chill through her flesh which was not caused by the
+damp breath of Fundy Bay.</p>
+
+<p>"How doth she find out things done behind her back&mdash;this clever little
+witch? And perhaps you will name the bridegroom, mademoiselle?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who could that be except the big Hollandais who hath come out of the
+west after her? Could she marry a priest or a common soldier?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is true," admitted Z&eacute;lie, feeling her superstition allayed.</p>
+
+<p>"There must be as few women as trinkets in that wilderness Fort of
+Orange from which he came," added the dwarf.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" inquired Z&eacute;lie, wrinkling her nose and squinting in the sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>But Le Rossignol took no further trouble than to give her a look of
+contempt, and lifted the furred garment to descend the stairs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X.</h2>
+
+<h3>AN ACADIAN POET.</h3>
+
+
+<p>"The woman who dispenses with any dignity which should attend her
+marriage, doth cheapen herself to her husband," said Lady Dorinda to
+Antonia Bronck, leaning back in the easiest chair of the fortress. It
+was large and stiff, but filled with cushions. Lady Dorinda's chamber
+was the most comfortable one in Fort St. John. It was over the front of
+the great hall, and was intended for a drawing-room, being spacious,
+well warmed by a fireplace and lighted by windows looking into the fort.
+A stately curtained bed, a toilet table with swinging mirror, bearing
+many of the ornaments and beauty-helpers of an elderly belle, and
+countless accumulations which spoke her former state in the world, made
+this an English bower in a French fort.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Her dull yellow hair was coifed in the fashion of the early Stuarts. She
+held a hand-screen betwixt her face and the fire, but the flush which
+touched its usual sallowness was not caused by heat. A wedding was a
+diversion of her exile which Lady Dorinda had never hoped for. There had
+been some mating in the fort below among soldiers and peasant women, to
+which she did not lower her thoughts. The noise of resulting
+merrymakings sufficiently sought out and annoyed her ear. But the
+wedding of the guest to a man of consequence in the Dutch colony was
+something to which she might unbend herself.</p>
+
+<p>Antonia had been brought against her will to consult with this faded
+authority by Marie, who sat by, supporting her through the ordeal. There
+was never any familiar chat between the lady of the fort and the widow
+of Claude La Tour. Neither forgot their first meeting behind cannon, and
+the tragedy of a divided house. Lady Dorinda lived in Acadia because she
+could not well<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> live elsewhere. And she secretly nursed a hope that in
+her day the province would fall into English hands, her knight be
+vindicated, and his son obliged to submit to a power he had defied to
+the extremity of warring with a father.</p>
+
+<p>If the two women had no love for each other they at least stinted no
+ceremony. Marie presented the smallest surface of herself to her
+mother-in-law. It is true they had been of the same household only a few
+months; but months and years are the same betwixt us and the people who
+solve not for us this riddle of ourselves. Antonia thought little of
+Lady Dorinda's opinions, but her saying about the dignity of marriage
+rites had the force of unexpected truth. Arendt Van Corlaer had used up
+his patience in courtship. He was now bent on wedding Antonia and
+setting out to Montreal without the loss of another day. His route was
+planned up St. John River and across-country to the St. Lawrence.</p>
+
+<p>"I would therefore give all possible state<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> to this occasion," added
+Lady Dorinda. "Did you not tell me this Sir Van Corlaer is an officer?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is the real patroon of Fort Orange, my lady."</p>
+
+<p>"He should then have military honors paid him on his marriage," observed
+Lady Dorinda, to whom patroon suggested the barbarous but splendid
+vision of a western pasha. "Salutes should be fired and drums sounded.
+In thus recommending I hope I have not overstepped my authority, Madame
+La Tour?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not, your ladyship," murmured Marie.</p>
+
+<p>"The marriage ceremony hath length and solemnity, but I would have it
+longer, and more solemn. A woman in giving herself away should greatly
+impress a man with the charge he hath undertaken. There be not many
+bridegrooms like Sir Claude de la Tour, who fasted an entire day before
+his marriage with me. The ceremonial of that marriage hath scarce been
+forgotten at court to this hour."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Lady Dorinda folded her hands and closed her eyes to sigh. Her voice had
+rolled the last words in her throat. At such moments she looked very
+superior. Her double chins and dull light eyes held great reserves of
+self-respect. A small box of aromatic seeds lay in her lap, and as her
+hands encountered it she was reminded to put a seed in her mouth and
+find pensive comfort in chewing it.</p>
+
+<p>"Edelwald should be here to give the proper grace to this event," added
+Lady Dorinda.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought of him," said Marie. "Edelwald has so much the nature of a
+troubadour."</p>
+
+<p>"The studies which adorn a man were well thought of when I was at
+court," said Lady Dorinda. "Edelwald is really thrown away upon this
+wilderness."</p>
+
+<p>Antonia was too intent on Van Corlaer and his fell determination to turn
+her mind upon Edelwald. She had, indeed, seen very little of La Tour's
+second in com<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>mand, for he had been away with La Tour on expeditions
+much of the time she had spent in Acadia. Edelwald was the only man of
+the fortress called by his baptismal name, yet it was spoken with
+respect and deference like a title. He was of the family of De Born. In
+an age when religion made political ties stronger than the ties of
+nature, the La Tours and De Borns had fought side by side through
+Huguenot wars. When a later generation of La Tours were struggling for
+foothold in the New World, it was not strange that a son of the De
+Borns, full of songcraft and spirit inherited from some troubadour
+soldier of the twelfth century, should turn his face to the same land.
+From his mother Edelwald took Norman and Saxon strains of blood. He had
+left France the previous year and made his voyage in the same ship with
+Madame La Tour and her mother-in-law, and he was now La Tour's trusted
+officer.</p>
+
+<p>Edelwald could take up any stringed instrument, strike melody out of it
+and sing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> songs he had himself made. But such pastimes were brief in
+Acadia. There was other business on the frontier; sailing, hunting,
+fighting, persuading or defying men, exploring unyielded depths of
+wilderness. The joyous science had long fallen out of practice. But
+while the grim and bloody records of our early colonies were being made,
+here was an unrecorded poet in Acadia. La Tour held this gift of
+Edelwald's in light esteem. He was a man so full of action and of
+schemes for establishing power that he touched only the martial side of
+the young man's nature, though in that contact was strong comradeship.
+Every inmate of the fortress liked Edelwald. He mediated between
+commandant and men, and jealousies and bickerings disappeared before
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"It would be better," murmured Antonia, breaking the stately silence by
+Lady Dorinda's fire, "if Mynheer Van Corlaer journeyed on to Montreal
+and returned here before any marriage takes place."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Think of the labor you will thereby put upon him," exclaimed Marie. "I
+speak for Monsieur Corlaer and not for myself," she added; "for by that
+delay I should happily keep you until summer. Besides, the priest we
+have here with us himself admits that the town of Montreal is little to
+look upon. Ville-Marie though it be named by the papists, what is it but
+a cluster of huts in the wilderness?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was six months preparing to be wedded to Mynheer Bronck," remembered
+Antonia.</p>
+
+<p>"And will Monsieur Corlaer return here from Montreal?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, madame. He will carry me with him."</p>
+
+<p>"I like him better for it," said Marie smiling, "though it pleases me
+ill enough."</p>
+
+<p>This was Antonia's last weak revolt against the determination of her
+stalwart suitor. She gained a three days' delay from him by submitting
+to the other conditions of his journey. It amused Marie to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> note the
+varying phases of Antonia's surrender. She was already resigned to the
+loss of Jonas Bronck's hand, and in no slavish terror of the
+consequences.</p>
+
+<p>"And it is true I am provided with all I need," she mused on, in the
+line of removing objections from Van Corlaer's way.</p>
+
+<p>"I have often promised to show you the gown I wore at my marriage," said
+Lady Dorinda, roused from her rumination on the aromatic seed, and
+leaving her chair to pay this gracious compliment to the Dutch widow.
+"It hath faded, and been discolored by the sea air, but you will not
+find a prettier fashion of lace in anything made since."</p>
+
+<p>She had no maid, for the women of the garrison had all been found too
+rude for her service. When she first came to Acadia with Claude La Tour,
+an English gentlewoman gladly waited on her. But now only Z&eacute;lie gave her
+constrained and half-hearted attention, rating her as "my other lady,"
+and plainly deploring her presence. Lady<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> Dorinda had one large box
+bound with iron, hidden in a nook beyond her bed. She took the key from
+its usual secret place and busied herself opening the box. Marie and
+Antonia heard her speak a word of surprise, but the curtained bed hid
+her from them. The raised lid of her box let out sweet scents of
+England, but that breath of old times, though she always dreaded its
+sweep across her resignation, had not made her cry out.</p>
+
+<p>She found a strange small coffer on the top of her own treasures. Its
+key stood in its lock, and Lady Dorinda at once turned that key, as a
+duty to herself. Antonia's loss of some precious casket had been
+proclaimed to her, but she recollected that in her second thought, when
+she had already laid aside the napkin and discovered Jonas Bronck's
+hand. Lady Dorinda snapped the lid down and closed her own chest. She
+rose from her place and stretched both arms toward the couch at the foot
+of her bed. Having reached the couch she sank down,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> her head meeting a
+cushion with nice calculation.</p>
+
+<p>"I am about to faint," said Lady Dorinda, and having parted with her
+breath in one puff, she sincerely lost consciousness and lay in extreme
+calm, her clay-colored eyelids shut on a clay-colored face. Marie was
+used to these quiet lapses of her mother-in-law, for Lady Dorinda had
+not been a good sailor on their voyage; but Antonia was alarmed. They
+bathed her face with a few inches of towel dipped in scented water, and
+rubbed her hands and fanned her. She caught life in again with a gasp,
+and opened her eyes to their young faces.</p>
+
+<p>"Your ladyship attempted too much in opening that box," said Marie. "It
+is not good to go back through old sorrows."</p>
+
+<p>"Madame La Tour may be right," gasped Claude's widow.</p>
+
+<p>"I could not now look at that gown, Lady Dorinda," protested Antonia.
+When her ladyship was able to sit again by the fire, she asked both of
+them to leave her;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> and being alone, she quieted her anxiety about her
+treasures in the chest by a forced search. Nothing had been disturbed.
+The coals burned down red while Lady Dorinda tried to understand this
+happening. She dismissed all thought of the casket's belonging to
+Antonia Bronck;&mdash;a mild and stiff-mannered young provincial who had
+nothing to do with ghastly tokens of war. That hand was a political
+hint, mysteriously sent to Lady Dorinda and embodying some important
+message.</p>
+
+<p>D'Aulnay de Charnisay may have sent it as a pledge that he intended to
+do justice to the elder La Tour while chastising the younger. There was
+a strange girl in the fort, accused of coming from D'Aulnay. Lady
+Dorinda could feel no enmity towards D'Aulnay. Her mind swarmed with
+foolish thoughts, harmless because ineffectual. She felt her importance
+grow, and was sure that the seed of a deep political intrigue lay hidden
+in her chest.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI.</h2>
+
+<h3>MARGUERITE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The days which elapsed before Antonia Bronck's marriage were lived
+joyfully by a people who lost care in any festival. Van Corlaer brought
+the sleek-faced young dominie from camp and exhibited him in all his
+potency as the means of a Protestant marriage service. He could not
+speak a word of French, but only Dutch was required of him. All
+religious rites were celebrated in the hall, there being no chapel in
+Fort St. John, and this marriage was to be witnessed by the garrison.</p>
+
+<p>During this cheerful time a burning unrest, which she concealed from her
+people, drove Marie about her domain. She fled up the turret stairs and
+stood on the cannon to look over the bay. Her husband had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> been away but
+eight days. "Yet he often makes swift journeys," she thought. The load
+of his misfortunes settled more heavily upon her as she drew nearer to
+the end of woman companionship.</p>
+
+<p>In former times, before such bitterness had grown in the feud between
+D'Aulnay and La Tour, she had made frequent voyages from Cape Sable up
+Fundy Bay to Port Royal. The winters were then merry among noble
+Acadians, and the lady of Fort St. Louis at Cape Sable was hostess of a
+rich seigniory. Now she had the sickness of suspense, and the wasting of
+life in waiting. Frequently during the day she met Father Jogues, who
+also wandered about disturbed by the evident necessity of his return to
+Montreal.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur," said Marie once, "can you on your conscience bless a
+heretic?"</p>
+
+<p>"Madame," said Father Jogues, "heaven itself blesses a good and
+excellent woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, monsieur, if you could lift up your hand, even with the sign
+which my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> house holds idolatrous, and say a few words of prayer, I
+should then feel consecrated to whatever is before me."</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps Father Jogues was tempted to have recourse to his vial of holy
+water and make the baptismal signs. Many a soul he truly believed he had
+saved from burning by such secret administration. And if savages could
+be thus reclaimed, should he hold back from the only opportunity ever
+given by this beautiful soul? His face shone. But with that gracious
+instinct to refrain from intermeddling which was beyond his times, he
+only lifted his stumps of fingers and spoke the words which she craved.
+A maimed priest is deprived of his sacred offices, but the pope had made
+a special dispensation for Father Jogues.</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks, monsieur," said Marie. "Though it be sin to declare it, I will
+say your religion hath mother-comfort in it. Perhaps you have felt, in
+the woods among Iroquois, that sometime need of mother-comfort which a
+civilized woman may feel who has long outgrown her childhood."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The mandolin was heard in the barracks once during those days, for Le
+Rossignol had come out of the house determined to seek out Marguerite.
+She found the Swiss girl beside the powder magazine, for Marguerite had
+brought out a stool, and seemed trying to cure her sick spirit in the
+sun. The dwarf stood still and looked at her with insolent eyes.
+Soldiers' wives hid themselves within their doors, cautiously watching,
+or thrusting out their heads to shake at one another or to squall at any
+child venturing too near the encounter. They did not like the strange
+girl, and besides, she was in their way. But they liked the Nightingale
+less, and pitied any one singled out for her attack.</p>
+
+<p>"Good day to madame the former Madame Klussman," said the dwarf.
+Marguerite gathered herself in defense to arise and leave her stool. But
+Le Rossignol gathered her mandolin in equal readiness to give pursuit.
+And not one woman in the barracks would have invited her quarry.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I was in Penobscot last week," announced Le Rossignol, and heads popped
+out of all the doors to lift eyebrows and open mouths at each other. The
+swan-riding witch! She confessed to that impossible journey!</p>
+
+<p>"I was in Penobscot last week," repeated Le Rossignol, holding up her
+mandolin and tinkling an accompaniment to her words, "and there I saw
+the house of D'Aulnay de Charnisay, and a very good house it is; but my
+lord should burn it. It is indeed of rough logs, and the windows are so
+high that one must have wings to look through them; but quite good
+enough for a woman of your rank, seeing that D'Aulnay hath a palace for
+his wife in Port Royal."</p>
+
+<p>"I know naught about the house," spoke Marguerite, a yellow sheen of
+anger appearing in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know naught about the Island of Demons, then?"</p>
+
+<p>The Swiss girl muttered a negative and looked sidewise at her
+antagonist.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I will tell you that story," said Le Rossignol.</p>
+
+<p>She played a weird prelude. Marguerite sat still to be baited, like a
+hare which has no covert. The instrument being heavy for the dwarf, she
+propped it by resting one foot on the abutting foundation of the
+powder-house, and all through her recital made the mandolin's effects
+act upon her listener.</p>
+
+<p>"The Sieur de Roberval sailed to this New World, having with him among a
+shipload of righteous people one Marguerite." She slammed her emphasis
+on the mandolin.</p>
+
+<p>"There have ever been too many such women, and so the Sieur de Roberval
+found, though this one was his niece. Like all her kind, madame, she had
+a lover to her scandal. The Sieur de Roberval whipped her, and prayed
+over her, and shut her up in irons in the hold; yet live a godly life
+she would not. So what could he do but set her ashore on the Island of
+Demons?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not want to hear it," was Marguerite's muttered protest.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But Le Rossignol advanced closer to her face.</p>
+
+<p>"And what does the lover do but jump overboard and swim after her? And
+well was he repaid." Bang! went the mandolin. "So they went up the rocky
+island together, and there they built a hut. What a horrible land was
+that!</p>
+
+<p>"All day long fiends twisted themselves in mist. The waves made a sadder
+moaning there than anywhere else on earth. Monsters crept out of the sea
+and grinned with dull eyes and clammy lips. No fruit, no flower,
+scarcely a blade of grass dared thrust itself toward the sky on that
+scaly island. Daylight was half dusk there forever. But the nights, the
+nights, madame, were full of howls, of contending beasts&mdash;the nights
+were storms of demons let loose to beat on that island!</p>
+
+<p>"All the two people had to eat were the stores set ashore by the Sieur
+de Roberval. Now a child was born in their hut, and the very next night
+a bear knocked at the door<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> and demanded the child. Marguerite full
+freely gave it to him."</p>
+
+<p>The girl shrunk back, and Le Rossignol was delighted until she herself
+noticed that Klussman had come in from some duty outside the gates. His
+eye detected her employment, and he sauntered not far off with his
+shoulder turned to the powder-house.</p>
+
+<p>"Next night, madame," continued Le Rossignol, and her tone and the
+accent of the mandolin made an insult of that unsuitable title, "a
+horned lion and two dragons knocked at the door and asked for the lover,
+and Marguerite full freely gave him to them. Kind soul, she would do
+anything to save herself!"</p>
+
+<p>"Go away!" burst out the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"And from that time until a ship took her off, the demons of Demon
+Island tried in vain to get Marguerite. They howled around her house
+every night, and gaped down her chimney, and whispered through the
+cracks and sat on the roof. But thou knowest, madame, that a woman of
+her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> kind, so soft and silent and downward-looking, is more than a match
+for any demon; sure to live full easily and to die a fat saint."</p>
+
+<p>"Have done with this," said Klussman behind the dwarf, who turned her
+grotesque beak and explained,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I am but telling the story of the Island of Demons to Madame Klussman."</p>
+
+<p>As soon as she had spoken the name the Swiss caught her in his hand,
+mandolin and all, and walked across the esplanade, holding her at arm's
+length, as he might have carried an eel. Le Rossignol ineffectually
+squirmed and kicked, raging at the spectacle she made for laughing women
+and soldiers. She tried to beat the Swiss with her mandolin, but he
+twisted her in another direction, a cat's weight of fury. Giving her no
+chance to turn upon him, he opened the entrance and shut her inside the
+hall, and stalked back to make his explanation to his wife. Klussman had
+avoided any glimpse of Marguerite until this instant of taking up her
+defense.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I pulled that witch-midget off thee," he said, speaking for the
+fortress to hear, "because I will not have her raising tumults in the
+fort. Her place is in the hall to amuse her ladies."</p>
+
+<p>Marguerite's chin rested on her breast.</p>
+
+<p>"Go in the house," said Klussman roughly. "Why do you show yourself out
+here to be mocked at?"</p>
+
+<p>The poor girl raised her swimming eyes and looked at him in the fashion
+he remembered when she was ill; when he had nursed her with agonies of
+fear that she might die. The old relations between them were thus
+suggested in one blinding flash. Klussman turned away so sick that the
+walls danced around him. He went outside the fort again, and wandered
+around the stony height, turning at every few steps to gaze and strain
+his eyes at that new clay in the graveyard.</p>
+
+<p>"When she lies beside that," muttered the soldier, "then I can be soft
+to her," though he knew he was already soft to her, and that her look
+had driven through him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII.</h2>
+
+<h3>D'AULNAY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The swelling spring was chilled by cold rain, driving in from the bay
+and sweeping through the half budded woods. The tide went up St. John
+River with an impulse which flooded undiked lowlands, yet there was no
+storm dangerous to shipping. Some sails hung out there in the whirl of
+vapors with evident intention of making port.</p>
+
+<p>Marie took a glass up to the turret and stood on the cannon to watch
+them. Rain fine as driven stings beat her face, and accumulated upon her
+muffling to run down and drip on the wet floor. She could make out
+nothing of the vessels. There were three of them, each by its sails a
+ship. They could not be the ships of Nicholas Denys carrying La Tour's
+recruits. She was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> not foolish enough, however great her husband's
+prosperity with Denys, to expect of him such a miraculous voyage around
+Cape Sable.</p>
+
+<p>Sails were a rare sight on that side of the bay. The venturesome seamen
+of the Massachusetts colony chose other courses. Fundy Bay was aside
+from the great sea paths. Port Royal sent out no ships except
+D'Aulnay's, and on La Tour's side of Acadia his was the only vessel.</p>
+
+<p>Certain of nothing except that these unknown comers intended to enter
+St. John River, Madame La Tour went downstairs and met Klussman on the
+wall. He turned from his outlook and said directly,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Madame, I believe it is D'Aulnay."</p>
+
+<p>"You may be right," she answered. "Is any one outside the gates?"</p>
+
+<p>"Two men went early to the garden, but the rain drove them back.
+Fortunately, the day being bad, no one is hunting beyond the falls."</p>
+
+<p>"And is our vessel well moored?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Her repairing was finished some days ago, you remember, madame, and she
+sits safe and comfortable. But D'Aulnay may burn her. When he was here
+before, my lord was away with the ship."</p>
+
+<p>"Bar the gates and make everything secure at once," said Marie. "And
+salute these vessels presently. If it be D'Aulnay, we sent him back to
+his seigniory with fair speed once before, and we are no worse equipped
+now."</p>
+
+<p>She returned down the stone steps where Van Corlaer's courtship had
+succeeded, and threw off her wet cloak to dry herself before the fire in
+her room. She kneeled by the hearth; the log had burned nearly away. Her
+mass of hair was twisted back in the plain fashion of the Greeks&mdash;that
+old sweet fashion created with the nature of woman, to which the world
+periodically returns when it has exhausted new devices. The smallest
+curves, which were tendrils rather than curls of hair, were blown out of
+her fleece over forehead and ears. A dark woman's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> beauty is independent
+of wind and light. When she is buffeted by weather the rich inner color
+comes through her skin, and the brightest dayshine can do nothing
+against the dusk of her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>If D'Aulnay was about to attack the fort, Marie was glad that Monsieur
+Corlaer had taken his bride, the missionaries, and his people and set
+out in the opposite direction. Barely had they escaped a siege, for they
+were on their way less than twenty-four hours. She had regretted their
+first day in a chill rain. But chill rain in boundless woods is better
+than sunlight in an invested fortress. Father Jogues' happy face with
+its forward droop and musing eyelids came before Marie's vision.</p>
+
+<p>"I need another of his benedictions," she said in undertone, when a
+knock on her door and a struggle with its latch disturbed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Enter, Le Rossignol," said Madame La Tour. And Le Rossignol entered,
+and approached the hearth, standing at full length<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> scarcely as high as
+her lady kneeling. The room was a dim one, for all apartments looking
+out of the fort had windows little larger than portholes, set high in
+the walls. Two or three screens hid its uses as bedchamber and
+dressing-room, and a few pieces of tapestry were hung, making occasional
+panels of grotesque figures. A couch stood near the fireplace. The
+dwarf's prominent features were gravely fixed, and her bushy hair stood
+in a huge auburn halo around them. She wet her lips with that sudden
+motion by which a toad may be seen to catch flies.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame Marie, every one is running around below and saying that
+D'Aulnay de Charnisay is coming again to attack the fort."</p>
+
+<p>"Your pretty voice has always been a pleasure to me, Nightingale."</p>
+
+<p>"But is it so, madame?"</p>
+
+<p>"There are three ships standing in."</p>
+
+<p>Le Rossignol's russet-colored gown moved nearer to the fire. She
+stretched her claws<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> to warm and then lifted one of them near her lady's
+nose.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame Marie, if D'Aulnay de Charnisay be coming, put no faith in that
+Swiss!"</p>
+
+<p>"In Klussman?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, madame."</p>
+
+<p>"Klussman is the best soldier now in the fort," said Madame La Tour
+laughing. "If I put no faith in him, whom shall I trust?"</p>
+
+<p>"Madame Marie, you remember that woman you brought back with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have not seen her or spoken with her," said Marie self-reproachfully,
+"since she vexed me so sorely about her child. She is a poor creature.
+But they feed and house her well in the barracks."</p>
+
+<p>"Madame Marie, Klussman hath been talking with that woman every day this
+week."</p>
+
+<p>The dwarf's lady looked keenly at her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no. There could be no talk between those two."</p>
+
+<p>"But there hath been. I have watched<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> him. Madame Marie, he took me up
+when I went into the fort before Madame Bronck's marriage&mdash;when I was
+but playing my clavier before that sulky knave to amuse her&mdash;he took me
+up in his big common-soldier fingers, gripping me around the waist, and
+flung me into the hall."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he so?" laughed Marie. "I can well see that my Nightingale can put
+no more faith in the Swiss. But hearken to me, thou bird-child. There!
+Hear our salute!"</p>
+
+<p>The cannon leaped almost over their heads, and the walls shook with its
+boom and rebound. Marie kept her finger up and waited for a reply.
+Minute succeeded minute. The drip of accumulated rain-drops from the
+door could be heard, but nothing else. Those sullen vessels paid no
+attention to the inquiry of Fort St. John.</p>
+
+<p>"Our enemy has come."</p>
+
+<p>She relaxed from her tense listening and with a deep breath looked at Le
+Rossignol.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not undermine the faith of one in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> another in this fortress. We must
+all hold together now. The Swiss may have a tenderness for his wretched
+wife which thou canst not understand. But he is not therefore faithless
+to his lord."</p>
+
+<p>Taking the glass and throwing on her wet cloak, Marie again ran up to
+the wall. But Le Rossignol sat down cross-legged by the fire, wise and
+brooding.</p>
+
+<p>"If I could see that Swiss hung," she observed, "it would scratch in my
+soul a long-felt itch."</p>
+
+<p>When calamity threatens, we turn back to our peaceful days with
+astonishment that they ever seemed monotonous. Marie watched the ships,
+and thought of the woman days with Antonia before Van Corlaer came; of
+embroidery, and teaching the Etchemins, and bringing sweet plunder from
+the woods for the child's grave; of paddling on the twilight river when
+the tide was up, brimming and bubble-tinted; of her lord's coming home
+to the autumn-night hearth; of the little wheels and spinning,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> and
+Edelwald's songs&mdash;of all the common joys of that past life. The clumsy
+glass lately brought from France to master distances in the New World,
+wearied her hands before it assured her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>D'Aulnay de Charnisay was actually coming to attack Fort St. John a
+second time. He warily anchored his vessels out of the fort's range; and
+hour after hour boats moved back and forth landing men and artillery on
+the cape at the mouth of the river, a position which gave as little
+scope as possible to St. John's guns. All that afternoon tents and
+earthworks were rising, and detail by detail appeared the deliberate and
+careful preparations of an enemy who was sitting down to a siege.</p>
+
+<p>At dusk camp-fires began to flame on the distant low cape, and voices
+moved along air made sensitively vibrant by falling damp. There was the
+suggested hum of a disciplined small army settling itself for the night
+and for early action.</p>
+
+<p>Madame La Tour came out to the espla<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>nade of the fort, and the Swiss met
+her, carrying a torch which ineffectual rain-drops irritated to constant
+hissing. He stood, tall and careworn, holding it up that his lady might
+see her soldiers. Everything in the fort was ready for the siege. The
+sentinels were about to be doubled, and sheltered by their positions.</p>
+
+<p>"I have had you called together, my men," she spoke, "to say a word to
+you before this affair begins."</p>
+
+<p>The torch flared its limited circle of shine, smoke wavering in a
+half-seen plume at its tip, and showed their erect figures in line, none
+very distinct, but all keenly suggestive of life. Some were
+black-bearded and tawny, and others had tints of the sun in flesh and
+hair. One was grizzled about the temples, and one was a smooth-cheeked
+youth. The roster of their familiar names seemed to her as precious as a
+rosary. They watched her, feeling her beauty as keenly as if it were a
+pain, and answering every lambent motion of her spirit.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>All the buildings were hinted through falling mist, and glowing hearths
+in the barracks showed like forge lights; for the wives of the half
+dozen married soldiers had come out, one having a child in her arms.
+They stood behind their lady, troubled, but reliant on her. She had with
+them the prestige of success; she had led the soldiers once before, and
+to a successful defense of the fort.</p>
+
+<p>"My men," said Marie, "when the Sieur de la Tour set out to northern
+Acadia he dreaded such a move as this on D'Aulnay's part. But I assured
+him he need not fear for us."</p>
+
+<p>The soldiers murmured their joy and looked at one another smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"The Sieur de la Tour will soon return, with help or without it. And
+D'Aulnay has no means of learning how small our garrison is. Bind
+yourselves afresh to me as you bound yourselves before the other
+attack."</p>
+
+<p>"My lady, we do!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Out leaped every right hand, Klussman's with the torch, which lost and
+caught its flame again with the sudden sweep.</p>
+
+<p>"That is all: and I thank you," said Marie. "We will do our best."</p>
+
+<p>She turned back to the tower under the torch's escort, her soldiers
+giving her a full cheer which might further have deceived D'Aulnay in
+the strength of the garrison.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SECOND DAY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The exhilaration of fighting quickened every pulse in the fort. By next
+dawn the cannon began to speak. D'Aulnay had succeeded in planting
+batteries on a height eastward, and his guns had immediate effect. The
+barracks were set on fire and put out several times during the day. All
+the inmates gathered in the stone hall, and at its fireplace the cook
+prepared and distributed rations. Great balls plowed up the esplanade,
+and the oven was shattered into a storm of stone and mortar, its
+adjoining mill being left with a gap in the side.</p>
+
+<p>Responsive tremors from its own artillery ran through the fortress'
+walls. The pieces, except that one in the turret, were all brought into
+two bastions, those in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> southeast bastion being trained on
+D'Aulnay's batteries, and the others on his camp. The gunner in the
+turret also dropped shot with effect among the tents, and attempted to
+reach the ships. But he was obliged to use nice care, for the iron
+pellets heaped on the stone floor behind him represented the heavy labor
+of one soldier who tramped at intervals up the turret stair, carrying
+ammunition.</p>
+
+<p>The day had dawned rainless but sullen. It was Good Friday. The women
+huddling in the hall out of their usual haunts noticed Marguerite's
+refusal even of the broth the cook offered her. She was restless, like a
+leopard, and seemed full of electrical currents which found no discharge
+except in the flicker of her eyes. Leaving the group of settles by the
+fireplace where these simple families felt more at home and least
+intrusive on the grandeur of the hall, she put herself on a distant
+chair with her face turned from them. This gave the women a chance to
+backbite her, to note her roused<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> mood, and to accuse her among
+themselves of wishing evil to the fort and consequently to their
+husbands.</p>
+
+<p>"She hath the closest mouth in Acadia," murmured one. "Doth anybody in
+these walls certainly know that she came from D'Aulnay?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Swiss, her husband, told it."</p>
+
+<p>"And if she find means to go back to D'Aulnay, it will appear where she
+came from," suggested Z&eacute;lie.</p>
+
+<p>"I would he had her now," said the first woman. "I have that feeling for
+her that I have for a cat with its hairs on end."</p>
+
+<p>Madame La Tour came to the hall and sat briefly and alone at her own
+table to take her dinner and supper. Later in the siege she stood and
+merely took food from the cook's hands, talking with and comforting her
+women while she ate. The surgeon of the fort was away with La Tour. She
+laid bandages ready, and felt obliged to dress not only the first but
+every wound received.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Pierre Doucett was brought from one of the bastions stunned and
+bleeding, and his wife rose up with her baby in her arms, filling the
+hall with her cries. The baby and her neighbors' children were moved to
+join her. But the eye of her lady was as awful as Pierre's wound. Her
+outcry sunk to a whimper; she hushed the children, and swept them off
+the settle so Pierre could lie there, and even paid out the roll of
+bandage with one hand while her lady used it. Marie controlled her own
+faintness; for a woman on whom a man's labors are imposed must bear
+them.</p>
+
+<p>The four little children stood with fingers in their mouths, looking at
+these grim tokens of war. All day long they heard the crashing or
+thumping of balls, and felt the leap and rebound of cannon. The cook,
+when he came down from a bastion to attend to his kettles, gave them
+nice bits to eat, and in spite of solemnity, they counted it a holiday
+to be in the hall. Pierre Doucett groaned upon his settle, and Madame<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
+La Tour being on the lookout in the turret, Pierre Doucett's wife again
+took to wailing over him. The other women comforted her with their
+ignorant sympathy, and Marguerite sat with her back to it all. But the
+children adapted themselves to the situation, and trooped across to the
+foot of the stairway to play war. On that grim pavement door which led
+down into the keep they shot each other with merry cannonading and were
+laid out in turn on the steps.</p>
+
+<p>Le Rossignol passed hours of that day sitting on the broad door-sill of
+the tower. She loved to watch the fiery rain; but she was also waiting
+for a lull in the cannonading that she might release her swan. He was
+always forbidden the rooms in the tower by her lady; for he was a
+pugnacious creature, quick to strike with beak or wings any one who
+irritated him. Especially did he seem tutored in the dwarf's dislike of
+Lady Dorinda. In peaceful times when she descended to the ground and
+took a sylvan excursion outside the fort, he ruffled all his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> feathers
+and pursued her even from the river. Le Rossignol had a forked branch
+with which she yoked him as soon as D'Aulnay's vessels alarmed the fort.
+She also tied him by one leg under his usual shelter, the pent-house of
+the mill. He always sulked at restraint, but Le Rossignol maintained
+discipline. In the destruction of the oven and the reeling of the mill,
+Shubenacadie leaped upward and fell back flattened upon the ground. The
+fragments had scarcely settled before his mistress had him in her arms.
+At the risk of her life she dragged him across to the entrance, and sat
+desolately crumbling away between her fingers such feathers as were
+singed upon him, and sleeking his long gasping neck. She swallowed
+piteously with suspense, but could not bring herself to examine his
+body. He had his feet; he had his wings; and finally he sat up of his
+own accord, and quavered some slight remark about the explosion.</p>
+
+<p>"What ails thee?" exclaimed the dwarf indignantly. "Thou great coward!
+To lie<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> down and gasp and sicken my heart for the singeing of a few
+feathers!"</p>
+
+<p>She boxed the place where a swan's ear should be, and Shubenacadie bit
+her. It was a serene and happy moment for both of them. Le Rossignol
+opened the door and pushed him in. Shubenacadie stood awkwardly with his
+feet sprawled on the hall pavement, and looked at the scenes to which
+his mistress introduced him. He noticed Marguerite, and hissed at her.</p>
+
+<p>"Be still, madman," admonished the dwarf. "Thou art an intruder here.
+The peasants will drive thee up chimney. Low-born people, when they get
+into good quarters, always try to put their betters out."</p>
+
+<p>Shubenacadie waddled on, scarcely recovered from the prostration of his
+fright, and inclined to hold the inmates of the tower accountable for
+it. Marie had just left Pierre Doucett, and his nurses were so busy with
+him that the swan was not detected until he scattered the children from
+the stairs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Now, Mademoiselle Nightingale," said Z&eacute;lie, coming heavily across the
+flags, "have we not enough strange cattle in this tower, that you must
+bring that creature in against my lady's orders?"</p>
+
+<p>"He shall not stand out there under D'Aulnay's guns. Besides, Madame
+Marie hath need of him," declared Le Rossignol impudently. "She would
+have me ride to D'Aulnay's camp and bring her word how many men have
+fallen there to-day."</p>
+
+<p>Z&eacute;lie shivered through her indignation.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you tell me such a tale, when you were shut in the turret for that
+very sin?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sin that is sin in peace is virtue in war," responded Le Rossignol.
+"Mount, Shubenacadie."</p>
+
+<p>"My lady will have his neck, wrung," threatened Z&eacute;lie.</p>
+
+<p>"She dare not. The chimney will tumble in. The fort will be taken."</p>
+
+<p>"Art thou working against us?" demanded the maid wrathfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I work for you? You<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> should, indeed, work for me. Pick me up
+this swan and carry him to the top of the stairs."</p>
+
+<p>"I will not do it!" cried Z&eacute;lie, revolting through every atom of her
+ample bulk. "Do I want to be lifted over the turret like thistledown?"</p>
+
+<p>The dwarf laughed, and caught her swan by the back of his neck. With
+webbed toes and beating wings he fought every step; but she pulled
+herself up by the balustrade and dragged him along. His bristling
+plumage scraped the upper floor until he and his wrath were shut within
+the dwarf's chamber.</p>
+
+<p>"Naught but muscle and bone and fire and flax went to the making of that
+stunted wight," mused Z&eacute;lie, setting her knuckles in her hips. "What a
+pity that she escapes powder and ball, when poor Pierre Doucett is shot
+down!&mdash;a man with wife and child, and useful to my lady besides."</p>
+
+<p>It was easy for Claude La Tour's widow to fill her idleness with visions
+of political<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> alliance, but when D'Aulnay de Charnisay began to batter
+the walls round her ears, her common sense resumed sway. She could be of
+no use outside her apartment, so she took her meals there, trembling,
+but in her fashion resolute and courageous. The crash of cannon-shot was
+forever associated with her first reception in Acadia. Therefore this
+siege was a torture to her memory as well as a peril to her body. The
+tower had no more sheltered place, however, than Lady Dorinda's room.
+Z&eacute;lie had orders to wait upon her with strict attention. The cannonading
+dying away as darkness lifted its wall between the opposed forces, she
+hoped for such sleep as could be had in a besieged place, and waited
+Z&eacute;lie's knock. War, like a deluge, may drive people who detest each
+other into endurable contact; and when, without even a warning stroke on
+the panel, Le Rossignol slipped in as nimbly as a spider, Lady Dorinda
+felt no such indignation as she would have felt in ordinary times.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"May I sit by your fire, your highness?" sweetly asked the dwarf. Lady
+Dorinda held out a finger to indicate the chimney-side and to stay
+further progress. The sallow and corpulent woman gazed at the beak-faced
+atom.</p>
+
+<p>"It hath been repeated a thousand times, but I will say again I am no
+highness."</p>
+
+<p>Le Rossignol took the rebuke as a bird might have taken it, her bright
+round eyes reflecting steadily the overblown mortal opposite. She had
+never called Lady Dorinda anything except "her highness." The dullest
+soldier grinned at the apt sarcastic title. When Marie brought her to
+account for this annoyance, she explained that she could not call Lady
+Dorinda anything else. Was a poor dwarf to be punished because people
+made light of every word she used? Yet this innocent creature took a
+pleasure of her own in laying the term like an occasional lash on the
+woman who so despised her. Le Rossignol sat with arms around her knees,
+on the hearth corner. Lady Do<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>rinda in her cushioned chair chewed
+aromatic seeds.</p>
+
+<p>The room, like a flower garden, exhaled all its perfumes at evening.
+Bottles of essences and pots of pomade and small bags of powders were
+set out, for the luxurious use of its inmate when Z&eacute;lie prepared her for
+the night. Le Rossignol enjoyed these scents. The sweet-odored
+atmosphere which clung about Lady Dorinda was her one attribute approved
+by the dwarf. Madame Marie never in any way appealed to the nose. Madame
+Marie's garments were scentless as outdoor air, and the freshness of
+outdoor air seemed to belong to them. Le Rossignol liked to have her
+senses stimulated, and she counted it a lucky thing to sit by that deep
+fire and smell the heavy fragrance, of the room. A branched silver
+candlestick held two lighted tapers on the dressing-table. The bed
+curtains were parted, revealing a huge expanse of resting-place within;
+and heavy folds shut the starlit-world from the windows. One could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> here
+forget that the oven was blown up, and the ground of the fort plowed
+with shot and sown with mortar.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there no fire in the hall?" inquired Lady Dorinda.</p>
+
+<p>"It hath all the common herd from the barracks around it," explained Le
+Rossignol. "And Pierre Doucett is stretched there, groaning over the
+loss of half his face."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is Madame La Tour?"</p>
+
+<p>"She hath gone out on the walls since the firing stopped. Our gunner in
+the turret told me that two guns are to be moved back before moonrise
+into the bastions they were taken from. Madame Marie is afraid D'Aulnay
+will try to encompass the fort to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"And what business took thee into the turret?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your highness"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Ladyship," corrected Lady Dorinda.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"I like to see D'Aulnay's torches," proceeded the dwarf, without
+accepting cor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>rection. "His soldiers are burying the dead over there. He
+needs a stone tower with walls seven feet thick like ours, does
+D'Aulnay."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Dorinda put another seed in her mouth, and reflected that Z&eacute;lie's
+attendance was tardier than usual. She inquired with shadings of
+disapproval,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Is Madame La Tour's woman also on the walls?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not Z&eacute;lie, your highness"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Ladyship," insisted Lady Dorinda.</p>
+
+<p>"That heavy-foot Z&eacute;lie," chuckled the dwarf, deaf to correction, "a fine
+bit of thistledown would she be to blow around the walls. Z&eacute;lie is
+laying beds for the children, and she hath come to words with the cook
+through trying to steal eggs to roast for them. We have but few wild
+fowl eggs in store."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell her that I require her," said Lady Dorinda, fretted by the
+irregularities of life in a siege. "Madame La Tour will account with her
+if she neglects her rightful duties."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Le Rossignol crawled reluctantly up to stand in her dots of moccasins.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, your highness"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Ladyship," repeated Claude La Tour's widow, to whom the sting was
+forever fresh, reminding her of a once possible regency.</p>
+
+<p>"But have you heard about the woman that was brought into the fortress
+before Madame Bronck went away?"</p>
+
+<p>"What of her?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Swiss says she comes from D'Aulnay."</p>
+
+<p>"It is Z&eacute;lie that I require," said Lady Dorinda with discouraging
+brevity. Le Rossignol dropped her face, appearing to give round-eyed
+speculation to the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"It is believed that D'Aulnay sent by that strange woman a box of poison
+into the fort to work secret mischief. But," added the dwarf, looking up
+in open perplexity, "that box cannot now be found."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you can tell what manner of box it was," said Lady Dorinda with
+irony, though a dull red was startled into her cheeks.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Madame Marie says it was a tiny box of oak, thick set with nails. She
+would not alarm the fort, so she had search made for it in Madame
+Bronck's name."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Dorinda, incredulous, but trembling, divined at once that the dwarf
+had hid that coffer in her chest. Perhaps the dwarf had procured the
+hand and replaced some valuable of Madame Bronck's with it. She longed
+to have the little beast shaken and made to confess. While she was
+considering what she could do with dignity, Z&eacute;lie rapped and was
+admitted, and Le Rossignol escaped into outside darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Hours passed, however, before Shubenacadie's mistress sought his
+society. She undressed in her black cell which had but one loophole
+looking toward the north, and taking the swan upon her bed tried to
+reconcile him to blankets. But Shubenacadie protested with both wings
+against a woolly covering which was not in his experience. The times
+were disjointed for him. He took no interest in Lady Dorinda and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> the
+box of Madame Bronck, and scratched the pallet with his toes and the
+nail at the end of his bill. But Le Rossignol pushed him down and
+pressed her confidences upon this familiar.</p>
+
+<p>"So her highness threw that box out into the fort. I had to shiver and
+wait until Z&eacute;lie left her, but I knew she would choose to rid herself of
+it through a window, for she would scarce burn it, she hath not
+adroitness to drop it in the hall, show it to Madame Marie she would
+not, and keep it longer to poison her court gowns she dare not. She hath
+found it before this. Her looking-glass was the only place apter than
+that chest. I would give much to know what her yellow highness thought
+of that hand. Here, mine own Shubenacadie, I have brought thee this
+sweet biscuit moistened with water. Eat, and scratch me not.</p>
+
+<p>"And little did its studding of nails avail the box, for the fall split
+it in three pieces; and I hid them under rubbish, for mortar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> and stones
+are plentiful down there. You should have seen my shade stretch under
+the moon like a tall hobgoblin. The nearest sentinel on the wall
+challenges me. 'Who is there?' 'Le Rossignol.' 'What are you doing?'
+'Looking: for my swan's yoke.' Then he laughs&mdash;little knowing how I
+meant to serve his officer. The Hollandais mummy hath been of more use
+to me than trinkets. I frightened her highness with it, and now it is
+set to torment the Swiss. Let me tell thee, Shubenacadie: punishment
+comes even on a swan who would stretch up his neck and stand taller than
+his mistress. Wert thou not blown up with the oven? Hide thy head and
+take warning."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN POWERS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The dwarf's report about Klussman forced Madame La Tour to watch the
+strange girl; but Marguerite seemed to take no notice of any soldier who
+came and went in the hall. As for the Swiss, he carried trouble on his
+self-revealing face, but not treachery. Klussman camped at night on the
+floor with other soldiers off guard; screens and the tall settles being
+placed in a row between this military bivouac and women and children of
+the household protected near the stairs. He awoke as often as the guard
+was changed, and when dawn-light instead of moonlight appeared with the
+last relief, he sprang up, and took the breastplate which had been laid
+aside for his better rest. Out of its hollow fell Jonas<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> Bronck's hand,
+bare and crouching with stiff fingers on the pavement. The soldiers
+about to lie down laughed at themselves and Klussman for recoiling from
+it, and fury succeeded pallor in his blond face.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you do that?" he demanded of the men, but before they could utter
+denials, his suspicion leaped the settles. Spurning Jonas Bronck's
+treasured fragment with his boot in a manner which Antonia could never
+have forgiven, Klussman sent it to the hearth and strode after it. He
+had not far to look for Marguerite. As his eye traveled recklessly into
+the women's camp, he encountered her beside him, sitting on the floor
+behind a settle and matching the red of a burning tree trunk with the
+red of her bruised eyelids.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you put that in my breastplate?" said Klussman, pointing to the
+hand as it lay palm upwards. Marguerite shuddered and burst out crying.
+This had been her employment much of the night, but the nervous fit of
+childish weeping swept away all of Klussman's self-control.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No; no;" she repeated. "You think I do everything that is horrible."
+And she sobbed upon her hands.</p>
+
+<p>Klussman stooped down and tossed the hand like an escaped coal behind
+the log. As he stooped he said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think that. Don't cry. If you cry I will shoot myself."</p>
+
+<p>Marguerite looked up and saw his helplessness in his face. He had sought
+her before, but only with reproaches. Now his resentment was broken.
+Twice had the dwarfs mischief thrown Marguerite on his compassion, and
+thereby diminished his resistance to her. Jonas Bronck's hand, in its
+red-hot seclusion behind the log, writhed and smoked, discharging its
+grosser parts up the chimney's shaft. Unseen, it lay a wire-like outline
+of bone; unseen, it became a hand of fairy ashes, trembling in every
+filmy atom; finally an ember fell upon it, and where a hand had been
+some bits of lime lay in a white glow.</p>
+
+<p>Klussman went out and mounted one of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> the bastions, where the gunners
+were already preparing for work. The weather had changed in the night,
+and the sky seemed immeasurably lifted while yet filled with the
+uncertainties of dawn. Fundy Bay revealed more and more of its clean
+blue-emerald level, and far eastward the glassy water shaded up to a
+flushing of pink. Smoke rose from the mess fires in D'Aulnay's camp. The
+first light puff of burnt powder sprung from his batteries, and the
+artillery duel again began.</p>
+
+<p>"If we had but enough soldiers to make a sally," said Madame La Tour to
+her officer, as she also came for an instant to the bastion, "we might
+take his batteries. Oh, for monsieur to appear on the bay with a stout
+shipload of men."</p>
+
+<p>"It is time he came," said the Swiss.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we shall see him or have news of him soon."</p>
+
+<p>In the tumult of Klussman's mind Jonas Bronck's hand never again came
+uppermost. He cared nothing and thought nothing about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> that weird
+fragment, in the midst of living disaster. It had merely been the
+occasion of his surrendering to Marguerite. He determined that when La
+Tour returned and the siege was raised, if he survived he would take his
+wife and go to some new colony. Live without her he could not. Yet
+neither could he re&euml;spouse her in Fort St. John, where he had himself
+openly denounced her.</p>
+
+<p>Spring that day leaped forward to a semblance of June. The sun poured
+warmth; the very air renewed life. But to Klussman it was the brilliancy
+of passing delirium. He did not feel when gun-metal touched his hands.
+The sound of the incoming tide, which could be heard betwixt artillery
+boomings, and the hint of birds which that sky gave, were mute against
+his thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>Though D'Aulnay's loss was visibly heavy, it proved also an ill day for
+the fort. The southeast bastion was raked by a fire which disabled the
+guns and killed three men. Five others were wounded at various<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> posts.
+The long spring twilight sunk through an orange horizon rim and filled
+up the measure which makes night, before firing reluctantly stopped.
+Marie had ground opened near the powder magazine to make a temporary
+grave for her three dead. They had no families. She held a taper in her
+hand and read a service over them. One bastion and so many men being
+disabled, a sentinel was posted in the turret after the gunners
+descended. The Swiss took this duty on himself, and felt his way up the
+pitch-black stairs. He had not seen Marguerite in the hall when he
+hurriedly took food, but she was safe in the tower. No woman ventured
+out in the storm of shot. The barracks were charred and battered.</p>
+
+<p>As Klussman reached the turret door he exclaimed against some human
+touch, but caught his breath and surrendered himself to Marguerite's
+arms, holding her soft body and smoothing her silk-stranded hair.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard you say you would come up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> here," murmured Marguerite. "And the
+door was unlocked."</p>
+
+<p>"Where have you been since morning?"</p>
+
+<p>"Behind a screen in the great hall. The women are cruel."</p>
+
+<p>Klussman hated the women. He kissed his wife with the first kiss since
+their separation, and all the toils of war failed to unman him like that
+kiss.</p>
+
+<p>"But there was that child!" he groaned.</p>
+
+<p>"That was not my child," said Marguerite.</p>
+
+<p>"The baby brought here with you!"</p>
+
+<p>"It was not mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Whose was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was a drunken soldier's. His wife died. They made me take care of
+it," said Marguerite resentfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you tell me that?" exclaimed Klussman. "You made me lie to
+my lady!"</p>
+
+<p>Marguerite had no answer. He understood her reticence, and the
+degradation which could not be excused.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Who made you take care of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"He did."</p>
+
+<p>"D'Aulnay?" Klussman uttered through his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I don't like him."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> like him!" said the savage Swiss.</p>
+
+<p>"He is cruel," complained Marguerite, "and selfish."</p>
+
+<p>The Swiss pressed his cheek to her soft cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"I never was selfish and cruel to thee," he said, weakly.</p>
+
+<p>"No, you never were."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why," burst out the husband afresh, "did you leave me to follow
+that beast of prey?"</p>
+
+<p>Marguerite brought a sob from her breast which was like a sword through
+Klussman. He smoothed and smoothed her hair.</p>
+
+<p>"But what did I ever do to thee, Marguerite?"</p>
+
+<p>"I always liked you best," she said. "But he was a great lord. The women
+in barracks are so hateful, and a common soldier is naught."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You would be the lady of a seignior," hissed Klussman.</p>
+
+<p>"Thou knowest I was fit for that," retorted Marguerite with spirit.</p>
+
+<p>"I know thou wert. It is marrying me that has been thy ruin." He groaned
+with his head hanging.</p>
+
+<p>"We are not ruined yet," she said, "if you care for me."</p>
+
+<p>"That was a stranger child?" he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"All the train knew it to be a motherless child. He had no right to
+thrust it on me."</p>
+
+<p>"I demand no testimony of D'Aulnay's followers," said Klussman roughly.</p>
+
+<p>He let her go from his arms, and stepped to the battlements. His gaze
+moved over the square of the fortress, and eastward to that blur of
+whiteness which hinted the enemy's tents, the hint being verified by a
+light or two.</p>
+
+<p>"I have a word to tell you," said Marguerite, leaning beside her
+husband.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I have this to tell thee," said the Swiss. "We must leave Acadia." His
+arm again fondled her, and he comforted his sore spirit with an
+instant's thought of home and peace somewhere.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. We can go to Penobscot," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Penobscot?" he repeated with suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>"The king will give you a grant of Penobscot."</p>
+
+<p>"The king will give it to&mdash;me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And it is a great seigniory."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know the king will do that?"</p>
+
+<p>"He told me to tell you; he promised it."</p>
+
+<p>"The king? You never saw the king."</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"D'Aulnay?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I would I had him by the throat!" burst out Klussman. Marguerite leaned
+her cheek on the stone and sighed. The bay<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> seemed full of salty spice.
+It was a night in which the human soul must beat against casements to
+break free and roam the blessed dark. All of spring was in the air.
+Directly overhead stood the north star, with slow constellations
+wheeling in review before him.</p>
+
+<p>"So D'Aulnay sent you to spy on my lord, as my lord believed?"</p>
+
+<p>"You shall not call me a spy. I came to my husband. I hate him," she
+added in a resentful burst. "He made me walk the marshes, miles and
+miles alone, carrying that child."</p>
+
+<p>"Why the child?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because the people from St. John would be sure to pity it."</p>
+
+<p>"And what word did he send you to tell me?" demanded Klussman. "Give me
+that word."</p>
+
+<p>Marguerite waited with her face downcast.</p>
+
+<p>"It was kind of him to think of me," said the Swiss; "and to send you
+with the message!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She felt mocked, and drooped against the wall. And in the midst of his
+scorn he took her face in his hands with a softness he could not master.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me the word," he repeated. Marguerite drew his neck down and
+whispered, but before she finished whispering Klussman flung her against
+the cannon with an oath.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought it would be, betray my lord's fortress to D'Aulnay de
+Charnisay! Go down stairs, Marguerite Klussman. When I have less matter
+in hand, I will flog thee! Hast thou no wit at all? To come from a man
+who broke faith with thee, and offer his faith to me! Bribe me with
+Penobscot to betray St. John to him!"</p>
+
+<p>Marguerite sat on the floor. She whispered, gasping,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Tell not the whole fortress."</p>
+
+<p>Klussman ceased to talk, but his heels rung on the stone as he paced the
+turret. He felt himself grow old as silence became massive betwixt his
+wife and him. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> moon rose, piercing the cannon embrasure, and showed
+Marguerite weeping against the wall. The mass of silence drove him
+resistless before her will. That soft and childlike shape did not
+propose treason to him. He understood that she thought only of herself
+and him. It was her method of bringing profit out of the times. He heard
+his relief stumble at the foot of the turret stairs, and went down the
+winding darkness to stop and send the soldier back to bed.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not sleepy," said Klussman. "I slept last night. Go and rest till
+daybreak." And the man willingly went. Marguerite had not moved a fold
+of her gown when her husband again came into the lighted tower. The
+Swiss lifted her up and made her stand beside him while he stanched her
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>"You hurt me when you threw me against the cannon," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I was rough. But I am too foolish fond to hold anger. It has worn me
+out to be hard on thee. I am not the man I was."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Marguerite clung around him. He dumbly felt his misfortune in being
+thralled by a nature of greater moral crudity than his own. But she was
+his portion in the world.</p>
+
+<p>"You flung me against the cannon because I wanted you made a seignior."</p>
+
+<p>"It was because D'Aulnay wanted me made a traitor."</p>
+
+<p>"What is there to do, indeed?" murmured Marguerite. "He said if you
+would take the sentinels off the wall on the entrance side of the fort,
+at daybreak any morning, he will be ready to scale that wall."</p>
+
+<p>"But how will he know I have taken the sentinels off?"</p>
+
+<p>"You must hold up a ladder in your hands."</p>
+
+<p>"The tower is between that side of the fort and D'Aulnay's camp. No one
+would see me standing with a ladder in my hands."</p>
+
+<p>"When you set the ladder against the outside wall, it is all you have to
+do, except<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> to take me with you as you climb down. It is their affair to
+see the signal."</p>
+
+<p>"So D'Aulnay plans an ambush between us and the river? And suppose I did
+all that and the enemy failed to see the signal? I should go down there
+to be hung, or my lady would have me thrown into the keep here, and
+perhaps shot. I ought to be shot."</p>
+
+<p>"They will see the signal," insisted Marguerite. "I know all that is to
+be done. He made me say it over until I tired of it. You must mount the
+wall where the gate is: that side of the fort toward the river, the camp
+being on another side."</p>
+
+<p>Klussman again smoothed her hair and argued with her as with a child.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot betray my lady. You see how madame trusts me."</p>
+
+<p>She grieved against his hard breastplate with insistence which pierced
+even that.</p>
+
+<p>"I am indeed not fit to be thought on beside the lady!"</p>
+
+<p>"I would do anything for thee but betray my lady."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And when you have held her fort for her will she advance you by so much
+as a handful of land?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was made lieutenant since the last siege."</p>
+
+<p>"But now you may be a seignior with a holding of your own," repeated
+Marguerite. So they talked the night away. She showed him on one hand a
+future of honor and plenty which he ought not to withhold from her; and
+on the other, a wandering forth to endless hardships. D'Aulnay had
+worked them harm; but this was in her mind an argument that he should
+now work them good. Being a selfish lord, powerful and cruel, he could
+demand this service as the condition of making her husband master of
+Penobscot; and the service itself she regarded as a small one compared
+to her lone tramping of the marshes to La Tour's stockade. D'Aulnay was
+certain to take Fort St. John some time. He had the king and all France
+behind him; the La Tours had nobody. Marguerite was a woman who could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
+see no harm in advancing her husband by the downfall of his mere
+employers. Her husband must be advanced. She saw herself lady of
+Penobscot.</p>
+
+<p>The Easter dawn began to grow over the world. Klussman remembered what
+day it was, and lifted her up to look over the battlements at light
+breaking from the east.</p>
+
+<p>Marguerite turned her head from point to point of the dewy world once
+more rising out of chaos. She showed her husband a new trench and a line
+of breastworks between the fort and the river. These had been made in
+the night, and might have been detected by him if he had guarded his
+post. The jutting of rocks probably hid them from sentinels below.</p>
+
+<p>"D'Aulnay is coming nearer," said the Swiss, looking with haggard
+indifferent eyes at these preparations, and an occasional head venturing
+above the fresh ridge. Marguerite threw her arms around her husband's
+neck, and hung on him with kisses.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Come on, then," he said, speaking with the desperate conviction of a
+man who has lost himself. "I have to do it. You will see me hang for
+this, but I'll do it for you."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV.</h2>
+
+<h3>A SOLDIER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Marie felt herself called through the deepest depths of sleep, and sat
+up in the robe of fur which she had wrapped around her for her night
+bivouac. There was some alarm at her door. The enemy might be on the
+walls. She tingled with the intense return of life, and was opening the
+door without conscious motion. Nobody stood outside in the hall except
+the dwarf, whose aureole of foxy hair surrounded features pinched by
+anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame Marie&mdash;Madame Marie! The Swiss has gone to give up the fort to
+D'Aulnay."</p>
+
+<p>"Has gone?"</p>
+
+<p>"He came down from the turret with his wife, who persuaded him. I
+listened all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> night on the stairs. D'Aulnay is ready to mount the wall
+when he gives the signal. I had to hide me until the woman and the Swiss
+passed below. They are now going to the wall to give the signal."</p>
+
+<p>Through Marie passed that worst shock of all human experience. To see
+your trusted ally transmuted into your secret most deadly foe, sickens
+the heart as death surely cannot sicken it. Like many a pierced wretch
+who has collapsed suddenly into the dust while the stab yet held the
+knife, she whispered feebly,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"He could not do that!"</p>
+
+<p>The stern blackness of her eyes seemed to annihilate all the rest of her
+face. Was rock itself stable under-foot? Why should one care to prolong
+life, when life only proved how cruel and worthless are the people for
+whom we labor?</p>
+
+<p>"Madame Marie, he is now doing it. He was to hold up a ladder on the
+wall."</p>
+
+<p>"Which wall?"</p>
+
+<p>"This one&mdash;where the gate is."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Marie looked through the glass in her door which opened toward the
+battlements, rubbed aside moisture, and looked again. While one breath
+could be drawn Klussman was standing in the dawn-light with a ladder
+raised overhead. She caught up a pair of long pistols which had lain
+beside her all night.</p>
+
+<p>"Rouse the men below&mdash;quick!" she said to Le Rossignol, and ran up the
+steps to the wall. No sentinels were there. The Swiss had already
+dropped down the ladder outside and was out of sight, and she heard the
+running, climbing feet of D'Aulnay's men coming to take the advantage
+afforded them. Sentinels in the other two bastions turned with surprise
+at her cry. They had seen Klussman relieving the guard, but his subtle
+action escaped their watch-worn eyes. They only noticed that he had the
+strange woman with him.</p>
+
+<p>D'Aulnay's men were at the foot of the wall planting ladders. They were
+swarming up. Marie met them with the sentinels<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> joining her and the
+soldiers rushing from below. The discharge of firearms, the clash of
+opposing metals, the thuds of falling bodies, cries, breathless
+struggling, clubbed weapons sweeping the battlements&mdash;filled one vast
+minute. Ladders were thrown back to the stones, and D'Aulnay's repulsed
+men were obliged to take once more to their trench, carrying the stunned
+and wounded. A cannon was trained on their breastworks, and St. John
+belched thunder and fire down the path of retreat. The Swiss's treason
+had been useless to the enemy. The people of the fort saw him hurried
+more like a prisoner than an ally towards D'Aulnay's camp, his wife
+beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Klussman," thought the lady of St. John, as she turned to station
+guards at every exposed point and to continue that day's fight, "you
+knew in another way what it is to be betrayed. How could you put this
+anguish upon me?"</p>
+
+<p>The furious and powder-grimed men, her faithful soldiers, hooted at the
+Swiss from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> their bastions, not knowing what a heart he carried with
+him. He turned once and made them a gesture of defiance, more pathetic
+than any wail for pardon, but they saw only the treason of the man, and
+shot at him with a good will. Through smoke and ball-plowed earth,
+D'Aulnay's soldiers ran into camp, and his batteries answered. Artillery
+echoes were scattered far through the woods, into the very depths of
+which that untarnished Easter weather seemed to stoop, coaxing growths
+from the swelling ground.</p>
+
+<p>Advancing and pausing with equal caution, a man came out of the northern
+forest toward St. John River. No part of his person was covered with
+armor. And instead of the rich and formal dress then worn by the
+Huguenots even in the wilderness, he wore a complete suit of hunter's
+buckskin which gave his supple muscles a freedom beautiful to see. His
+young face was freshly shaved, showing the clean fine texture of the
+skin. For having nearly finished his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> journey from the head of Fundy
+Bay, he had that morning prepared himself to appear what he was in Fort
+St. John&mdash;a man of good birth and nurture. His portables were rolled
+tightly in a blanket and strapped to his shoulders. A hunting-knife and
+two long pistols armed him. His head was covered with a cap of beaver
+skin, and he wore moccasins. Not an ounce of unnecessary weight hampered
+him.</p>
+
+<p>The booming of cannon had met him so far off on that day's march that he
+understood well the state of siege in which St. John would be found; and
+long before there was any glimpse of D'Aulnay's tents and earthworks,
+the problem of getting into the fort occupied his mind. For D'Aulnay's
+guards might be extended in every direction. But the first task in hand
+was to cross the river. One or two old canoes could be seen on the other
+side; cast-off property of the Etchemin Indians who had broken camp.
+Being on the wrong bank these were as useless to him as dream<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> canoes.
+But had a ferryman stood in waiting, it was perilous to cross in open
+day, within possible sight of the enemy. So the soldier moved carefully
+down to a shelter of rocks below the falls, opposite that place where
+Van Corlaer had watched the tide sweep up and drown the rapids. From
+this post he got a view of La Tour's small ship, yet anchored and safe
+at its usual moorings. No human life was visible about it.</p>
+
+<p>"The ship would afford me good quarters," said the soldier to himself,
+"had I naught to do but rest. But I must get into the fort this night;
+and how is it to be done?"</p>
+
+<p>All the thunders of war, and all the effort and danger to be undertaken,
+could not put his late companions out of his mind. He lay with hands
+clasped under his head, and looked back at the trees visibly leafing in
+the warm Easter air. They were much to this man in all their differences
+and habits, their whisperings and silences. They had marched with him
+through countless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> lone long reaches, passing him from one to another
+with friendly recommendation. It hurt him to notice a broken or deformed
+one among them; but one full and nobly equipped from root to top crown
+was Nature's most triumphant shout. There is a glory of the sun and a
+glory of the moon, but to one who loves them there is another glory of
+the trees.</p>
+
+<p>"In autumn," thought the soldier, "I have seen light desert the skies
+and take to the trees and finally spread itself beneath them, a material
+glow, flake on flake. But in the spring, before their secret is spoken,
+when they throb, and restrain the force driving through them, then have
+I most comfort with them, for they live as I live."</p>
+
+<p>Shadows grew on the river, and ripples were arrested and turned back to
+flow up stream. There was but one way for him to cross the river, and
+that was to swim. And the best time to swim was when the tide brimmed
+over the current and trembled at its turn, a broad and limpid expanse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
+of water, cold, dangerous, repellent to the chilled plunging body; but
+safer and more easily paddled through than when the current, angular as
+a skeleton, sought the bay at its lowest ebb.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately tide and twilight favored the young soldier together. He
+stripped himself and bound his weapons and clothes in one tight packet
+on his head. At first it was easy to tread water: the salt brine upheld
+him. But in the middle of the river it was wise to sink close to the
+surface and carry as small a ripple as possible; for D'Aulnay's guards
+might be posted nearer than he knew. The water, deceptive at its outer
+edges in iridescent reflection of warm clouds, was cold as glacier
+drippings in midstream. He swam with desperate calmness, guarding
+himself by every stroke against cramp. The bundle oppressed him. He
+would have cast it off, but dared not change by a thought of variation
+the routine of his struggle. Hardy and experienced woodsman as he was,
+he staggered out on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> other side and lay a space in the sand, too
+exhausted to move.</p>
+
+<p>The tide began to recede, leaving stranded seaweed in green or brown
+streaks, the color of which could be determined only by the dullness or
+vividness of its shine through the dusk. As soon as he was able, the
+soldier sat up, shook out his blanket and rolled himself in it. The
+first large stars were trembling out. He lay and smelled gunpowder
+mingling with the saltiness of the bay and the evening incense of the
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>There was a moose's lip in his wallet, the last spoil of his wilderness
+march, taken from game shot the night before and cooked at his morning
+fire. He ate it, still lying in the sand. Lights began to appear in the
+direction of D'Aulnay's camp, but the fort held itself dark and close.
+He thought of the grassy meadow rivulet which was always empty at low
+tide, and that it might afford him some shelter in his nearer approach
+to the fort. He dressed and put on his weapons, but left everything else
+except<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> the blanket lying where he had landed. In this venture little
+could be carried except the man and his life. The frontier graveyard
+outlined itself dimly against the expanse of landscape. The new-turned
+clay therein gave him a start. He crept over the border of stones, went
+close, and leaned down to measure the length of the fresh grave with his
+outstretched hands. A sigh of relief which was as strong as a sob burst
+from the soldier.</p>
+
+<p>"It is only that child we found at the stockade," he murmured, and
+stepped on among the older mounds and leaped the opposite boundary, to
+descend that dip of land which the tide invaded. Water yet shone there
+on the grass. Too impatient to wait until the tide ran low, he found the
+log, and moved carefully forward, through increasing dusk, on hands and
+knees within closer range of the fort. Remembering that his buckskin
+might make an inviting spot on the slope, he wrapped his dark blanket
+around him. The chorus of insect life and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> of water creatures, which had
+scarcely been tuned for the season, began to raise experimental notes.
+And now a splash like the leap of a fish came from the river. The moon
+would be late; he thought of that with satisfaction. There was a little
+mist blown aloft over the stars, yet the night did not promise to be
+cloudy.</p>
+
+<p>The whole environment of Fort St. John was so familiar to the young
+soldier that he found no unusual stone in his way. That side toward the
+garden might be the side least exposed to D'Aulnay's forces at night. If
+he could reach the southwest bastion unseen, he could ask for a ladder.
+There was every likelihood of his being shot before the sentinels
+recognized him, yet he might be more fortunate. Balancing these chances,
+he moved toward that angle of shadow which the fortress lifted against
+the southern sky. Long rays of light within the walls were thrown up and
+moved on darkness like the pulsing motions of the aurora.</p>
+
+<p>"Who goes there?" said a voice.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The soldier lay flat against the earth. He had imagined the browsing
+sound of cattle near him. But a standing figure now condensed itself
+from the general dusk, some distance up the slope betwixt him and the
+bastion. The challenger was entirely apart from the fort. As he
+flattened himself in breathless waiting for a shot which might follow, a
+clatter began at his very ears, some animal bounded over him with a
+glancing cut of its hoof, and galloped toward the trench below St.
+John's gate. He heard another exclamation,&mdash;this rapid traveler had
+probably startled another sentinel. The man who had challenged him
+laughed softly in the darkness. All the Sable Island ponies must be
+loose upon the slope. D'Aulnay's men had taken possession of the stable
+and cattle, and the wild and frightened ponies were scattered. As his
+ear lay so near the ground the soldier heard other little hoofs startled
+to action, and a snort or two from suspicious nostrils. He crept away
+from the sentinel without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> further challenge. It was evident that
+D'Aulnay had encompassed the fort with guards.</p>
+
+<p>The young soldier crept slowly down the rocky hillock, avoided another
+sentinel, and, after long caution and self-restraint and polishing the
+earth with his buckskin, crawled into the empty trench. The Sable Island
+ponies continually helped him. They were so nervous and so agile that
+the sentinels ceased to watch moving shadows.</p>
+
+<p>The soldier looked up at St. John and its tower, knowing that he must
+enter in some manner before the moon rose. He dreaded the red brightness
+of moon-dawn, when guards whom he could discern against the stony ascent
+might detect his forehead above the breastwork. Behind him stretched an
+alluvial flat to the river's sands. The tide was running swiftly out,
+and under starlight its swirls and long muscular sweeps could be
+followed by a practiced eye.</p>
+
+<p>As the soldier glanced warily in every direction, two lights left
+D'Aulnay's camp<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> and approached him, jerking and flaring in the hands of
+men who were evidently walking over irregular ground. They might be
+coming directly to take possession of the trench. But why should they
+proclaim their intention with torches to the batteries of Fort St. John?
+He looked around for some refuge from the advancing circle of smoky
+shine, and moved backwards along the bottom of the trench. The light
+stretched over and bridged him, leaving him in a stream of deep shadow,
+protected by the breastwork from sentinels above. He could therefore
+lift a cautious eye at the back of the trench, and scan the group now
+moving betwixt him and the river. There were seven persons, only one of
+whom strode the stones with reckless feet. This man's hands were tied
+behind his back, and a rope was noosed around his neck and held at the
+other end by a soldier.</p>
+
+<p>"It is Klussman, our Swiss!" flashed through the soldier in the trench,
+with a mighty throb of rage and shame, and anx<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>iety for the lady in the
+fort. If Klussman had been taken prisoner, the guns of St. John would
+surely speak in his behalf when he was about to be hanged before its
+very gate. Such a parade of the act must be discovered on the walls. It
+was plain that Klussman had deserted to D'Aulnay, and was now enjoying
+D'Aulnay's gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>"The tree that doth best front the gates," said one of the men, pointing
+with his torch to an elm in the alluvial soil: "my lord said the tree
+that doth best front the gates."</p>
+
+<p>"That hath no fit limbs," objected another.</p>
+
+<p>"He said the tree that doth best front the gates," insisted the first
+man. "Besides this one, what shrub hereabouts is tall enough for our
+use?"</p>
+
+<p>They moved down towards the elm. A stool carried by one man showed its
+long legs grotesquely behind his back. There were six persons besides
+the prisoner, all soldiers except one, who wore the coarse, long,
+cord-girdled gown of a Capuchin. His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> hood was drawn over his face, and
+the torches imperfectly showed that he was of the bare-footed order and
+wore only sandals. He held up a crucifix and walked close beside
+Klussman. But the Swiss gazed all around the dark world which he was so
+soon to leave, and up at the fortress he had attempted to betray, and
+never once at the murmuring friar.</p>
+
+<p>The soldier in the trench heard a breathing near him, and saw that a
+number of the ponies, drawn by the light, had left their fitful grazing
+and were venturing step by step beyond the end of the trench. Some
+association of this scene with soldiers who used to feed them at night,
+after a hard day of drawing home the winter logs, may have stirred
+behind their shaggy foreheads. He took his hunting-knife with sudden and
+desperate intention, threw off his moccasins, cut his leggins short at
+the middle of the leg, and silently divided his blanket into strips.</p>
+
+<p>Preparations were going forward under<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> the elm. One of the soldiers
+climbed the tree and crept out upon an arched limb, catching the rope
+end thrown up to him. Both torches were given to one man, that all the
+others might set themselves to the task. Klussman stood upon the stool,
+which they had brought for the purpose from the cook's galley in one of
+their ships. His blond face, across which all his thoughts used to
+parade, was cast up by the torches like a stiffened mask, hopeless yet
+fearless in its expression.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Father Vincent," said the man who had made the knot, sliding down
+the tree. "This is a Huguenot fellow, and good words are lost on him. I
+wonder that my lord let him have a friar to comfort him."</p>
+
+<p>"Retire, Father Vincent," said the men around the stool, with more
+roughness than they would have shown to a favorite confessor of
+D'Aulnay's. The Capuchin turned and walked toward the trench.</p>
+
+<p>The soldier in the trench could not hear what they said, but he had time
+for no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> further thought of Klussman. He had been watching the ponies
+with the conviction that his own life hung on what he might drive them
+to do. They alternately snuffed at Klussman's presence and put their
+noses down to feel for springing grass. Before they could start and
+wheel from the friar, the soldier had thrown his hunting-knife. It
+struck the hind leg of the nearest pony and a scampering and snorting
+hurricane swept down past the elm. Klussman's stool and the torch-bearer
+were rolled together. Both lights were stamped out by the panic-struck
+men, who thought a sally had been made from the fort. Father Vincent saw
+the knife thrown, and turned back, but the man in the trench seized him
+with steel muscles and dragged him into its hollow. If the good father
+uttered cry against such violence, there was also noise under the elm,
+and the wounded pony yet galloped and snorted toward the river. The
+young soldier fastened his mouth shut with a piece of blanket, stripped
+off his capote and sandals<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> and tied him so that he could not move.
+Having done all most securely and put the capote and sandals upon
+himself, the soldier whispered at the friar's ear an apology which must
+have amused them both,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon my roughness, good father. Perhaps you will lend me your
+clothes?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a>XVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE CAMP.</h3>
+
+
+<p>D'Aulnay's sentinels about the walls, understanding that all this
+confusion was made by a stampede of ponies, kept the silence which had
+been enjoined on them. But some stir of inquiry seemed to occur in the
+bastions. Father Vincent, lying helpless in the trench, and feeling the
+chill of lately opened earth through his shaven head and partly nude
+body, wondered if he also had met D'Aulnay's gratitude for his recent
+inquiry into D'Aulnay's fitness to receive the sacraments.</p>
+
+<p>"But I will tell my lord of Charnisay the truth about his sins," thought
+Father Vincent, unable to form any words with a pinioned mouth, "though
+he should go the length of procuring my death."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The soldier with his buckskin covered by Father Vincent's capote stepped
+out into the starlight and turned his cowled face toward the fort. He
+intended to tell the sentinels that D'Aulnay had sent him with a message
+to the commandant of St. John. The guards, discerning his capote, would
+perhaps obey a beckoning finger, and believe that he had been charged
+with silence; for not having heard the churchman's voice he dared not
+try to imitate it, and must whisper. But that unforeseen element which
+the wisest cannot rule out of their fate halted him before he took a
+dozen steps up the hill.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is Father Vincent de Paris?" called some impatient person below
+the trench. Five figures coming from the tree gained distinctness as
+they advanced, but it was a new-comer who demanded again,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Where is Father Vincent de Paris? Did he not leave the camp with you?"</p>
+
+<p>The soldier went down directly where his gray capote might speak for
+itself to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> eye, and the man who carried the stool pointed with it
+toward the evident friar.</p>
+
+<p>"There stands the friar behind thee. He hath been tumbled into the
+trench, I think."</p>
+
+<p>"Is your affair done?"</p>
+
+<p>"And well done, except that some cattle ran mad among us but now, and we
+thought a sally had been made, so we put out our torches."</p>
+
+<p>"With your stupid din," said the messenger from camp, "you will wake up
+the guns of the fort at the very moment when Sieur D'Aulnay would send
+his truce bearer in."</p>
+
+<p>"I thank the saints I am not like to be used for his agent," said the
+man who had been upset with the torches, "if the walls are to be stormed
+as they were this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"He wants Father Vincent de Paris," said the under officer from camp.
+"Good father, you took more license in coming hither than my lord
+intended."</p>
+
+<p>The soldier made some murmured noise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> under his cowl. He walked beside
+the officer and heard one man say to another behind him,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"These holy folks have more courage than men-at-arms. My lord was minded
+to throw this one out of the ship when he sailed from Port Royal."</p>
+
+<p>"The Sieur D'Aulnay hath too much respect to his religion to do that,"
+answered the other.</p>
+
+<p>"You had best move in silence," said the officer, turning his head
+toward them, and no further words broke the march into camp. D'Aulnay's
+camp was well above the reach of high tide, yet so near the river that
+soft and regular splashings seemed encroaching on the tents. The soldier
+noticed the batteries on their height, and counted as ably as he could
+for the cowl and night dimness the number of tents holding this little
+army. Far beyond them the palpitating waters showed changeful surfaces
+on Fundy Bay.</p>
+
+<p>The capote was long for him. He kept<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> his hands within the sleeves.
+Before the guard-line was passed he saw in the middle of the camp an
+open tent. A long torch stood in front of it with the point stuck in the
+ground. The floating yellow blaze showed the tent's interior, its simple
+fittings for rest, the magnificent arms and garments of its occupant,
+and first of all, D'Aulnay de Charnisay himself, sitting with a rude
+camp table in front of him. He was half muffled in a furred cloak from
+the balm of that Easter night. Papers and an ink-horn were on the table,
+and two officers stood by, receiving orders.</p>
+
+<p>This governor of Acadia had a triangular face with square temples and
+pointed beard, its crisp fleece also concealing his mouth except the
+thin edges of his lips. It was a handsome nervous face of black tones;
+one that kept counsel, and was not without humor. He noticed his
+subordinate approaching with the friar. The men sent to execute Klussman
+were dispersed to their tents.</p>
+
+<p>"The Swiss hath suffered his punishment?" he inquired.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my lord D'Aulnay. I met the soldiers returning."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he say anything further concerning the state of the fort?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know not, my lord. But I will call the men to be questioned."</p>
+
+<p>"Let it be. He hath probably not lied in what he told me to-day of its
+weak garrison. But help is expected soon with La Tour. Perhaps he told
+more to the friar in their last conference."</p>
+
+<p>"Heretics do not confess, my lord."</p>
+
+<p>"True enough; but these churchmen have inquisitive minds which go into
+men's affairs without confession," said the governor of Acadia with a
+smile which lengthened slightly the thread-lines of his lips. D'Aulnay
+de Charnisay had an eye with a keen blue iris, sorting not at all with
+the pigments of his face. As he cast it on the returned friar his mere
+review deepened to a scrutiny used to detecting concealments.</p>
+
+<p>"Hath this Capuchin shrunk?" exclaimed D'Aulnay. "He is not as tall as
+he was."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>All present looked with quickened attention at the soldier, who expected
+them to pull off his cowl and expose a head of thrifty clusters which
+had never known the tonsure. His beaver cap lay in the trench with the
+real Father Vincent.</p>
+
+<p>He folded his arms on his breast with a gesture of patience which had
+its effect. D'Aulnay's followers knew the warfare between their seignior
+and Father Vincent de Paris, the only churchman in Acadia who insisted
+on bringing him to account; and who had found means to supplant a
+favorite priest on this expedition, for the purpose of watching him.
+D'Aulnay bore it with assumed good-humor. He had his religious scruples
+as well as his revenges and ambitions. But there were ways in which an
+intruding churchman could be martyred by irony and covert abuse, and by
+discomfort chargeable to the circumstances of war. Father Vincent de
+Paris, on his part, bore such martyrdom silently, but stinted no word of
+needed rebuke. A woman's mourn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>ing in the dusky tent next to D'Aulnay's
+now rose to such wildness of piteous cries as to divert even him from
+the shrinkage of Father Vincent's height. No other voice could be heard,
+comforting her. She was alone with sorrow in the midst of an army of
+fray-hardened men. A look of embarrassment passed over De Charnisay's
+face, and he said to the officer nearest him,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Remove that woman to another part of the camp."</p>
+
+<p>"The Swiss's wife, my lord?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Swiss's widow, to speak exactly." He turned again with a frowning
+smile to the silent Capuchin. "By the proofs she gives, my kindness hath
+not been so great to that woman that the church need upbraid me."</p>
+
+<p>Marguerite came out of the tent at a peremptory word given by the
+officer at its opening. She did not look toward D'Aulnay de Charnisay,
+the power who had made her his foolish agent to the destruction of the
+man who loved her. Muffling her heart<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>broken cries she followed the
+subaltern away into darkness&mdash;she who had meant at all costs to be
+mistress of Penobscot. When distance somewhat relieved their ears,
+D'Aulnay took up a paper lying before him on the table and spoke in some
+haste to the friar.</p>
+
+<p>"You will go with escort to the walls of the fort, Father Vincent, and
+demand to speak with Madame La Tour. She hath, it appears, little
+aversion to being seen on the walls. Give into her hand this paper."</p>
+
+<p>The soldier under the cowl, dreading that his unbroken silence might be
+noted against him, made some muttering remonstrance, at which D'Aulnay
+laughed while tying the packet.</p>
+
+<p>"When churchmen go to war, Father Vincent, they must expect to share its
+risks, at least in offices of mediation. Look you: they tell me the
+Jesuits and missionaries of Quebec and Montreal are ever before the
+soldier in the march upon this New World. But Capuchins are a lazy,
+selfish order.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> They would lie at their ease in a monastery, exerting
+themselves only to spy upon their neighbors."</p>
+
+<p>He held out the packet. The soldier in the capote had to step forward to
+receive it, and D'Aulnay's eye fell upon the sandal advanced near the
+torch.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, this is not our Capuchin," he exclaimed grimly. "This man hath a
+foot whiter than my own!"</p>
+
+<p>The feeling that he was detected gave the soldier desperate boldness and
+scorn of all further caution. He stood erect and lifted his face. Though
+the folds of the cowl fell around it, the governor caught his
+contemptuous eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Wash thy heart as I have washed my feet, and it also will be white,
+D'Aulnay de Charnisay!"</p>
+
+<p>"There spoke the Capuchin," said D'Aulnay with a nod. His close face
+allowed itself some pleasure in baiting a friar, and if he had suspected
+Father Vincent of changed identity, his own men were not sure of his
+suspicion the next instant.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Our friar hath washed his feet," he observed insolently, pointing out
+the evident fact. "Such penance and ablution he hath never before put
+upon himself since he came to Acadia! I will set it down in my
+dispatches to the king, for his majesty will take pleasure in such
+news:&mdash;'Father Vincent de Paris, on this blessed P&acirc;ques day of the year
+1645, hath washed his feet.'"</p>
+
+<p>The men laughed in a half ashamed way which apologized to the holy man
+while it deferred to the master, and D'Aulnay dismissed his envoy with
+seriousness. The two officers who had taken his orders lighted another
+torch at the blaze in front of the tent, and led away the willing friar.
+D'Aulnay watched them down the avenue of lodges, and when their figures
+entered blurred space, watched the moving star which indicated their
+progress. The officer who had brought Father Vincent to this conference,
+also stood musing after them with unlaid suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>"Close my tent," said D'Aulnay, rising, "and set the table within."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"My lord," spoke out the subordinate, "I did not tell you the men were
+thrown into confusion around the Swiss."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, monsieur?" responded D'Aulnay curtly, with an attentive eye.</p>
+
+<p>"There was a stampede of the cattle loosened from the stable. Father
+Vincent fell into the empty trench. They doubtless lost sight of him
+until he came out again."</p>
+
+<p>"Therefore, monsieur?"</p>
+
+<p>"It seemed to me as your lordship said, that this man scarce had the
+bearing of a friar, until, indeed, he spoke out in denunciation, and
+then his voice sounded a deeper tone than I ever heard in it before."</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you not tell me this directly?"</p>
+
+<p>"My lord, I had not thought it until he showed such readiness to move
+toward yon fort."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you examine the trench?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, my lord. I hurried the friar hither at your command."</p>
+
+<p>"It was the part of a prudent soldier,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> sneered his master, "to leave a
+dark trench possibly full of La Tour's recruits, and trot a friar into
+camp."</p>
+
+<p>"But the sentinels are there, monsieur, and they gave no alarm."</p>
+
+<p>"The sentinels are like you. They will think of giving an alarm
+to-morrow sunrise, when the fort is strengthened by a new garrison. Take
+a company of men, surround that trench, double the guards, send me back
+that friar, and do all with such haste as I have never seen thee show in
+my service yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my lord."</p>
+
+<p>While the officer ran among the tents, D'Aulnay walked back and forth
+outside, nervously impatient to have his men gone. He whispered with a
+laugh in his beard, "Charles de Menou, D'Aulnay de Charnisay, are you to
+be twice beaten by a woman? If La Tour hath come back with help and
+entered the fort, the siege may as well be raised to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>The cowled soldier taxed his escort in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> the speed he made across that
+dark country separating camp and fortress.</p>
+
+<p>"Go softly, good father," remonstrated one of the officers, stumbling
+among stones. "The Sieur D'Aulnay meant not that we should break our
+necks at this business."</p>
+
+<p>But he led them with no abatement and a stern and offended mien;
+wondering secretly if the real Father Vincent would by this time be able
+to make some noise in the trench. Unaccountable night sounds startled
+the ear. He turned to the fortress ascent while the trench yet lay
+distant.</p>
+
+<p>"There is an easier way, father," urged one of the men, obliged,
+however, to follow him and bend to the task of climbing. The discomfort
+of treading stony soil in sandals, and the sensibility of his uncovered
+shins to even that soft night air, made him smile under the cowl. A
+sentinel challenged them and was answered by his companions. Passing on,
+they reached the wall near the gate. Here the hill sloped less abruptly
+than at the towered corner. The rocky foundation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> of Fort St. John made
+a moat impossible. Guards on the wall now challenged them, and the
+muzzles of three guns looked down, distinct eyes in the lifted
+torchlight, but at the sign of truce these were withdrawn.</p>
+
+<p>"The Sieur D'Aulnay de Charnisay sends this friar with dispatches to the
+lady of the fort," said one of the officers. "Call your lady to receive
+them into her own hand. These are our orders."</p>
+
+<p>"And put down a ladder," said the other officer, "that he may ascend
+with them."</p>
+
+<p>"We put down no ladders," answered the man leaning over the wall. "We
+will call our lady, but you must yourselves find an arm long enough to
+lift your dispatches to her."</p>
+
+<p>During this parley, the rush of men coming from the camp began to be
+heard. The guards on the wall listened, and two of them promptly trained
+the cannon in that direction.</p>
+
+<p>"You have come to surprise us again," taunted the third guard, leaning
+over the wall; "but the Swiss is not here now!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The soldier saw his escape was cut off, and desperately casting back his
+monk's hood, he shouted upwards,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"La Tour! La Tour! Put down the ladder&mdash;it is Edelwald!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII"></a>XVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>AN ACADIAN PASSOVER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>At that name, down came a ladder as if shot from a catapult. Edelwald
+sprung up the rounds and both of D'Aulnay's officers seized him. He had
+drawn one of his long pistols and he clubbed it on their heads so that
+they staggered back. The sentinels and advancing men fired on him, but
+by some muscular flash he was flat upon the top of the wall, and the
+cannon sprung with a roar at his enemies. They were directly in its
+track, and they took to the trench. Edelwald, dragging the ladder up
+after him, laughed at the state in which they must find Father Vincent.
+The entire garrison rushed to the walls, and D'Aulnay's camp stirred
+with the rolling of drums. Then there was a pause, and each party<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
+waited further aggression from the other. The fort's gun had spoken but
+once. Perhaps some intelligence passed from trench to camp. Presently
+the unsuccessful company ventured from their breastwork and moved away,
+and both sides again had rest for the night.</p>
+
+<p>Madame La Tour stood in the fort, watching the action of her garrison
+outlined against the sky. She could no longer ascend the wall by her
+private stairs. Cannon shot had torn down her chimney and piled its rock
+in a barricade against the door. Sentinels were changed, and the
+relieved soldiers descended from the wall and returned to that great
+room of the tower which had been turned into a common camp. It seemed
+under strange enchantment. There was a hole beside the portrait of
+Claude La Tour, and through its tunnel starlight could be seen and the
+night air breathed in. The carved buffet was shattered. The usual log,
+however, burned in cheer, and families had reunited in distinct nests. A
+pavilion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> of tapestry was set up for Lady Dorinda and all her treasures,
+near the stairs: the southern window of her chamber had been made a
+target.</p>
+
+<p>Le Rossignol sat on a table, with the four expectant children still
+dancing in front of her. Was it not P&acirc;ques evening? The alarm being over
+she again began her merriest tunes. Irregular life in a besieged
+fortress had its fascination for the children. No bedtime laws could be
+enforced where the entire household stirred. But to Shubenacadie such
+turmoil was scandalous. He also lived in the hall during the day, and as
+late at night as his mistress chose, but he lived a retired life,
+squatted in a corner, hissing at all who passed near him. Perhaps he
+pined for water whereon to spread his wings and sail. Sometimes he
+quavered a plaintive remark on society as he found it, and sometimes he
+stretched up his neck to its longest length, a sinuous white serpent,
+and gazed wrathfully at the paneled ceiling. The firelight revealed him
+at this moment a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> bundle of glistening satin, wrapped in sleep and his
+wings from the alarms of war.</p>
+
+<p>Marie stood at the hearth to receive Edelwald. He came striding from
+among her soldiers, his head showing like a Roman's above the cowl. It
+was dark-eyed, shapely of feature, and with a mouth and inward curve
+above the chin so beautiful that their chiseled strength was always a
+surprise. As he faced the lady of the fortress he stood no taller than
+she did, but his contour was muscular.</p>
+
+<p>After dropping on his knee to kiss her hand, he stood up to bear the
+search of her eyes. They swept down his friar's dress and found it not
+so strange that it should supplant her immediate inquiry,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Your news? My lord is well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my lady."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he without?"</p>
+
+<p>"My lady, he is at the outpost at the head of Fundy Bay."</p>
+
+<p>Her face whitened terribly. She knew what this meant. La Tour could get
+no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> help. Nicholas Denys denied him men. There was no hope of rescue for
+Fort St. John. He was waiting in the outpost for his ship to bring him
+home&mdash;the home besieged by D'Aulnay. The blood returned to her face with
+a rush, her mouth quivered, and she sobbed two or three times without
+tears. La Tour could have taken her in his arms. But Edelwald folded his
+empty arms across his breast.</p>
+
+<p>"My lady, I would rather be shot than bring you this message."</p>
+
+<p>"Klussman betrayed us, Edelwald! and I know I hurt men, hurt them with
+my own hands, striking and shooting on the wall!"</p>
+
+<p>She threw herself against the settle and shook with weeping. It was the
+revolt of womanhood. The soldier hung his head. It relieved him to
+declare savagely,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Klussman hath his pay. D'Aulnay's followers have just hanged him below
+the fort."</p>
+
+<p>"Hanged him! Hanged poor Klussman? Edelwald, I cannot have
+Klussman&mdash;hanged!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Le Rossignol had stopped her mandolin, and the children clustered near
+Edelwald waiting for his notice. One of them now ran with the news to
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"Klussman is hanged," she repeated, changing her position on the table
+and laying the mandolin down. "Faith, we are never satisfied with our
+good. I am in a rage now because they hanged not the woman in his
+stead."</p>
+
+<p>Marie wiped off her tears. The black rings of sleeplessness around her
+eyes emphasized her loss of color, but she was beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>"How foolish doth weariness make a woman! I expected no help from
+Denys&mdash;yet rested my last hope on it. You must eat, Edelwald. By your
+dress and the alarm raised you have come into the fort through danger
+and effort."</p>
+
+<p>"My lady, if, you will permit me first to go to my room, I will find
+something which sorts better with a soldier than this churchman's gown.
+My buckskin, I was obliged to mutilate to make me a proper friar."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Go, assuredly. But I know not what rubbish the cannon of D'Aulnay have
+battered down in your room. The monk's frock will scarce feel lonesome
+in that part of our tower now: we have had two Jesuits to lodge there
+since you left."</p>
+
+<p>"Did they carry away Madame Bronck? I do not see her among your women."</p>
+
+<p>"She is fortunate, Edelwald. A man loved her, and traveled hither from
+the Orange settlement. They were wed five days ago, and set out with the
+Jesuits to Montreal."</p>
+
+<p>Marie did not lift her heavy eyelids while she spoke, and anguish passed
+unseen across Edelwald's face. Whoever was loved and fortunate, he stood
+outside of such experience. He was young, but there was to be no wooing
+for him in the world, however long war might spare him. The women of the
+fort waited with their children for his notice. His stirring to turn
+toward them rustled a paper under his capote.</p>
+
+<p>"My lady," he said pausing, "D'Aulnay<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> had me in his camp and gave me
+dispatches to you."</p>
+
+<p>"You were there in this friar's dress?"</p>
+
+<p>Marie looked sincerely the pride she took in his simple courage.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my lady, though much against my will. I was obliged to knock down
+a reverend shaveling and strip him. But the gown hath served fairly for
+the trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"Hath D'Aulnay many men?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is well equipped."</p>
+
+<p>Edelwald took the packet from his belt and gave it to her. Marie broke
+the thread and sat down on the settle, spreading D'Aulnay's paper to the
+firelight. She read it in silence, and handed it to Edelwald. He leaned
+toward the fire and read it also.</p>
+
+<p>D'Aulnay de Charnisay demanded the surrender of Fort St. John with all
+its stores, ammunition, moneys and plate, and its present small
+garrison. When Edelwald looked up, Marie extended her hand for the
+dispatch and threw it into the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Let that be his answer," said Edelwald.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"If we surrender," spoke the lady of the fort, "we will make our own
+terms."</p>
+
+<p>"My lady, you will not surrender."</p>
+
+<p>As she looked at Edelwald, the comfort of having him there softened the
+resolute lines of her face into childlike curves. Being about the same
+age she felt always a youthful comradeship with him. Her eyes again
+filled.</p>
+
+<p>"Edelwald, we have lost ten men."</p>
+
+<p>"D'Aulnay has doubtless lost ten or twenty times as many."</p>
+
+<p>"What are men to him? Cattle, which he can buy. But to us, they are
+priceless. To say nothing of your rank, Edelwald, you alone are worth
+more than all the armies D'Aulnay can muster."</p>
+
+<p>He sheltered his face with one hand as if the fire scorched him.</p>
+
+<p>"My lady, Sieur Charles would have us hold this place. Consider: it is
+his last fortress except that stockade."</p>
+
+<p>"You mistake him, Edelwald. He would save the garrison and let the fort
+go. If<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> he or you had not come to-night I must have died of my
+troubles."</p>
+
+<p>She conquered some sobbing, and asked, "How does he bear this despair,
+Edelwald? for he knew it must come to this without help."</p>
+
+<p>"He was heartsick with anxiety to return, my lady."</p>
+
+<p>She leaned against the back of the settle.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not say things to induce me to sacrifice his men for his fort."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think, my lady, that D'Aulnay would spare the garrison if he
+gets possession of this fort?"</p>
+
+<p>"On no other condition will he get the fort. He shall let all my brave
+men go out with the honors of war."</p>
+
+<p>"But if he accepts such terms&mdash;will he keep them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is not any man obliged to keep a written treaty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Kings are scarce obliged to do that."</p>
+
+<p>"I see what you would do," said Marie, "and I tell you it is useless.
+You would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> frighten me with D'Aulnay into allowing you, our only
+officer, and these men, our only soldiers, to ransom this fort with your
+lives. It comes to that. We might hold out a few more days and end by
+being at his mercy."</p>
+
+<p>"Let the men themselves be spoken to," entreated Edelwald.</p>
+
+<p>"They will all, like you, beg to give themselves to the holding of
+Charles La Tour's property. I have balanced these matters night and day.
+We must surrender, Edelwald. We must surrender to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"My lady, I am one more man. And I will now take charge of the defense."</p>
+
+<p>"And what could I say to my lord if you were killed?&mdash;you, the friend of
+his house, the soldier who lately came with such hopes to Acadia. Our
+fortunes do you harm enough, Edelwald. I could never face my lord again
+without you and his men."</p>
+
+<p>"Sieur Charles loves me well enough to trust me with his most dangerous
+affairs,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> my lady. The keeping of this fortress shall be one of them."</p>
+
+<p>"O Edelwald, go away from me now!" she cried out piteously. He dropped
+his head and turned on the instant. The women met him and the children
+hung to him; and that little being who was neither woman nor child so
+resented the noise which they made about him as he approached her table
+that she took her mandolin and swept them out of her way.</p>
+
+<p>"How fares Shubenacadie?" he inquired over the claw she presented to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Shubenacadie's feathers are curdled. He hath greatly soured. Confess me
+and give me thy benediction, Father Edelwald for I have sinned."</p>
+
+<p>"Not since I took these orders, I hope," said Edelwald. "As a Capuchin I
+am only an hour old."</p>
+
+<p>"Within the hour, then, I have beaten my swan, bred a quarrel amongst
+these spawn of the common soldier, and wished a woman hanged."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"A naughty list," said Edelwald.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but lying is worse than any of these. Lying doth make the soul
+sick."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have tried it," said Le Rossignol. "Many a time have I tried it.
+Scarce half an hour ago I told her forlorn old highness that the fort
+was surely taken this time, and I think she hath buried herself in her
+chest."</p>
+
+<p>"Edelwald," said a voice from the tapestried pavilion. Lady Dorinda's
+head and hand appeared, with the curtains drawn behind them.</p>
+
+<p>As the soldier bent to his service upon the hand of the old maid of
+honor, she exclaimed whimsically,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"What, Edelwald! Are our fortunes at such ebb that you are taking to a
+Romish cloister?"</p>
+
+<p>"No cloister for me. Your ladyship sees only a cover which I think of
+rendering to its owner again. He may not have a second capote in the
+world, being friar extraor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>dinary to D'Aulnay de Charnisay, who is
+notable for seizing other men's goods."</p>
+
+<p>"Edelwald, you bring ill news?"</p>
+
+<p>"There was none other to bring."</p>
+
+<p>"Is Charles La Tour then in such straits that we are to have no relief
+in this fortress?"</p>
+
+<p>"We can look for nothing, Lady Dorinda."</p>
+
+<p>"Thou seest now, Edelwald, how France requites his service. If he had
+listened to his father he might to-day be second to none in Acadia, with
+men and wealth in abundance."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet, your ladyship, we love our France!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you do put me out of patience! But the discomforts and perils of
+this siege have scarce left me any. We are walled together here like
+sheep."</p>
+
+<p>"It is trying, your ladyship, but if we succeed in keeping the butcher
+out we may do better presently."</p>
+
+<p>Marie sent her woman for writing tools,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> and was busy with them when
+Edelwald returned in his ordinary rich dark dress. She made him a place
+beside her on the settle, and submitted the paper to his eye. The women
+and children listened. They knew their situation was desperate.
+Whispering together they decided with their lady that she would do best
+to save her soldiers and sacrifice the fort.</p>
+
+<p>Edelwald read the terms she intended to demand, and then looked aside at
+the beautiful and tender woman who had borne the hardships of war. She
+should do anything she wished. It was worth while to surrender if
+surrendering decreased her care. All Acadia was nothing when weighed
+against her peace of mind. He felt his rage mounting against Charles La
+Tour for leaving her exposed in this frontier post, the instrument of
+her lord's ambition and political feud. In Edelwald's silent and
+unguessed warfare with his secret, he had this one small half hour's
+truce. Marie sat under his eyes in firelight, depending on the comfort
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> his presence. Rapture opened its sensitive flower and life
+culminated for him. Unconscious of it, she wrote down his suggestions,
+bending her head seriously to the task.</p>
+
+<p>Edelwald himself finally made a draft of the paper for D'Aulnay. The
+weary men had thrown themselves down to sleep, and heard no colloquy.
+But presently the cook was aroused from among them and bid to set out
+such a feast as he had never before made in Fort St. John.</p>
+
+<p>"Use of our best supplies," directed Marie. "To-morrow we may give up
+all we have remaining to the enemy. We will eat a great supper together
+this P&acirc;ques night."</p>
+
+<p>The cook took an assistant and labored well. Kettles and pans multiplied
+on coals raked out for their service. Marie had the men bring such doors
+as remained from the barracks and lay them from table to table, making
+one long board for her household; and this the women dressed in the best
+linen of the house. They set on plate which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> had been in La Tour's
+family for generations. Every accumulation of prosperity was brought out
+for this final use. The tunnel in the wall was stopped with blankets,
+and wax candles were lighted everywhere. Odors of festivity filled the
+children with eagerness. It was like the new year when there was always
+merry-making in the hall, yet it was also like a religious ceremony. The
+men rose from their pallets and set aside screens, and the news was
+spread when sentinels were changed.</p>
+
+<p>Marie called Z&eacute;lie up to her ruined apartment, and standing amidst stone
+and plaster, was dressed in her most magnificent gown and jewels. She
+appeared on the stairs in the royal blackness of velvet whitened by
+laces and sparkling with points of tinted fire. Edelwald led her to the
+head of the long board, and she directed her people to range themselves
+down its length in the order of their families.</p>
+
+<p>"My men," said Madame La Tour to each party in turn as they were
+relieved on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> the walls to sit down at the table below her, "we are
+holding a passover supper this P&acirc;ques night because it may be our last
+night in Fort St. John. You all understand how Sieur de la Tour hath
+fared. We are reduced to the last straits. Yet not to the last straits,
+my men, if we can keep you. With such followers your lord can make some
+stand elsewhere. D'Aulnay has proposed a surrender. I refused his terms,
+and have set down others, which will sacrifice the fort but save the
+garrison. Edelwald, our only officer, is against surrender, because he,
+like yourselves, would give the greater for the less, which I cannot
+allow."</p>
+
+<p>"My lady," spoke Glaud Burge, a sturdy grizzled man, rising to speak for
+the first squad, "we have been talking of this matter together, and we
+think Edelwald is right. The fort is hard beset, and it is true there
+are fewer of us than at first, but we may hold out somehow and keep the
+walls around us. We have no stomach to strike flag to D'Aulnay de
+Charnisay."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"My lady," spoke Jean le Prince, the youngest man in the fortress, who
+was appointed to speak for the second squad when their turn came to sit
+down at the table, "we also think Edelwald is right in counseling you
+not to give up Fort St. John. We say nothing of D'Aulnay's hanging
+Klussman, for Klussman deserved it. But we would rather be shot down man
+by man than go out by the grace of D'Aulnay."</p>
+
+<p>She answered both squads,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Do not argue against surrender, my men. We can look for no help. The
+fort must go in a few more days anyhow, and by capitulating we can make
+terms. My lord can build other forts, but where will he find other
+followers like you? You will march out not by the grace of D'Aulnay but
+with the honors of war. Now speak of it no more, and let us make this a
+festival."</p>
+
+<p>So they made it a festival. With guards coming and going constantly,
+every man took the pleasure of the hall while the walls were kept.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Such a night was never before celebrated in Fort St. John. A heavier
+race might have touched the sadness underlying such gayety; or have
+fathomed moonlight to that terrible burden of the elm-tree down the
+slope. But this French garrison lent themselves heartily to the hour,
+enjoying without past or future. Stories were told of the New World and
+of France, tales of persecuted Huguenots, legends which their fathers
+had handed down to them, and traditions picked up among the Indians.
+Edelwald took the dwarf's mandolin and stood up among them singing the
+songs they loved, the high and courageous songs, loving songs, and songs
+of faith. Lady Dorinda, having shut her curtain for the night, declined
+to take any part in this household festivity, though she contributed
+some unheard sighs and groans of annoyance during its progress. A
+phlegmatic woman, fond of her ease, could hardly keep her tranquillity,
+besieged by cannon in the daytime, and by chattering and laughter, the
+cracking of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> nuts and the thump of soldiers' feet half the night.</p>
+
+<p>But Shubenacadie came out of his corner and lifted his wings for battle.
+Le Rossignol first soothed him and then betrayed him into shoes of birch
+bark which she carried in her pocket for the purpose of making
+Shubenacadie dance. Shubenacadie began to dance in a wild untutored trot
+most laughable to see. He varied his paddling on the flags by sallies
+with bill and wings against the dear mistress who made him a spectacle;
+and finally at Marie's word he was relieved, and waddled back to his
+corner to eat and doze and mutter swan talk against such orgies in Fort
+St. John. The children had long fallen asleep with rapturous fatigue,
+when Marie stood up and made her people follow her in a prayer. The
+waxlights were then put out, screens divided the camp, and quiet
+followed.</p>
+
+<p>Of all nights in Le Rossignol's life this one seemed least likely to be
+chosen as her occasion for a flight. The walls were strictly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> guarded,
+and at midnight the moon spread its ghostly day over all visible earth.
+Besides, if the fortress was to be surrendered, there was immediate
+prospect of a voyage for all the household.</p>
+
+<p>The dwarf's world was near the ground, to which the thinking of the tall
+men and women around her scarcely stooped. But she seized on and weighed
+and tried their thoughts, arriving at shrewd issues. Nobody had asked
+her advice about the capitulation. Without asking anybody's advice she
+decided that the Hollandais Van Corlaer and the Jesuit priest Father
+Jogues would be wholesome checks upon D'Aulnay de Charnisay when her
+lady opened the fort to him. The weather must have prevented Van Corlaer
+from getting beyond the sound of cannon, and neither he nor the priest
+could indifferently leave the lady of St. John to her fate, and Madame
+Antonia would refuse to do it. Le Rossignol believed the party that had
+set out early in the week must be encamped not far away.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Edelwald mounted a bastion with the sentinels. That weird light of the
+moon which seems the faded and forgotten ghost of day, rested
+everywhere. The shadow of the tower fell inward, and also partly covered
+the front wall. This enchanted land of night cooled Edelwald. He threw
+his arms upward with a passionate gesture to which the soldiers had
+become accustomed in their experience of the young chevalier.</p>
+
+<p>"What is that?" exclaimed the man nearest him, for there was disturbance
+in the opposite bastion. Edelwald moved at once across the interval of
+wall and found the sentinels in that bastion divided between laughter
+and superstitious awe.</p>
+
+<p>"She's out again," said one.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is out?" demanded Edelwald.</p>
+
+<p>"The little swan-riding witch."</p>
+
+<p>"You have not let the dwarf scale this wall? If she could do that
+unobserved, my men, we are lax."</p>
+
+<p>"She is one who will neither be let nor hindered. We are scarce sure we
+even saw her. There was but the swoop of wings."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why, Renot, my lad," insisted Edelwald, "we could see her white swan
+now in this noon of moonlight, if she were abroad. Besides, D'Aulnay has
+sentinels stationed around this height. They will check her."</p>
+
+<p>"They will check the wind across Fundy Bay first," said the other man.</p>
+
+<p>"You cannot think Le Rossignol has risen in the air on her swan's back?
+That is too absurd," said Edelwald. "No one ever saw her play such
+pranks. And you could have winged the heavy bird as he rose."</p>
+
+<p>"I know she is out of Fort St. John at this minute," insisted Renot
+Babinet. "And how are you to wing a bird which gets out of sight before
+you know what has happened?"</p>
+
+<p>"I say it is no wonder we have trouble in this seigniory," growled the
+other man. "Our lady never could see a mongrel baby or a witch dwarf or
+a stray black gown anywhere, but she must have it into the fort and make
+it free of the best here."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And God forever bless her," said Edelwald, baring his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Amen," they both responded with force.</p>
+
+<p>The silent cry was mighty behind Edelwald's lips;&mdash;the cry which he
+intrusted not even to his human breath&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"My love&mdash;my love! My royal lady! God, thou who alone knowest my secret,
+make me a giant to hold it down!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII"></a>XVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SONG OF EDELWALD.</h3>
+
+
+<p>At daybreak a signal on the wall where it could be seen from D'Aulnay's
+camp brought an officer and his men to receive Madame La Tour's
+dispatches. Glaud Burge handed them, down at the end of a ramrod.</p>
+
+<p>"But see yonder," he said to Fran&ccedil;ois Bastarack his companion, as they
+stood and watched the messengers tramp away. He pointed to Klussman
+below the fort&mdash;poor Klussman whom the pearly vapors of morning could
+not conceal. "I could have done that myself in first heat, but I like
+not treating with a man who did it coolly."</p>
+
+<p>Parleying and demurring over the terms of surrender continued until
+noon. All that time ax, saw and hammer worked in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> D'Aulnay's camp as if
+he had suddenly taken to ship-building. But the pastimes of a victorious
+force are regarded with dull attention by the vanquished. Finally the
+papers were handed up bearing D'Aulnay's signature. They guaranteed to
+Madame La Tour the safety of her garrison, who were to march out with
+their arms and personal belongings, the household goods of her people;
+and La Tour's ship with provisions enough to stock it for a voyage. The
+money, merchandise, stores, jewels and ordnance fell to D'Aulnay with
+the fort.</p>
+
+<p>D'Aulnay marched directly on his conquest. His drums approached, and the
+garrison ran to throw into a heap such things as they and their families
+were to take away. Spotless weather and a dimpled bay adorned this lost
+seigniory. It was better than any dukedom in France to these first
+exiled Acadians. Pierre Doucett's widow and another bereaved woman knelt
+to cry once more over the trench by the powder-house. Her baby, hid in a
+case like a bol<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>ster, hung across her shoulder. Lady Dorinda's
+belongings, numbered among the goods of the household, were also placed
+near the gate. She sat within the hall, wrapped for her journey,
+composed and silent. For when the evil day actually overtook Lady
+Dorinda, she was too thorough a Briton to cringe. She met her second
+repulse from Acadia as she had met her first, when Claude La Tour found
+her his only consolation. In this violent uprooting of family life so
+long grown to one place, Le Rossignol was scarcely missed. Each one
+thought of the person dearest to himself and of that person's comfort.
+Marie noted her absence, but the dwarf never came to harm. She was
+certain to rejoin the household somewhere, and who could blame her for
+avoiding the capitulation if she found it possible? The little
+Nightingale could not endure pain. Edelwald drew the garrison up in line
+and the gates were opened.</p>
+
+<p>D'Aulnay entered the fort with his small army. He was splendidly
+dressed, and such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> pieces of armor as he wore dazzled the eye. As he
+returned the salute of Edelwald and the garrison, he paused and whitened
+with chagrin. Klussman had told him something of the weakness of the
+place, but he had not expected to find such a pitiful remnant of men.
+Twenty-three soldiers and an officer! These were the precious creatures
+who had cost him so much, and whom their lady was so anxious to save! He
+smiled at the disproportionate preparations made by his hammers and
+saws, and glanced back to see if the timbers were being carried in. They
+were, at the rear of his force, but behind them intruded Father Vincent
+de Paris wrapped in a blanket which one of the soldiers had provided for
+him. The scantiness of this good friar's apparel should have restrained
+him in camp. But he was such an apostle as stalks naked to duty if need
+be, and he felt it his present duty to keep the check of religion upon
+the implacable nature of D'Aulnay de Charnisay.</p>
+
+<p>D'Aulnay ordered the gates shut. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> would have shut out Father Vincent,
+but it could not be managed without great discourtesy, and there are
+limits to that with a churchman. The household and garrison ready to
+depart saw this strange action with dismay, and Marie stepped directly
+down from her hall to confront her enemy. D'Aulnay had seen her at Port
+Royal when he first came to Acadia. He remembered her motion in the
+dance, and approved of it. She was a beautiful woman, though her
+Huguenot gown and close cap now gave her a widowed look&mdash;becoming to a
+woman of exploits. But she was also the woman to whom he owed one defeat
+and much humiliation.</p>
+
+<p>He swept his plume at her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Permit me, Madame La Tour, to make my compliments to an amazon. My own
+taste are women who stay in the house at their prayers, but the Sieur de
+la Tour and I differ in many things."</p>
+
+<p>"Doubtless, my lord De Charnisay," responded Marie with the dignity
+which can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>not taunt, though she still believed the outcast child to be
+his. "But why have you closed on us the gates which we opened to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Madame, I have been deceived in the terms of capitulation."</p>
+
+<p>"My lord, the terms of capitulation were set down plainly and I hold
+them signed by your hand."</p>
+
+<p>"But a signature is nothing when gross advantage hath been taken of one
+of the parties to a treaty."</p>
+
+<p>The mistake she had made in trusting to the military honor of D'Aulnay
+de Charnisay swept through Marie. But she controlled her voice to
+inquire,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"What gross advantage can there be, my lord D'Aulnay&mdash;unless you are
+about to take a gross advantage of us? We leave you here ten thousand
+pounds of the money of England, our plate and jewels and furs, and our
+stores except a little food for a journey. We go out poor; yet if our
+treaty is kept we shall complain of no gross advantage."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Look at those men," said D'Aulnay, shaking his glove at her soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>"Those weary and faithful men," said Marie: "I see them."</p>
+
+<p>"You will see them hanged as traitors, madame. I have no time to
+parley," exclaimed D'Aulnay. "The terms of capitulation are not
+satisfactory to me. I do not feel bound by them. You may take your women
+and withdraw when you please, but these men I shall hang."</p>
+
+<p>While he spoke he lifted and shook his hand as if giving a signal, and
+the garrison was that instant seized, by his soldiers. Her women
+screamed. There was such a struggle in the fort as there had been upon
+the wall, except that she herself stood blank in mind, and pulseless.
+The actual and the unreal shimmered together. But there stood her
+garrison, from Edelwald to Jean le Prince, bound like criminals,
+regarding their captors with that baffled and half ashamed look of the
+surprised and overpowered. Above the mass of D'Aulnay's busy soldiery<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
+timber uprights were reared, and hammers and spikes set to work on the
+likeness of a scaffold. The preparations of the morning made the
+completion of this task swift and easy. D'Aulnay de Charnisay intended
+to hang her garrison when he set his name to the paper securing their
+lives. The ringing of hammers sounded far off to Marie.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand these things," she articulated. "I don't understand
+anything in the world!"</p>
+
+<p>D'Aulnay gave himself up to watching the process, in spite of Father
+Vincent de Paris, whose steady remonstrances he answered only by shrugs.
+In that age of religious slaughter the Capuchin could scarcely object to
+decreasing heretics, but he did object as a man and a priest to such
+barbarous treachery toward men with whom a compact had been made. The
+refined nurture of France was not recent in D'Aulnay's experience, but
+he came of a great and honorable house, and the friar's appeal was made
+to inherited instincts.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Good churchman," spoke out Jean le Prince, the lad, shaking his hair
+back from his face, "your capote and sandals lie there by the door of
+the tower, where Edelwald took thought to place them for you. But you
+who have the soldier's heart should wear the soldier's dress, and hide
+D'Aulnay de Charnisay under the cowl."</p>
+
+<p>"You men-at-arms," Glaud Burge exhorted the guards drawn up, on each
+side of him and his fellow-prisoners, "will you hang us up like dogs? If
+we must die we claim the death of soldiers. You have your pieces in your
+hands; shoot us. Do us such grace as we would do you in like extremity."</p>
+
+<p>The guards looked aside at each other and then at their master, shamed
+through their peasant blood by the outrage they were obliged to put upon
+a courageous garrison. But Edelwald said nothing. His eyes were upon
+Marie. He would not increase her anguish of self-reproach by the change
+of a muscle in his face. The garrison was trapped and at the mercy of a
+merciless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> enemy. His most passionate desire was to have her taken away
+that she might not witness the execution. Why was Sieur Charles La Tour
+sitting in the stockade at the head of Fundy Bay while she must endure
+the sight of this scaffold?</p>
+
+<p>Marie's women knelt around her crying. Her slow distracted gaze traveled
+from Glaud Burge to Jean le Prince, from Renot Babinet to Fran&ccedil;ois
+Bastarack, from Ambroise Tibedeaux along the line of stanch faces to
+Edelwald. His calm uplifted countenance&mdash;with the horrible platform of
+death growing behind it&mdash;looked, as it did when he happily met the sea
+wind or went singing through trackless wilderness. She broke from her
+trance and the ring of women, and ran before D'Aulnay de Charnisay.</p>
+
+<p>"My lord," said Marie&mdash;and she was so beautiful in her ivory pallor, so
+wonderful with fire moving from the deep places of her dilated black
+eyes that he felt satisfaction in attending to her&mdash;"it is useless to
+talk to a man like you."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Quite, madame," said D'Aulnay. "I never discuss affairs with a woman."</p>
+
+<p>"But you may discuss them with the king when he learns that you have
+hanged with other soldiers of a ransomed garrison a young officer of the
+house of De Born."</p>
+
+<p>D'Aulnay ran his eye along the line. The unrest of Edelwald at Marie's
+slightest parley with D'Aulnay reminded the keen governor of the face he
+had last night seen under the cowl.</p>
+
+<p>"The king will be obliged to me," he observed, "when one less heretical
+De Born cumbers his realm."</p>
+
+<p>"The only plea I make to you, my lord D'Aulnay, is that you hang me
+also. For I deserve it. My men had no faith in your military honor, and
+I had."</p>
+
+<p>"Madame, you remind me of a fact I desired to overlook. You are indeed a
+traitor deserving death. But of my clemency, and not because you are a
+woman, for you yourself have forgotten that in meddling with war, I will
+only parade you upon the scaf<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>fold as a reprieved criminal. Bring hither
+a cord," called D'Aulnay, "and noose it over this lady's head." Edelwald
+raged in a hopeless tearing at his bonds. The guards seized him, but he
+struggled with unconquered strength to reach and protect his lady.
+Father Vincent de Paris had taken his capote and sandals at Jean le
+Prince's hint, and entered the tower. He clothed himself behind one of
+the screens of the hall, and thought his absence short, but during that
+time Marie was put upon the finished scaffold. A skulking reluctant
+soldier of D'Aulnay's led her by a cord. She walked the long rough
+planks erect. Her garrison to a man looked down, as they did at
+funerals, and Edelwald sobbed in his fight against the guards, the tears
+starting from under his eyelids as he heard her foot-fall pass near him.
+Back and forth she trod, and D'Aulnay watched the spectacle. Her
+garrison felt her degradation as she must feel their death. The grizzled
+lip of Glaud Burge moved first to comfort her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"My lady, though our hands be tied, we make our military salute to you,"
+he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Fret not, my lady," said Renot Babinet.</p>
+
+<p>"Edelwald can turn all these mishaps into a song, my lady," declared
+Jean le Prince. Marie had that sensation of lost identity which has
+confused us all. In her walk she passed the loops dangling ready for her
+men. A bird, poised for one instant on the turret, uttered a sweet long
+trill. She could hear the river. It was incredible that all those
+unknown faces should be swarming below her; that the garrison was
+obliged to stand tied; that Lady Dorinda had braved the rabble of
+soldiery and come out to wait weeping at the scaffold end. Marie looked
+at the row of downcast faces. The bond between these faithful soldiers
+and herself was that instant sublime.</p>
+
+<p>"I crave pardon of you all," said Marie as she came back and the rustle
+of her gown again passed them, "for not knowing how to deal with the
+crafty of this world. My<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> foolishness has brought you to this scaffold."</p>
+
+<p>"No, my lady," said the men in full chorus.</p>
+
+<p>"We desire nothing better, my lady," said Edelwald, "since your walking
+there has blessed it."</p>
+
+<p>Father Vincent's voice from the tower door arrested the spectacle. His
+cowl was pushed back to his shoulders, baring the astonishment of his
+lean face.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the unworthiest action of your life, my son De Charnisay," he
+denounced, shaking his finger and striding down at the governor, who
+owned the check by a slight grimace.</p>
+
+<p>"It is enough," said D'Aulnay. "Let the scaffold now be cleared for the
+men."</p>
+
+<p>He submitted with impatience to a continued parley with the Capuchin.
+Father Vincent de Paris was angry. And constantly as D'Aulnay walked
+from him he zealously followed.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon sunlight sloped into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> walls, leaving a bank of shadow
+behind the timbered framework, which extended an etching of itself
+toward the esplanade. The lengthened figures of soldiers passed also in
+cloudy images along the broken ground, for a subaltern's first duty had
+been to set guards upon the walls. The new master of Fort St. John was
+now master of all southern and western Acadia; but he had heard nothing
+which secured him against La Tour's return with fresh troops.</p>
+
+<p>"My friends," said D'Aulnay, speaking to the garrison, "this good friar
+persuades in me more softness than becomes a faithful servant of the
+king. One of your number I will reprieve."</p>
+
+<p>"Then let it be Jean le Prince," said Edelwald, speaking for the first
+time to D'Aulnay de Charnisay. "The down has not yet grown on the lad's
+lip."</p>
+
+<p>"But I pardon him," continued the governor, "on condition that he hangs
+the rest of you."</p>
+
+<p>"Hang thyself!" cried the boy. "Thou<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> art the only man on earth I would
+choke with a rope."</p>
+
+<p>"Will no one be reprieved?"</p>
+
+<p>D'Aulnay's eye, traveled from scorn to scorn along the row.</p>
+
+<p>"It is but the pushing aside of a slab. They are all stubborn heretics,
+Father Vincent. We waste time. I should be inspecting the contents of
+this fort."</p>
+
+<p>The women and children were flattening themselves like terrified
+swallows against the gate; for through the hum of stirring soldiery
+penetrated to them from outside a hint of voices not unknown. The
+sentinels had watched a party approaching; but it was so small, and
+hampered, moreover, by a woman and some object like a tiny gilded sedan
+chair, that they did not notify the governor. One of the party was a
+Jesuit priest by his cassock, and another his donn&eacute;. These never came
+from La Tour. Another was a tall Hollandais; and two servants lightly
+carried the sedan up the slope. A few more people seemed to wait behind
+for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> the purpose of making a camp, and there were scarce a dozen of the
+entire company.</p>
+
+<p>Marie had borne without visible exhaustion the labors of this siege, the
+anguish of treachery and disappointment, her enemy's breach of faith and
+cruel parade of her. The garrison were ranged ready upon the plank; but
+she held herself in tense control, and waited beside Lady Dorinda, with
+her back toward the gate, while her friends outside parleyed with her
+enemy. D'Aulnay refused to admit any one until he had dealt with the
+garrison. The Jesuit was reported to him as Father Isaac Jogues, and the
+name had its effect, as it then had everywhere among people of the Roman
+faith. No soldier would be surprised at meeting a Jesuit priest anywhere
+in the New World. But D'Aulnay begged Father Jogues to excuse him while
+he finished a moment's duty, and he would then come out and escort his
+guest into the fortress.</p>
+
+<p>The urgent demand, however, of a missionary to whom even the king had
+shown<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> favor, was not to be denied. D'Aulnay had the gates set ajar; and
+pushing through their aperture came in Father Jogues with his donn&eacute; and
+two companions.</p>
+
+<p>The governor advanced in displeasure. He would have put out all but the
+priest, but the gates were slammed to prevent others from entering, and
+slammed against the chair in which the sentinels could see a red-headed
+dwarf. The weird melody of her screaming threats kept them dubious while
+they grinned. The gates being shut, Marie fled through ranks of
+men-at-arms to Antonia, clung to her and gave Father Jogues and Van
+Corlaer no time to stand aghast at the spectacle they saw. Crying and
+trembling, she put back the sternness of D'Aulnay de Charnisay, and the
+pity of Father Vincent de Paris, and pleaded with Father Jogues and the
+Hollandais for the lives of her garrison as if they had come with
+heavenly authority.</p>
+
+<p>"You see them with ropes around their necks, Monsieur Corlaer and
+Monsieur<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> Jogues, when here is the paper the governor signed,
+guaranteeing to me their safety. Edelwald is scarce half a year from
+France. Speak to the governor of Acadia; for you, Monsieur Corlaer, are
+a man of affairs, and this good missionary is a saint&mdash;you can move
+D'Aulnay de Charnisay to see it is not the custom, even in warfare with
+women, to trap and hang a garrison who has made honorable surrender."</p>
+
+<p>A man may resolve that he will not meddle with his neighbor's feuds, or
+involve a community dependent on him with any one's formidable enemy.
+Yet he will turn back from his course the moment an appeal is made for
+his help, and face that enemy as Van Corlaer faced the governor of
+Acadia, full of the fury roused by outrage. But what could he and Father
+Jogues and the persevering Capuchin say to the parchment which the
+governor now deigned to pass from hand to hand among them in reply?&mdash;the
+permission of Louis XIII. to his beloved D'Aulnay de Charnisay (whom God
+hold in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> His keeping) to take the Fort of St. John and deal with its
+rebellious garrison as seemed to him fit, for which destruction of
+rebels his sovereign would have him in loving remembrance.</p>
+
+<p>During all this delay Edelwald stood with his beautiful head erect above
+the noose, and his self-repressed gaze still following Marie. The wives
+of other soldiers were wailing for their husbands. But he must die
+without wife, without love. He saw Antonia holding her and weeping with
+her. His blameless passion filled him like a great prayer. That changing
+phantasm which we call the world might pass from before his men and him
+at the next breath; yet the brief last song of the last troubadour burst
+from his lips to comfort the lady of Fort St. John.</p>
+
+<p>There was in this jubilant cry a gush and grandeur of power outmastering
+force of numbers and brute cunning. It reached and compelled every
+spirit in the fortress. The men in line with him stood erect and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> lifted
+their firm jaws, and gazed forward with shining eyes. Those who had
+faded in the slightest degree from their natural flush of blood felt the
+strong throbs which paint a man's best on his face. They could not sing
+the glory of death in duty, the goodness of God who gave love and valor
+to man; but they could die with Edelwald.</p>
+
+<p>The new master of Fort St. John was jealous of such dying as the song
+ceased and he lifted his hand to signal his executioners. Father Jogues
+turned away praying with tremulous lips. The Capuchin strode toward the
+hall. But Van Corlaer and Lady Dorinda and Antonia held with the
+strength of all three that broken-hearted woman who struggled like a
+giantess with her arms stretched toward the scaffold.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>will</i> save them&mdash;I <i>will</i> save them! My brave Edelwald&mdash;all my brave
+soldiers shall not die!&mdash;Where are my soldiers, Antonia? It is dark. I
+cannot see them any more!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="POSTLUDE" id="POSTLUDE"></a>POSTLUDE.</h2>
+
+<h3>A TIDE-CREEK.</h3>
+
+
+<p>When ordinary days had settled flake on flake over this tragedy in
+Acadia until memory looked back at it as at the soft outlines of a
+snow-obliterated grave, Madame Van Corlaer stood one evening beside the
+Hudson River, and for half an hour breathed again the salt breath of
+Fundy Bay. Usually she was abed at that hour. But Mynheer had been
+expected all day on a sailing vessel from New Amsterdam, and she could
+not resist coming down once more through her garden to the wharf.</p>
+
+<p>Van Corlaer's house, the best stone mansion in Rensselaerswyck&mdash;that
+overflow of settlement around the stockade of Fort Orange&mdash;stood up the
+slope, and had its farm appended. That delight of Dutchmen, an ample
+garden, extended its central path<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> almost like an avenue to the river.
+Antonia need scarcely step off her own domain to meet her husband at the
+wharf. She had lingered down the garden descent; for sweet herbs were
+giving their souls to the summer night there; and not a cloud of a sail
+yet appeared on the river. Some fishing-boats lay at the wharf, but no
+men were idling around under the full moon. It was pleasanter to visit
+and smoke from door to door in the streets above.</p>
+
+<p>Antonia was not afraid of any savage ambush. Her husband kept the
+Iroquois on friendly terms with the settlement. The years through which
+she had borne her dignity of being Madame Van Corlaer constantly
+increased her respect for that colonial statesman. The savages in the
+Mohawk valley used the name Corlaer when they meant governor. Antonia
+felt sure that the Jesuit missionary, Father Isaac Jogues, need not have
+died a martyr's death if Van Corlaer had heard in time of his return to
+the Mohawks.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At the bottom of her garden she rested her hands upon a gate in the low
+stone wall. The mansion behind her was well ordered and prosperous. No
+drop of milk was spilled in Antonia's domain without her knowledge. She
+had noted, as she came down the path, how the cabbages were rounding
+their delicately green spheres. Antonia was a housewife for whom maids
+labored with zeal. She could manipulate so deftly the comfort-making
+things of life. Neither sunset nor moonrise quite banished the dreamy
+blue light on these rolling lands around the head-waters of the Hudson.
+Across her tranquil commonplace happiness blew suddenly that ocean
+breath from Fundy Bay; for the dwarf of Fort St. John, leading a white
+waddling bird, whose feathers even in that uncertain light showed soil,
+appeared from the screening masonry of the wall.</p>
+
+<p>She stood still and looked at Antonia; and Antonia inside the gate
+looked at her. That instant was a bubble full of revolving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> dyes. It
+brought a thousand pictures to Antonia's sight. Thus silently had that
+same dwarf with her swan appeared to a camp in the Acadian woods,
+announcing trouble at Fort St. John.</p>
+
+<p>Again Antonia lived through confusion which was like pillage of the
+fort. Again she sat in her husband's tent, holding Marie's dying head on
+her arm while grief worked its swift miracle in a woman formed to such
+fullness of beauty and strength. Again she saw two graves and a long
+trench made in the frontier graveyard for Marie and her officer Edelwald
+and her twenty-three soldiers, all in line with her child. Once more
+Antonia saw the household turn from that spot weeping aloud; and De
+Charnisay's ships already sailing away with the spoil of the fort to
+Penobscot; and his sentinels looking down from the walls of St. John.
+She saw her husband dividing his own party, and sending all the men he
+could spare to navigate La Tour's ship and carry the helpless women and
+children to the head<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> of Fundy Bay. All these things revolved before
+her, in that bubble of an instant, before her own voice broke it,
+saying,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Is this you, Le Rossignol?"</p>
+
+<p>"Shubenacadie and I," responded the dwarf, lilting up sweetly.</p>
+
+<p>"Where do you come from?" inquired Antonia, feeling the weirdness of her
+visitor as she had never felt it in the hall at Fort St. John.</p>
+
+<p>"Port Royal. I have come from Port Royal on purpose to speak with you."</p>
+
+<p>"With me?"</p>
+
+<p>"With you, Madame Antonia."</p>
+
+<p>"You must then go directly to the house and eat some supper," said
+Antonia, speaking her first thought but reserving her second: "Our
+people will take to the fields when they see the poor little creature by
+daylight, and as for the swan, it is worse than a drove of Mynheer's
+Indians."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not eating to-night, I am riding," answered Le Rossignol, bold in
+mystery while the moon made half uncertain the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> draggled state of
+Shubenacadie's feathers. She placed her hands on his back and pressed
+him downward, as if his plumage foamed up from an over-full
+packing-case. Shubenacadie waddled a step or two reluctantly, and
+squatted, spreading his wings and curving his head around to look at
+her. The dwarf sat upon him as upon a throne, stroking his neck with her
+right hand while she talked. She seemed a part of the river's whisper,
+or of that world of summer night insects which shrilled around.</p>
+
+<p>"I have come to tell you about the death of D'Aulnay de Charnisay," said
+this pigmy.</p>
+
+<p>"We have long had that news," responded Antonia, "and worse which
+followed it."</p>
+
+<p>Madame Van Corlaer despised Charles La Tour for repossessing himself of
+all he had lost and becoming the first power in Acadia by marrying
+D'Aulnay's widow.</p>
+
+<p>"No ear," declared the dwarf, "hath ever heard how D'Aulnay de Charnisay
+died."</p>
+
+<p>"He was stuck in a bog," said Antonia.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He was stuck in no bog," said Le Rossignol, "for I alone was beside him
+at the time. And I ride from Port Royal to tell thee the whole of it and
+free my mind, lest I be obliged to fling it in my new lady's face the
+next time she speaks of his happy memory. Widows who take second
+husbands have no sense about the first one."</p>
+
+<p>Antonia slightly coughed. It is not pleasant to have your class
+disapproved of, even by a dwarf. And she did still secretly respect her
+first husband's prophecy. Had it not been fulfilled on the friend she
+best loved, if not on the husband she took?</p>
+
+<p>"Mynheer Van Corlaer will soon be home from New Amsterdam, whither he
+made a voyage to confer with the governor," said Antonia. "Let me take
+you to the house, where we can talk at our ease."</p>
+
+<p>"I talk most at my ease on Shubenacadie's back," answered Le Rossignol,
+holding her swan's head and rubbing her cheek against his bill. "You
+will not keep me a moment at Fort Orange. I fell out of pa<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>tience with
+every place while we lived so long in poverty at that stockade at the
+head of Fundy Bay."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you live there long?" inquired Antonia.</p>
+
+<p>"Until D'Aulnay de Charnisay died out of my lord's way. What could my
+lord do for us, indeed, with nothing but a ship and scarce a dozen men?
+He left some to keep the stockade and took the rest to man his ship when
+he started to Newfoundland to send her forlorn old highness back to
+England. Her old highness hath had many a dower fee from us since that
+day."</p>
+
+<p>"Your lord hath mended his fortunes," remarked Antonia without approval.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we are now the greatest people in Acadia; we live in grand state
+at Port Royal. You would never know him for the careworn man he
+was&mdash;except once, indeed, when he came from viewing the ruins of Fort
+St. John. It is no longer maintained as a fortress. But I like not all
+these things. I rove more now than when Madame Marie lived."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Silence was kept a moment after Madame La Tour's name, between Antonia
+and her illusive visitor. The dwarf seemed clad in sumptuous garments. A
+cap of rich velvet could be discerned on her flaring hair instead of the
+gull-breast covering she once made for herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet I roved much out of the peasants' way at the stockade," she
+continued, sending the night sounds again into background. "Peasants who
+have no master over them become like swine. We had two goats, and I
+tended them, and sat ages upon ages on the bank of a tide-creek which
+runs up among the marshes at the head of Fundy Bay. Madame Antonia, you
+should see that tide-creek. It shone like wet sleek red carnelian when
+the water was out of it. I loved its basin; and the goats would go down
+to lick the salt. They had more sense than D'Aulnay de Charnisay, for
+they knew where to venture. I thought D'Aulnay de Charnisay was one of
+our goats by his bleat, until I looked down and saw him part sunk in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>
+quicksand at the bottom of the channel. The tide was already frothing in
+like yeast upon him. How gloriously the tide shoots up that tide-creek!
+It hisses. It comes like thousands of horses galloping one behind the
+other and tumbling over each other,&mdash;fierce and snorting spray, and
+climbing the banks, and still trampling down and flying over the ones
+who have galloped in first."</p>
+
+<p>"But what did D'Aulnay de Charnisay do?" inquired Antonia.</p>
+
+<p>"He stuck in the quicksand," responded Le Rossignol.</p>
+
+<p>"But did he not call for help?"</p>
+
+<p>"He did nothing else, indeed, until the tide's horses trampled him
+under."</p>
+
+<p>"But what did you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I sat down and watched him," said the dwarf.</p>
+
+<p>"How could you?" shuddered Antonia, feeling how little this tiny being's
+humanity was developed.</p>
+
+<p>"We had some chat," said Le Rossignol. "He promised me a seigniory if I
+would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> run and call some men with ropes. 'I heard a Swiss's wife say
+that you promised him a seigniory,' quoth I. 'And you had enough ropes
+then.' He pledged his word and took oath to make me rich if I would get
+him only a priest. 'You pledged your word to the lady of Fort St. John,'
+said I. The water kept rising and he kept stretching his neck above it,
+and crying and shouting, and I took his humor and cried and shouted with
+him, naming the glorious waves as they rode in from the sea:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Glaud Burge!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Jean le Prince!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Renot Babinet!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Ambroise Tibedeaux!'</p>
+
+<p>"And so on until Fran&ccedil;ois Bastarack the twenty-third roller flowed over
+his head, and Edelwald did not even know he was beneath."</p>
+
+<p>Antonia dropped her face upon her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"So that is the true story," said Le Rossignol. "He died a good salt
+death, and his men pulled him out before the next tide."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Presently Antonia looked up. Her eye was first caught by a coming sail
+on the river. It shone in the moonlight, moving slowly, for there was so
+little wind. Her husband must be there. She turned to say so to Le
+Rossignol; who was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Antonia opened the gate and stepped outside, looking in every direction
+for dwarf and swan. She had not even noticed a rustle, or the pat of
+Shubenacadie's feet upon sand. But Le Rossignol and her familiar had
+disappeared in the wide expanse of moonlight; whether deftly behind tree
+or rock, or over wall, or through air above, Antonia had no mind to find
+out.</p>
+
+<p>Even the approaching sail took weirdness. The ship was too distant for
+her to yet hear the hiss of water around its prow. But in that, Van
+Corlaer and the homely good happiness of common life was approaching.
+With the dwarf had disappeared that misty sweet sorrowful Acadian world.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LADY OF FORT ST. JOHN***</p>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Lady of Fort St. John, 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 Lady of Fort St. John
+
+
+Author: Mary Hartwell Catherwood
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 19, 2006  [eBook #18631]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LADY OF FORT ST. JOHN***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Stacy Brown, Robert Cicconetti, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/) from
+page images generously made available by Early Canadiana Online
+(http://www.canadiana.org/eco/index.html)
+
+
+
+Note: Images of the original pages are available through
+      Early Canadiana Online. See
+      http://www.canadiana.org/ECO/ItemRecord/09719?id=773b7c56888b994b
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LADY OF FORT ST. JOHN
+
+by
+
+MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD
+
+Author of "The Romance of Dollard"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+Boston and New York
+Houghton, Mifflin and Company
+The Riverside Press, Cambridge
+1891
+Copyright, 1891,
+By Mary Hartwell Catherwood.
+All rights reserved.
+The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
+Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
+
+
+
+
+
+This book I dedicate
+
+TO
+
+TWO ACADIANS OF THE PRESENT DAY;
+
+NATIVES OF NOVA SCOTIA WHO REPRESENT THE LEARNING
+AND GENTLE ATTAINMENTS OF THE
+NEW ORDER:
+
+DR. JOHN-GEORGE BOURINOT, C. M. G., ETC.
+CLERK OF THE CANADIAN HOUSE OF COMMONS, OF
+OTTAWA; AND
+
+DR. GEORGE STEWART,
+OF QUEBEC.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+How can we care for shadows and types, when we may go back through
+history and live again with people who actually lived?
+
+Sitting on the height which is now topped by a Martello tower, at St.
+John in the maritime province of New Brunswick, I saw--not the opposite
+city, not the lovely bay; but this tragedy of Marie de la Tour, the
+tragedy "which recalls" (says the Abbe Casgrain in his "Pelerinage au
+pays d'Evangeline") "the romances of Walter Scott, and forces one to own
+that reality is stranger than fiction."
+
+In "Papers relating to the rival chiefs, D'Aulnay and La Tour," of the
+Massachusetts Historical Collection, vol. vii., may be found these
+prefatory remarks:--
+
+"There is a romance of History as well as a History of Romance. To the
+former class belong many incidents in the early periods of New England
+and its adjacent colonies. The following papers ... refer to two
+persons, D'Aulnay and La Tour, ... individuals of respectable intellect
+and education, of noble families and large fortune. While the first was
+a zealous and efficient supporter of the Roman Church, the second was
+less so, from his frequent connection with others of a different faith.
+The scene of their ... prominent actions, their exhibition of various
+passions and talents, their conquests and defeats, their career and end,
+as exerting an influence on their associates as well as themselves, on
+other communities as well as their own--was laid in Nova Scotia. This
+phrase then comprised a territory vastly more extensive than it does
+now as a British Province. It embraced not only its present boundaries,
+which were long termed Acadia, but also about two thirds of the State of
+Maine."
+
+It startles the modern reader, in examining documents of the French
+archives relating to the colonies, to come upon a letter from Louis
+XIII. to his beloved D'Aulnay de Charnisay, thanking that governor of
+Acadia for his good service at Fort St. John. Thus was that great race
+who first trod down the wilderness on this continent continually and
+cruelly hampered by the man who sat on the throne in France.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER                                             PAGE
+
+ Prelude.   At the Head of the Bay of Fundy            1
+
+       I.   An Acadian Fortress                       13
+
+      II.   Le Rossignol                              21
+
+     III.   Father Isaac Jogues                       40
+
+      IV.   The Widow Antonia                         55
+
+       V.   Jonas Bronck's Hand                       64
+
+      VI.   The Mending                               73
+
+     VII.   A Frontier Graveyard                      82
+
+    VIII.   Van Corlaer                               96
+
+      IX.   The Turret                               107
+
+       X.   An Acadian Poet                          121
+
+      XI.   Marguerite                               133
+
+     XII.   D'Aulnay                                 143
+
+    XIII.   The Second Day                           155
+
+     XIV.   The Struggle between Powers              173
+
+      XV.   A Soldier                                191
+
+     XVI.   The Camp                                 211
+
+    XVII.   An Acadian Passover                      227
+
+   XVIII.   The Song of Edelwald                     252
+
+Postlude.   A Tide-Creek                             273
+
+
+
+
+LADY OF FORT ST. JOHN.
+
+
+
+
+PRELUDE.
+
+AT THE HEAD OF THE BAY OF FUNDY.
+
+
+The Atlantic rushed across a mile or two of misty beach, boring into all
+its channels in the neck of Acadia. Twilight and fog blurred the
+landscape, but the eye could trace a long swell of earth rising
+gradually from the bay, through marshes, to a summit with a small
+stockade on its southern slope. Sentinels pacing within the stockade
+felt the weird influence of that bald land. The guarded spot seemed an
+island in a sea of vapor and spring night was bringing darkness upon it.
+
+The stockade inclosed a single building of rough logs clumsily put
+together, and chinked with the hard red soil. An unhewn wall divided
+the house into two rooms, and in one room were gathered less than a
+dozen men-at-arms. Their officer lay in one of the cupboard-like bunks,
+with his hands clasped under his head. Some of the men were already
+asleep; others sat by the hearth, rubbing their weapons or spreading
+some garment to dry. A door in the partition opened, and the wife of one
+of the men came from the inner room.
+
+"Good-night, madame," she said.
+
+"Good-night, Zelie," answered a voice within.
+
+"If you have further need of me, you will call me, madame?"
+
+"Assuredly. Get to your rest. To-morrow we may have stormy weather for
+our voyage home."
+
+The woman closed the door, and the face of the one who had hearkened to
+her turned again to the fireplace. It was a room repeating the men's
+barrack in hewed floor, loophole windows, and rough joists.
+
+This frontier outpost on the ridge since called Beausejour was merely a
+convenient halting-place for one of the lords of Acadia. It stood on a
+detached spot of his large seigniory, which he had received with other
+portions of western Acadia in exchange for his grant of Cape Sable.
+
+Though in his early thirties, Charles de la Tour had seen long service
+in the New World. Seldom has a man from central France met the northern
+cold and sea air with so white a favor. His clean-shaven skin and the
+sunny undecided color of his hair were like a child's. Part of his armor
+had been unbuckled, and lay on the floor near him. He sat in a chair of
+twisted boughs, made of refuse from trees his men had dragged out of the
+neighboring forest for the building of the outpost. His wife sat on a
+pile of furs beside his knee. Her Huguenot cap lay on the shelf above
+the fire. She wore a black gown slashed in the sleeves with white, and a
+kerchief of lace pushed from her throat. Her black hair, which Zelie
+had braided, hung down in two ropes to the floor.
+
+"How soon, monsieur," she asked, "can you return to Fort St. John?"
+
+"With all speed possible, Marie. Soon, if we can work the miracle of
+moving a peace-loving man like Denys to action."
+
+"Nicholas Denys ought to take part with you."
+
+"Yet he will scarce do it."
+
+"The king-favored governor of Acadia will some time turn and push him as
+he now pushes you."
+
+"D'Aulnay hath me at sore straits," confessed La Tour, staring at the
+flame, "since he has cut off from me the help of the Bostonnais."
+
+"They were easily cut off," said Marie. "Monsieur, those Huguenots of
+the colonies were never loving friends of ours. Their policy hath been
+to weaken this province by helping the quarrel betwixt D'Aulnay and you.
+Now that D'Aulnay has strength at court, and has persuaded the king to
+declare you an outlaw, the Bostonnais think it wise to withdraw their
+hired soldiers from you. We have not offended the Bostonnais as allies;
+we have only gone down in the world."
+
+La Tour stirred uneasily.
+
+"I dread that D'Aulnay may profit by this hasty journey I make to
+northern Acadia, and again attack the fort in my absence."
+
+"He hath once found a woman there who could hold it," said Marie,
+checking a laugh.
+
+La Tour moved his palm over her cheek. Within his mind the province of
+Acadia lay spread from Penobscot River to the Island of Sable, and from
+the southern tip of the peninsula now called Nova Scotia nearly to the
+mouth of the St. Lawrence. This domain had been parceled in grants: the
+north to Nicholas Denys; the centre and west to D'Aulnay de Charnisay;
+and the south, with posts on the western coast, to Charles de la Tour.
+Being Protestant in faith, La Tour had no influence at the court of
+Louis XIII. His grant had been confirmed to him from his father. He had
+held it against treason to France; and his loyal service, at least, was
+regarded until D'Aulnay de Charnisay became his enemy. Even in that year
+of grace 1645, before Acadia was diked by home-making Norman peasants or
+watered by their parting tears, contending forces had begun to trample
+it. Two feudal barons fought each other on the soil of the New World.
+
+"All things failing me"--La Tour held out his wrists, and looked at them
+with a sharp smile.
+
+"Let D'Aulnay shake a warrant, monsieur. He must needs have you before
+he can carry you in chains to France."
+
+She seized La Tour's hands, with a swift impulse of atoning to them for
+the thought of such indignity, and kissed his wrists. He set his teeth
+on a trembling lip.
+
+"I should be a worthless, aimless vagrant without you, Marie. You are
+young, and I give you fatigue and heart-sickening peril instead of
+jewels and merry company."
+
+"The merriest company for us at present, monsieur, are the men of our
+honest garrison. If Edelwald, who came so lately, complains not of this
+New World life, I should endure it merrily enough. And you know I seldom
+now wear the jewels belonging to our house. Our chief jewel is buried in
+the ground."
+
+She thought of a short grave wrapped in fogs near Fort St. John; of fair
+curls and sweet childish limbs, and a mouth shouting to send echoes
+through the river gorge; of scamperings on the flags of the hall; and of
+the erect and princely carriage of that diminutive presence the men had
+called "my little lord."
+
+"But it is better for the boy that he died, Marie," murmured La Tour.
+"He has no part in these times. He might have survived us to see his
+inheritance stripped from him."
+
+They were silent until Marie said, "You have a long march before you
+to-morrow, monsieur."
+
+"Yes; we ought to throw ourselves into these mangers," said La Tour.
+
+One wall was lined with bunks like those in the outer room. In the lower
+row travelers' preparations were already made for sleeping.
+
+"I am yet of the mind, monsieur," observed Marie, "that you should have
+made this journey entirely by sea."
+
+"It would cost me too much in time to round Cape Sable twice. Nicholas
+Denys can furnish ship as well as men, if he be so minded. My lieutenant
+in arms next to Edelwald," said La Tour, smiling over her, "my equal
+partner in troubles, and my lady of Fort St. John will stand for my
+honor and prosperity until I return."
+
+Marie smiled back.
+
+"D'Aulnay has a fair wife, and her husband is rich, and favored by the
+king, and has got himself made governor of Acadia in your stead. She
+sits in her own hall at Port Royal: but poor Madame D'Aulnay! She has
+not thee!"
+
+At this La Tour laughed aloud. The ring of his voice, and the clang of
+his breastplate which fell over on the floor as he arose, woke an
+answering sound. It did not come from the outer room, where scarcely a
+voice stirred among the sleepy soldiery, but from the top row of bunks.
+Marie turned white at this child wail soothed by a woman's voice.
+
+"What have we here?" exclaimed La Tour.
+
+"Monsieur, it must be a baby!"
+
+"Who has broken into this post with a baby? There may be men concealed
+overhead."
+
+He grasped his pistols, but no men-at-arms appeared with the haggard
+woman who crept down from her hiding-place near the joists.
+
+"Are you some spy sent from D'Aulnay?" inquired La Tour.
+
+"Monsieur, how can you so accuse a poor outcast mother!" whispered
+Marie.
+
+The door in the partition was flung wide, and the young officer appeared
+with men at his back.
+
+"Have you found an ambush, Sieur Charles?"
+
+"We have here a listener, Edelwald," replied La Tour, "and there may be
+more in the loft above."
+
+Several men sprang up the bunks and moved some puncheons overhead. A
+light was raised under the dark roof canopy, but nothing rewarded its
+search. The much-bedraggled woman was young, with falling strands of
+silken hair, which she wound up with one hand while holding the baby.
+Marie took the poor wailer from her with a divine motion and carried it
+to the hearth.
+
+"Who brought you here?" demanded La Tour of the girl.
+
+She cowered before him, but answered nothing. Her presence seemed to him
+a sinister menace against even his obscurest holdings in Acadia. The
+stockade was easily entered, for La Tour was unable to maintain a
+garrison there. All that open country lay sodden with the breath of the
+sea. From whatever point she had approached, La Tour could scarcely
+believe her feet came tracking the moist red clay alone.
+
+"Will you give no account of yourself?"
+
+"You must answer monsieur," encouraged Marie, turning, from her cares
+with the child. It lay unwound from its misery on Marie's knees,
+watching the new ministering power with accepting eyes. Feminine and
+piteous as the girl was, her dense resistance to command could only vex
+a soldier.
+
+"Put her under guard," he said to his officer.
+
+"And Zelie must look to her comfort," added Marie.
+
+"Whoever she may be," declared La Tour, "she hath heard too much to go
+free of this place. She must be sent in the ship to Fort St. John, and
+guarded there."
+
+"What else could be done, indeed?" asked Marie. "The child would die of
+exposure here."
+
+The prisoner was taken to the other hearth; and the young officer, as he
+closed the door, half smiled to hear his lady murmur over the wretched
+little outcast, as she always murmured to ailing creatures,--
+
+"Let mother help you."
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+AN ACADIAN FORTRESS.
+
+
+At the mouth of the river St. John an island was lashed with drift, and
+tide-terraces alongshore recorded how furiously the sea had driven upon
+the land. There had been a two days' storm on the Bay of Fundy,
+subsiding to the clearest of cool spring evenings. An amber light lay on
+the visible world. The forest on the west was yet too bare of leaf buds
+to shut away sunset.
+
+A month later the headlands would be lined distinctly against a blue and
+quickening sky by freshened air and light and herbage. Two centuries and
+a half later, long streaks of electric light would ripple on that
+surface, and great ships stand at ease there, and ferry-boats rush back
+and forth. But in this closing dusk it reflected only the gray and
+yellow vaporous breath of April, and shaggy edges of a wilderness. The
+high shores sank their shadows farther and farther from the water's
+edge.
+
+Fort St. John was built upon a gradual ascent of rocks which rose to a
+small promontory on the south side of the river. There were four
+bastions guarded with cannon, the northeast bastion swelling above its
+fellows in a round turret topped with battlements. On this tower the
+flag of France hung down its staff against the evening sky, for there
+was scarcely any motion of the air. That coast lay silent like a
+pictured land, except a hint of falls above in the river. It was ebb
+tide; the current of the St. John set out toward the sea instead of
+rushing back on its own channel; and rocks swallowed at flood now broke
+the surface.
+
+A plume of smoke sprang from one bastion, followed by the rolling
+thunder of a cannon shot. From a small ship in the bay a gun replied to
+this salute. She stood, gradually clear of a headland, her sails
+hanging torn and one mast broken, and sentinel and cannoneer in the
+bastion saw that she was lowering a boat. They called to people in the
+fortress, and all voices caught the news:--
+
+"Madame has come at last!"
+
+Life stirred through the entire inclosure with a jar of closing doors
+and running feet.
+
+Though not a large fortification, St. John was well and compactly built
+of cemented stone. A row of hewed log-barracks stood against the
+southern wall, ample for all the troops La Tour had been able to muster
+in prosperous times. There was a stone vault for ammunition. A well, a
+mill and great stone oven, and a storehouse for beaver and other skins
+were between the barracks and the commandant's tower built massively
+into the northeast bastion. This structure gave La Tour the advantage of
+a high lookout, though it was much smaller than a castle he had formerly
+held at La Heve. The interior accommodated itself to such compactness,
+the lower floor having only one entrance, and windows looking into the
+area of the fort, while the second floor was lighted through deep
+loopholes.
+
+A drum began to beat, a tall fellow gave the word of command, and the
+garrison of Fort St. John drew up in line facing the gate. A sentinel
+unbarred and set wide both inner and outer leaves, and a cheer burst
+through the deep-throated gateway, and was thrown back from the opposite
+shore, from forest and river windings. Madame La Tour, with two women
+attendants, was seen coming up from the water's edge, while two men
+pushed off with the boat.
+
+She waved her hand in reply to the shout.
+
+The tall soldier went down to meet her, and paused, bareheaded, to make
+the salutation of a subaltern to his military superior. She responded
+with the same grave courtesy. But as he drew nearer she noticed him
+whitening through the dusk.
+
+"All has gone well, Klussman, at Fort St. John, since your lord left?"
+
+"Madame," he said with a stammer, "the storm made us anxious about you."
+
+"Have you seen D'Aulnay?"
+
+"No, madame."
+
+"You look haggard, Klussman."
+
+"If I look haggard, madame, it must come from seeing two women follow
+you, when I should see only one."
+
+He threw sharp glances behind her, as he took her hand to lead her up
+the steep path. Marie's attendant was carrying the baby, and she lifted
+it for him to look at, the hairs on her upper lip moved by a
+good-natured smile. Klussman's scowl darkened his mountain-born
+fairness.
+
+"I would rather, indeed, be bringing more men to the fort instead of
+more women," said his lady, as they mounted the slope. "But this one
+might have perished in the stockade where we found her, and your lord
+not only misliked her, as you seem to do, but he held her in suspicion.
+In a manner, therefore, she is our prisoner, though never went prisoner
+so helplessly with her captors."
+
+"Yes, any one might take such a creature," said Klussman.
+
+"Those are no fit words to speak, Klussman."
+
+He was unready with his apology, however, and tramped on without again
+looking behind. Madame La Tour glanced at her ship, which would have to
+wait for wind and tide to reach the usual mooring.
+
+"Did you tell me you had news?" she was reminded to ask him.
+
+"Madame, I have some news, but nothing serious."
+
+"If it be nothing serious, I will have a change of garments and my
+supper before I hear it. We have had a hard voyage."
+
+"Did my lord send any new orders?"
+
+"None, save to keep this poor girl about the fort; and that is easily
+obeyed, since we can scarce do otherwise with her."
+
+"I meant to ask in the first breath how he fared in the outset of his
+expedition."
+
+"With a lowering sky overhead, and wet red clay under-foot. But I
+thanked Heaven, while we were tossing with a broken mast, that he was
+at least on firm land and moving to his expectations."
+
+They entered the gateway, Madame La Tour's cheeks tingling richly from
+the effort of climbing. She saluted her garrison, and her garrison
+saluted her, each with a courteous pride in the other, born of the joint
+victory they had won over D'Aulnay de Charnisay when he attacked the
+fort. Not a man broke rank until she entered her hall. There was a
+tidiness about the inclosure peculiar to places inhabited by women. It
+added grace even to military appointments.
+
+"You miss the swan, madame," noted Klussman. "Le Rossignol is out
+again."
+
+"When did she go?"
+
+"The night after my lord and you sailed northward. She goes each time in
+the night, madame."
+
+"And she is still away?"
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+"And this is all you know of her?"
+
+"Yes, madame. She went, and has not yet come back."
+
+"But she always comes back safely. Though I fear," said Madame La Tour
+on the threshold, "the poor maid will some time fall into harm."
+
+He opened the door, and stood aside, saying under his breath, "I would
+call a creature like that a witch instead of a maid."
+
+"I will send for you, Klussman, when I have refreshed myself."
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+The other women filed past him, and entered behind his lady.
+
+The Swiss soldier folded his arms, staring hard at that crouching
+vagrant brought from Beausejour. She had a covering over her face, and
+she held it close, crowding on the heels in front of her as if she dared
+not meet his eye.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+LE ROSSIGNOL.
+
+
+A girlish woman was waiting for Marie within the hall, and the two
+exchanged kisses on the cheek with sedate and tender courtesy.
+
+"Welcome home, madame."
+
+"Home is more welcome to me because I find you in it, Antonia. Has
+anything unusual happened in the fortress while I have been setting
+monsieur on his way?"
+
+"This morning, about dawn, I heard a great tramping of soldiers in the
+hall. One of the women told me prisoners had been brought in."
+
+"Yes. The Swiss said he had news. And how has the Lady Dorinda fared?"
+
+"Well, indeed. She has described to me three times the gorgeous pageant
+of her marriage."
+
+They had reached the fireplace, and Marie laughed as she warmed her
+hands before a pile of melting logs.
+
+"Give our sea-tossed bundle and its mother a warm seat, Zelie," she said
+to her woman.
+
+The unknown girl was placed near the hearth corner, and constrained to
+take upon her knees an object which she held indifferently. Antonia's
+eyes rested on her, detecting her half-concealed face, with silent
+disapproval.
+
+"We found a child on this expedition."
+
+"It hath a stiffened look, like a papoose," observed Antonia. "Is it
+well in health?"
+
+"No; poor baby. Attend to the child," said Marie sternly to the mother;
+and she added, "Zelie must go directly with me to my chests before she
+waits on me, and bring down garments for it to this hearth."
+
+"Let me this time be your maid," said Antonia.
+
+"You may come with me and be my resolution, Antonia; for I have to set
+about the unlocking of boxes which hold some sacred clothes."
+
+"I never saw you lack courage, madame, since I have known you."
+
+"Therein have I deceived you then," said Marie, throwing her cloak on
+Zelie's arm, "for I am a most cowardly creature in my affections, Madame
+Bronck."
+
+They moved toward the stairs. Antonia was as perfect as a slim and
+blue-eyed stalk of flax. She wore the laced bodice and small cap of New
+Holland. Her exactly spoken French denoted all the neat appointments of
+her life. This Dutch gentlewoman had seen much of the world; having
+traveled from Fort Orange to New Amsterdam, from New Amsterdam to
+Boston, and from Boston with Madame La Tour to Fort St. John in Acadia.
+The three figures ascended in a line the narrow stairway which made a
+diagonal band from lower to upper corner of the remote hall end. Zelie
+walked last, carrying her lady's cloak. At the top a little light fell
+on them through a loophole.
+
+"Was Mynheer La Tour in good heart for his march?" inquired Antonia,
+turning from the waifs brought back to the expedition itself.
+
+"Stout-hearted enough; but the man to whom he goes is scarce to be
+counted on. We Protestant French are all held alien by Catholics of our
+blood. Edelwald will move Denys to take arms with us, if any one can. My
+lord depends much upon Edelwald. This instant," said Marie with a laugh,
+"I find the worst of all my discomforts these disordered garments."
+
+The stranger left by the fire gazed around the dim place, which was
+lighted only by high windows in front. The mighty hearth, inclosed by
+settles, was like a roseate side-chamber to the hall. Outside of this
+the stone-paved floor spread away unevenly. She turned her eyes from the
+arms of La Tour over the mantel to trace seamed and footworn flags, and
+noticed in the distant corner, at the bottom of the stairs, that they
+gave way to a trapdoor of timbers. This was fastened down with iron
+bars, and had a huge ring for its handle. Her eyes rested on it in fear,
+betwixt the separated settles.
+
+But it was easily lost sight of in the fire's warmth. She had been so
+chilled by salt air and spray as to crowd close to the flame and court
+scorching. Her white face kindled with heat. She threw back her
+mufflers, and the comfort of the child occurring to her, she looked at
+its small face through a tunnel of clothing. Its exceeding stillness
+awoke but one wish, which she dared not let escape in words.
+
+These stone walls readily echoed any sound. So scantily furnished was
+the great hall that it could not refrain from echoing. There were some
+chairs and tables not of colonial pattern, and a buffet holding silver
+tankards and china; but these seemed lost in space. Opposite the
+fireplace hung two portraits,--one of Charles La Tour's father, the
+other of a former maid of honor at the English court. The ceiling of
+wooden panels had been brought from La Tour's castle at Cape Sable; it
+answered the flicker of the fire with lines of faded gilding.
+
+The girl dropped her wrappings on the bench, and began to unroll the
+baby, as if curious about its state.
+
+"I believe it _is_ dead!" she whispered.
+
+But the clank of a long iron latch which fastened the outer door was
+enough to deflect her interest from the matter. She cast her cloak over
+the baby, and held it loosely on her knees, with its head to the fire.
+When the door shut with a crash, and some small object scurried across
+the stone floor, the girl looked out of her retreat with fear. Her
+eyelids and lips fell wider apart. She saw a big-headed brownie coming
+to the hearth, clad, with the exception of its cap, in the dun tints of
+autumn woods. This creature, scarcely more than two feet high, had a
+woman's face, of beak-like formation, projecting forward. She was as
+bright-eyed and light of foot as any bird. Moving within the inclosure
+of the settles, she hopped up with a singular power of vaulting, and
+seated herself, stretching toward the fire a pair of spotted seal
+moccasins. These were so small that the feet on which they were laced
+seemed an infant's, and sorted strangely with the mature keen face above
+them. Youth, age, and wise sylvan life were brought to a focus in that
+countenance.
+
+To hear such a creature talk was like being startled by spoken words
+from a bird.
+
+"I'm Le Rossignol," she piped out, when she had looked at the vagrant
+girl a few minutes, "and I can read your name on your face. It's
+Marguerite."
+
+The girl stared helplessly at this midget seer.
+
+"You're the same Marguerite that was left on the Island of Demons a
+hundred years ago. You may not know it, but you're the same. I know that
+downward look, and soft, crying way, and still tongue, and the very baby
+on your knees. You never bring any good, and words are wasted on you.
+Don't smile under your sly mouth, and think you are hiding anything
+from Le Rossignol."
+
+The girl crouched deeper into her clothes, until those unwinking eyes
+relieved her by turning with indifference toward the chimney.
+
+"I have no pity for any Marguerite," Le Rossignol added, and she tossed
+from her head the entire subject with a cap made of white gull breasts.
+A brush of red hair stood up in thousands of tendrils, exaggerating by
+its nimbus the size of her upper person. Never had dwarf a sweeter
+voice. If she had been compressed in order to produce melody, her tones
+were compensation, enough. She made lilting sounds while dangling her
+feet to the blaze, as if she thought in music.
+
+Le Rossignol was so positive a force that she seldom found herself
+overborne by the presence of large human beings. The only man in the
+fortress who saw her without superstition was Klussman. He inclined to
+complain of her antics, but not to find magic in her flights and
+returns. At that period deformity was the symbol of witchcraft. Blame
+fell upon this dwarf when toothache or rheumatic pains invaded the
+barracks, especially if the sufferer had spoken against her unseen
+excursions with her swan. Protected from childhood by the family of La
+Tour, she had grown an autocrat, and bent to nobody except her lady.
+
+"Where is my clavier?" exclaimed Le Rossignol. "I heard a tune in the
+woods which I must get out of my clavier,--a green tune, the color of
+quickening lichens; a dropping tune with sap in it; a tune like the wind
+across inland lakes."
+
+She ran along the settle, and thrust her head around its high back.
+
+Zelie, with white garments upon one arm, was setting solidly forth down
+the uncovered stairs, when the dwarf arrested her by a cry.
+
+"Go back, heavy-foot,--go back and fetch me my clavier."
+
+"Mademoiselle the nightingale has suddenly returned," muttered Zelie,
+ill pleased.
+
+"Am I not always here when my lady comes home? I demand the box wherein
+my instrument is kept."
+
+"What doth your instrument concern me? Madame has sent me to dress the
+baby."
+
+"Will you bring my clavier?"
+
+The dwarf's scream was like the weird high note of a wind-harp. It had
+its effect on Zelie. She turned back, though muttering against the
+overruling of her lady's commands by a creature like a bat, who could
+probably send other powers than a decent maid to bring claviers.
+
+"And where shall I find it?" she inquired aloud. "Here have I been in
+the fortress scarce half an hour, after all but shipwreck, and I must
+search out the belongings of people who do naught but idle."
+
+"Find it where you will. No one hath the key but myself. The box may
+stand in Madame Marie's apartment, or it may be in my own chamber. Such
+matters are blown out of my head by the wind along the coast. Make
+haste to fetch it so I can play when Madame Marie appears."
+
+Le Rossignol drew herself up the back of the settle, and perched at ease
+on the angle farthest from the fire. She beat her heels lightly against
+her throne, and hummed, with her face turned from the listless girl, who
+watched all her antics.
+
+Zelie brought the instrument case, unlocked it, and handed up a
+crook-necked mandolin and its small ivory plectrum to her tyrant. At
+once the hall was full of tinkling melody. The dwarf's threadlike
+fingers ran along the neck of the mandolin, and as she made the ivory
+disk quiver among its strings her head swayed in rapturous singing.
+
+Zelie forgot the baby. The garments intended for its use were spread
+upon the settle near the fire. She folded her arms, and wagged her head
+with Le Rossignol's. But while the dwarf kept an eye on the stairway,
+watching like a lover for the appearance of Madame La Tour, the outer
+door again clanked, and Klussman stepped into the hall. His big presence
+had instant effect on Le Rossignol. Her music tinkled louder and faster.
+The playing sprite, sitting half on air, gamboled and made droll faces
+to catch his eye. Her vanity and self-satisfaction, her pliant gesture
+and skillful wild music, made her appear some soulless little being from
+the woods who mocked at man's tense sternness.
+
+Klussman took little notice of any one in the hall, but waited by the
+closed door so relentless a sentinel that Zelie was reminded of her
+duty. She made haste to bring perfumed water in a basin, and turned the
+linen on the settle. She then took the child from its mother's limp
+hands, and exclaimed and muttered under her breath as she turned it on
+her knees.
+
+"What hast thou done to it since my lady left thee?" inquired Zelie
+sharply. But she got no answer from the girl.
+
+Unrewarded for her minstrelsy by a single look from the Swiss, Le
+Rossignol quit playing, and made a fist of the curved instrument to
+shake at him, and let herself down the back of the settle. She sat on
+the mandolin box in shadow, vaguely sulking, until Madame La Tour, fresh
+from her swift attiring, stood at the top of the stairway. That instant
+the half-hid mandolin burst into quavering melodies.
+
+"Thou art back again, Nightingale?" called the lady, descending.
+
+"Yes, Madame Marie."
+
+"Madame!" exclaimed Klussman, and as his voice escaped repression it
+rang through the hall. He advanced, but his lady lifted her finger to
+hold him back.
+
+"Presently, Klussman. The first matter in hand is to rebuke this
+runaway."
+
+Marie's firm and polished chin, the contour of her glowing mouth, and
+the kindling beauty of her eyes were forever fresh delights to Le
+Rossignol. The dwarf watched the shapely and majestic woman moving down
+the hall.
+
+"Madame," besought Zelie, looking anxiously around the end of the
+settle. But she also was obliged to wait. Marie extended a hand to the
+claws of Le Rossignol, who touched it with her beak.
+
+"Thou hast very greatly displeased me."
+
+"Yes, Madame Marie," said the culprit, with resignation.
+
+"How many times have you set all our people talking about these witch
+flights on the swan, and sudden returns after dark?"
+
+"I forget, Madame Marie."
+
+"In all seriousness thou shalt be well punished for this last," said the
+lady severely.
+
+"I was punished before the offense. Your absence punished me, Madame
+Marie."
+
+"A bit of adroit flattery will not turn aside discipline. The smallest
+vassal in the fort shall know that. A day in the turret, with a loaf of
+bread and a jug of water, may put thee in better liking to stay at
+home."
+
+"Yes, Madame Marie," assented the dwarf, with smiles.
+
+"And I may yet find it in my heart to have that swan's neck wrung."
+
+"Shubenacadie's neck! Oh, Madame Marie, wring mine! It would be the
+death of me if Shubenacadie died. Consider how long I have had him. And
+his looks, my lady! He is such a pretty bird."
+
+"We must mend that dangerous beauty of his. If these flights stop not, I
+will have his wings clipped."
+
+"His satin wings,--his glistening, polished wings," mourned Le
+Rossignol, "tipped with angel-finger feathers! Oh, Madame Marie, my
+heart's blood would run out of his quills!"
+
+"It is a serious breach in the discipline of this fortress for even you
+to disobey me constantly," said the lady, again severely, though she
+knew her lecture was wasted on the human brownie.
+
+Le Rossignol poked and worried the mandolin with antennae-like fingers,
+and made up a contrite face.
+
+The dimness of the hall had not covered Klussman's large pallor. The
+emotions of the Swiss passed over the outside of his countenance, in
+bulk like himself. His lady often compared him to a noble young bullock
+or other well-conditioned animal. There was in Klussman much
+wholesomeness and excuse for existence.
+
+"Now, Klussman," said Marie, meeting her lieutenant with the intentness
+of one used to sudden military emergencies. He trod straight to the
+fireplace, and pointed at the strange girl, who hid her face.
+
+"Madame, I have come in to speak of a thing you ought to know. Has that
+woman told you her name?"
+
+"No, she hath not. She hath kept a close tongue ever since we found her
+at the outpost."
+
+"She ever had a close tongue, madame, but she works her will in silence.
+It hath been no good will to me, and it will be no good will to the Fort
+of St. John."
+
+"Who is she, Klussman?"
+
+"I know not what name she bears now, but two years since she bore the
+name of Marguerite Klussman."
+
+"Surely she is not your sister?"
+
+"No, madame. She is only my wife." He lifted his lip, and his blue eyes
+stared at the muffled culprit.
+
+"We knew not you had a wife when you entered our service, Klussman."
+
+"Nor had I, madame. D'Aulnay de Charnisay had already taken her."
+
+"Then this woman does come from D'Aulnay de Charnisay?"
+
+"Yes, madame! And if you would have my advice, I say put her out of the
+gate this instant, and let her find shelter with our Indians above the
+falls."
+
+"Madame," exclaimed Zelie, lifting the half-nude infant, and thrusting
+it before her mistress with importunity which could wait no longer, "of
+your kindness look at this little creature. With all my chafing and
+sprinkling I cannot find any life in it. That girl hath let it die on
+her knees, and hath not made it known!"
+
+Klussman's glance rested on the body with that abashed hatred which a
+man condemns in himself when its object is helpless.
+
+"It is D'Aulnay's child," he muttered, as if stating abundant reason for
+its taking off.
+
+"I have brought an agent from D'Aulnay and D'Aulnay's child into our
+fortress," said Madame La Tour, speaking toward Marguerite's silent
+cover, under which the girl made no sign of being more than a hidden
+animal. Her stern face traveled from mother back to tiny body.
+
+There is nothing more touching than the emaciation of a baby. Its sunken
+temples and evident cheekbones, the line of its jaw, the piteous parted
+lips and thin neck were all reflected in Marie's eyes. Her entire figure
+softened, and passionate motherhood filled her. She took the still
+pliant shape from Zelie, held it in her hands, and finally pressed it
+against her bosom. No sign of mourning came from the woman called its
+mother.
+
+"This baby is no enemy of ours," trembled Madame La Tour. "I will not
+have it even reproached with being the child of our enemy. It is my
+little dead lad come again to my bosom. How soft are his dear limbs! And
+this child died for lack of loving while I went with empty arms! Have
+you suffered, dear? It is all done now. Mother will give you
+kisses,--kisses. Oh, baby,--baby!"
+
+Klussman turned away, and Zelie whimpered. But Le Rossignol thrust her
+head around the settle to see what manner of creature it was over which
+Madame Marie sobbed aloud.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+FATHER ISAAC JOGUES.
+
+
+The child abandoned by La Tour's enemy had been carried to the upper
+floor, and the woman sent with a soldier's wife to the barracks; yet
+Madame La Tour continued to walk the stone flags, feeling that small
+skeleton on her bosom, and the pressure of death on the air.
+
+Her Swiss lieutenant opened the door and uttered a call. Presently, with
+a clatter of hoofs on the pavement, and a mighty rasping of the
+half-tree which they dragged, in burst eight Sable Island ponies, shaggy
+fellows, smaller than mastiffs, yet with large heads. The settles were
+hastily cleared away for them, and they swept their load to the hearth.
+As soon as their chain was unhooked, these fairy horses shot out again,
+and their joyful neighing could be heard as they scampered around the
+fort to their stable. Two men rolled the log into place, set a table and
+three chairs, and one returned to the cook-house while the other spread
+the cloth.
+
+Claude La Tour and his wife, the maid of honor, seemed to palpitate in
+their frames, with the flickering expressions of firelight. The silent
+company of these two people was always enjoyed by Le Rossignol. She knew
+their disappointments, and liked to have them stir and sigh. In the
+daytime, the set courtier smile was sadder than a pine forest. But the
+chimney's huge throat drew in the hall's heavy influences, and when the
+log was fired not a corner escaped its glow. The man who laid the cloth
+lighted candles in a silver candelabrum and set it on the table, and
+carried a brand to waxlights which decorated the buffet.
+
+These cheerful preparations for her evening meal recalled Madame La Tour
+to the garrison's affairs. Her Swiss lieutenant yet stood by, his arms
+and chin settled sullenly on his breast; reluctant to go out and pass
+the barrack door where his wife was sheltered.
+
+"Are sentinels set for the night, Klussman?" inquired the lady.
+
+He stood erect, and answered, "Yes, madame."
+
+"I will not wait for my supper before I hear your news. Discharge it
+now. I understand the grief you bear, my friend. Your lord will not
+forget the faithfulness you show toward us."
+
+"Madame, if I may speak again, put that woman out of the gate. If she
+lingers around, I may do her some hurt when I have a loaded piece in my
+hand. She makes me less a man."
+
+"But, Klussman, the Sieur de la Tour, whose suspicions of her you have
+justified, strictly charged that we restrain her here until his return.
+She has seen and heard too much of our condition."
+
+"Our Indians would hold her safe enough, madame."
+
+"Yet she is a soft, feeble creature, and much exhausted. Could she bear
+their hard living?"
+
+"Madame, she will requite whoever shelters her with shame and trouble.
+If D'Aulnay has turned her forth, she would willingly buy back his favor
+by opening this fortress to him. If he has not turned her forth, she is
+here by his command. I have thought out all these things; and, madame, I
+shall say nothing more, if you prefer to risk yourself in her hands
+instead of risking her with the savages."
+
+The dwarf's mandolin trembled a mere whisper of sound. She leaned her
+large head against the settle and watched the Swiss denounce his wife.
+
+"You speak good military sense," said the lady, "yet there is monsieur's
+command. And I cannot bring myself to drive that exhausted creature to a
+cold bed in the woods. We must venture--we cannot do less--to let her
+rest a few days under guard. Now let me hear your news."
+
+"It was only this, madame. Word was brought in that two priests from
+Montreal were wandering above the falls and trying to cross the St. John
+in order to make their way to D'Aulnay's fort at Penobscot. So I set
+after them and brought them in, and they are now in the keep, waiting
+your pleasure."
+
+"Doubtless you did right," hesitated Madame La Tour. "Even priests may
+be working us harm, so hated are we of Papists. But have them out
+directly, Klussman. We must not be rigorous. Did they bear any papers?"
+
+"No, madame; and they said they had naught to do with D'Aulnay, but were
+on a mission to the Abenakis around Penobscot, and had lost their course
+and wandered here. One of them is that Father Isaac Jogues who was
+maimed by the Mohawks, when he carried papistry among them, and the
+other his donne--a name these priests give to any man who of his own
+free will goes with them to be servant of the mission."
+
+"Bring them out of the keep," said Madame La Tour.
+
+The Swiss walked with ringing foot toward the stairway, and dropped upon
+one knee to unbar the door in the pavement. He took a key from his
+pocket and turned it in the lock, and, as he lifted the heavy leaf of
+beams and crosspieces, his lady held over the darkness a candle, which
+she had taken from one of the buffet sconces. Out of the vault rose a
+chill breath from which the candle flame recoiled.
+
+"Monsieur," she spoke downward, "will you have the goodness to come up
+with your companion?"
+
+Her voice resounded in the hollow; and some movement occurred below as
+soft-spoken answer was made:--
+
+"We come, madame."
+
+A cassocked Jesuit appeared under the light, followed by a man wearing
+the ordinary dress of a French colonist. They ascended the stone steps,
+and Klussman replaced the door with a clank which echoed around the
+hall. Marie gave him the candle, and with clumsy touch he fitted it to
+the sconce while she led her prisoners to the fire. The Protestant was
+able to dwell with disapproval on the Jesuit's black gown, though it
+proved the hard service of a missionary priest; the face of Father
+Jogues none but a savage could resist.
+
+His downcast eyelids were like a woman's, and so was his delicate mouth.
+The cheeks, shading inward from their natural oval, testified to a life
+of hardship. His full and broad forehead, bordered by a fringe of hair
+left around his tonsure, must have overbalanced his lower face, had that
+not been covered by a short beard, parted on the upper lip and peaked at
+the end. His eyebrows were well marked, and the large-orbed eyes seemed
+so full of smiling meditation that Marie said to herself, "This lovely,
+woman-looking man hath the presence of an angel, and we have chilled him
+in our keep!"
+
+"Peace be with you, madame," spoke Father Jogues.
+
+"Monsieur, I crave your pardon for the cold greeting you have had in
+this fortress. We are people who live in perils, and we may be
+over-suspicious."
+
+"Madame, I have no complaint to bring against you."
+
+Both men were shivering, and she directed them to places on the settle.
+They sat where the vagrant girl had huddled. Father Jogues warmed his
+hands, and she noticed how abruptly serrated by missing or maimed
+fingers was their tapered shape. The man who had gone out to the
+cook-house returned with platters, and in passing the Swiss lieutenant
+gave him a hurried word, on which the Swiss left the hall. The two men
+made space for Father Jogues at their lady's board, and brought forward
+another table for his donne.
+
+"Good friends," said Marie, "this Huguenot fare is offered you heartily,
+and I hope you will as heartily take it, thereby excusing the hunger of
+a woman who has just come in from seafaring."
+
+"Madame," returned the priest, "we have scarcely seen civilized food
+since leaving Montreal, and we need no urging to enjoy this bounty. But,
+if you permit, I will sit here beside my brother Lalande."
+
+"As you please," she answered, glancing at the plain young Frenchman in
+colonial dress with suspicion that he was made the excuse for separating
+Romanist and Protestant.
+
+Father Jogues saw her glance and read her thought, and silently accused
+himself of cowardice for shrinking, in his maimed state, from her table
+with the instincts of a gentle-born man. He explained, resting his hand
+upon the chair which had been moved from the lady's to his servant's
+table:--
+
+"We have no wish to be honored above our desert, madame. We are only
+humble missionaries, and often while carrying the truth have been
+thankful for a meal of roots or berries in the woods."
+
+"Your humility hurts me, monsieur. On the Acadian borders we have bitter
+enmities, but the fort of La Tour shelters all faiths alike. We can
+hardly atone to so good a man for having thrust him into our keep."
+
+Father Jogues shook his head, and put aside this apology with a gesture.
+The queen of France had knelt and kissed his mutilated hands, and the
+courtiers of Louis had praised his martyrdom. But such ordeals of
+compliment were harder for him to endure than the teeth and knives of
+the Mohawks.
+
+As soon as Le Rossignol saw the platters appearing, she carried her
+mandolin to the lowest stair step and sat down to play: a quaint
+minstrel, holding an instrument almost as large as herself. That part of
+the household who lingered in the rooms above owned this accustomed
+signal and appeared on the stairs: Antonia Bronck, still disturbed by
+the small skeleton she had seen Zelie dressing for its grave; and an
+elderly woman of great bulk and majesty, with sallow hair and face, who
+wore, enlarged, one of the court gowns which her sovereign, the queen
+of England, had often praised. Le Rossignol followed these two ladies
+across the hall, alternately aping the girlish motion of Antonia and her
+elder's massive progress. She considered the Dutch gentlewoman a sweet
+interloper who might, on occasions, be pardoned; but Lady Dorinda was
+the natural antagonist of the dwarf in Fort St. John. Marie herself
+seated her mother-in-law, with the graceful deference of youth to middle
+age and of present power to decayed grandeur. Lady Dorinda was not easy
+to make comfortable. The New World was hardly her sphere. In earlier
+life, she had learned in the school of the royal Stuarts that some
+people are, by divine right, immeasurably better than others,--and
+experience had thrust her down among those unfortunate others.
+
+Seeing there were strange men in the hall, Antonia divined that the
+prisoners from the keep had been brought up to supper. But Lady Dorinda
+settled her chin upon her necklace, and sighed a large sigh that
+priests and rough men-at-arms should weary eyes once used to revel in
+court pageantry. She looked up at the portrait of her dead husband,
+which hung on the wall. He had been created the first knight of Acadia;
+and though this honor came from her king, and his son refused to inherit
+it after him, Lady Dorinda believed that only the misfortunes of the La
+Tours had prevented her being a colonial queen.
+
+"Our chaplain being absent in the service of Sieur de la Tour," spoke
+Marie, "will monsieur, in his own fashion, bless this meal?"
+
+Father Jogues spread the remnant of his hands, but Antonia did not hear
+a word he breathed. She was again in Fort Orange. The Iroquois stalked
+up hilly paths and swarmed around the plank huts of Dutch traders. With
+the savages walked this very priest, their patient drudge until some of
+them blasphemed, when he sternly and fearlessly denounced the sinners.
+
+Supper was scarcely begun when the Swiss lieutenant came again into the
+hall and saluted his lady.
+
+"What troubles us, Klussman?" she demanded.
+
+"There is a stranger outside."
+
+"What does he want?"
+
+"Madame, he asks to be admitted to Fort St. John."
+
+"Is he alone? Hath he a suspicious look?"
+
+"No, madame. He bears himself openly and like a man of consequence."
+
+"How many followers has he?"
+
+"A dozen, counting Indians. But all of them he sends back to camp with
+our Etchemins."
+
+"And well he may. We want no strange followers in the barracks. Have you
+questioned him? Whence does he come?"
+
+"From Fort Orange, in the New Netherlands, madame."
+
+"He is then Hollandais." Marie turned to Antonia Bronck, and was jarred
+by her blanching face.
+
+"What is it, Antonia? You have no enemy to follow you into Acadia?"
+
+The flaxen head was shaken for reply.
+
+"But what brings a man from Fort Orange here?"
+
+"There be nearly a hundred men in Fort Orange," whispered Antonia.
+
+"He says," announced the Swiss, "that he is cousin and agent of the
+seignior they call the patroon, and his name is Van Corlaer."
+
+"Do you know him, Antonia?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And is he kindly disposed to you?"
+
+"He was the friend of my husband, Jonas Bronck," trembled Antonia.
+
+"Admit him," said Marie to her lieutenant.
+
+"Alone, madame?"
+
+"With all his followers, if he wills it. And bring him as quickly as you
+can to this table."
+
+"We need Edelwald to manage these affairs," added the lady of the fort,
+as her subaltern went out. "The Swiss is faithful, but he has manners as
+rugged as his mountains."
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+THE WIDOW ANTONIA.
+
+
+Antonia sat in tense quiet, though whitened even across the lips where
+all the color of her face usually appeared; and a stalwart and courtly
+man presented himself in the hall. Some of the best blood of the Dutch
+Republic had evidently gone to his making. He had the vital and reliable
+presence of a master in affairs, and his clean-shaven face had firm
+mouth-corners. Marie rose up without pause to meet him. He was freshly
+and carefully dressed in clothes carried for this purpose across the
+wilderness, and gained favor even with Lady Dorinda, as a man bearing
+around him in the New World the atmosphere of Europe. He made his
+greeting in French, and explained that he was passing through Acadia on
+a journey to Montreal.
+
+"We stand much beholden to monsieur," said Marie with a quizzical face,
+"that he should travel so many hundred leagues out of his way to visit
+this poor fort. I have heard that the usual route to Montreal is that
+short and direct one up the lake of Champlain."
+
+Van Corlaer's smile rested openly on Antonia as he answered,--
+
+"Madame, a man's most direct route is the one that leads to his object."
+
+"Doubtless, monsieur. And you are very welcome to this fort. We have
+cause to love the New Netherlanders."
+
+Marie turned to deliver Antonia her guest, but Antonia stood without
+word or look for him. She seemed a scared Dutch child, bending all her
+strength and all her inherited quiet on maintaining self-control. He
+approached her, searching her face with his near-sighted large eyes.
+
+"Had Madame Bronck no expectation of seeing Arendt Van Corlaer in
+Acadia?"
+
+"No, mynheer," whispered Antonia.
+
+"But since I have come have you nothing to say to me?"
+
+"I hope I see you well, mynheer."
+
+"You might see me well," reproached Van Corlaer, "if you would look at
+me."
+
+She lifted her eyes and dropped them again.
+
+"This Acadian air has given you a wan color," he noted.
+
+"Did you leave Teunis and Marytje Harmentse well?" quavered Antonia,
+catching at any scrap. Van Corlaer stared, and answered that Teunis and
+Marytje were well, and would be grateful to her for inquiring.
+
+"For they also helped to hide this priest from the Mohawks," added
+Antonia without coherence. Marie could hear her heart laboring.
+
+"What priest?" inquired Van Corlaer, and as he looked around his eyes
+fell on the cassocked figure at the other table.
+
+"Monsieur Corlaer," spoke Father Jogues, "I was but waiting fit
+opportunity to recall myself and your blessed charity to your memory."
+
+Van Corlaer's baffled look changed to instant glad recognition.
+
+"That is Father Jogues!"
+
+He met the priest with both hands, and stood head and shoulders taller
+while they held each other like brothers.
+
+"I thought to find you in Montreal, Father Jogues, and not here, where
+in my dim fashion I could mistake you for the chaplain of the fort."
+
+"Monsieur Corlaer, I have not forgot one look of yours. I was a great
+trouble to you with, my wounds, and my hiding and fever. And what pains
+you took to put me on board the ship in the night! It would be better
+indeed to see me at Montreal than ever in such plight again at Fort
+Orange, Monsieur Corlaer!"
+
+"Glad would we be to have you at Fort Orange again, without pain to
+yourself, Father Jogues."
+
+"And how is my friend who so much enjoyed disputing about religion?"
+
+"Our dominie is well, and sent by my hand his hearty greeting to that
+very learned scholar Father Jogues. We heard you had come back from
+France."
+
+Van Corlaer dropped one hand on the donne's shoulder and leaned down to
+examine his smiling face.
+
+"It is my brother Lalande, the donne of this present mission," said the
+priest.
+
+"My young monsieur," said Van Corlaer, "keep Father Jogues out of the
+Mohawks' mouths henceforth. They have really no stomach for religion,
+though they will eat saints. It often puzzles a Dutchman to handle that
+Iroquois nation."
+
+"Our lives are not our own," said the young Frenchman.
+
+"We must bear the truth whether it be received or not," said Father
+Jogues.
+
+"Whatever errand brought you into Acadia," said Van Corlaer, turning
+back to the priest, "I am glad to find you here, for I shall now have
+your company back to Montreal."
+
+"Impossible, Monsieur Corlaer. For I have set out to plant a mission
+among the Abenakis. They asked for a missionary. Our guides deserted us,
+and we have wandered off our course and been obliged to throw away
+nearly all the furniture of our mission. But we now hope to make our way
+along the coast."
+
+"Father Jogues, the Abenakis are all gone northward. We passed through
+their towns on the Penobscot."
+
+"But they will come back?"
+
+"Some time, though no man at Penobscot would be able to say when."
+
+Father Jogues' perplexed brows drew together. Wanderings, hunger, and
+imprisonment he could bear serenely as incidents of his journey. But to
+have his flock scattered before he could reach it was real calamity.
+
+"We must make shift to follow them," he said.
+
+"How will you follow them without supplies, and without knowing where
+they may turn in the woods?"
+
+"I see we shall have to wait for them at Penobscot," said Father Jogues.
+
+"Take a heretic's advice instead. For I speak not as the enemy of your
+religion when I urge you to journey with me back to Montreal. You can
+make another and better start to establish this mission."
+
+The priest shook his head.
+
+"I do not see my way. But my way will be shown to me, or word will come
+sending me back."
+
+Some sign from the lady of the fortress recalled Van Corlaer to his duty
+as a guest. The supper grew cold while he parleyed. So he turned quickly
+to take the chair she had set for him, and saw that Antonia was gone.
+
+"Madame Bronck will return," said Marie, pitying his chagrin, and
+searching her own mind for Antonia's excuse. "We brought a half-starved
+baby home from our last expedition, and it lies dead upstairs. Women
+have soft hearts, monsieur: they cannot see such sights unmoved. She
+hath lost command of herself to-night."
+
+Van Corlaer's face lightened with tenderness. Bachelor though he was, he
+had held infants in his hands for baptism, and not only the children of
+Fort Orange but dark broods of the Mohawks often rubbed about his knees.
+
+"You brought your men into the fort, Monsieur Corlaer?"
+
+"No, madame. I sent them back to camp by the falls. We are well
+provisioned. And there was no need for them to come within the walls."
+
+"If you lack anything I hope you will command it of us."
+
+"Madame, you are already too bounteous; and we lack nothing."
+
+"The Sieur de la Tour being away, the conduct and honor of this fort are
+left in my hands. And he has himself ever been friendly to the people of
+the colonies."
+
+"That is well known, madame."
+
+Soft waxlight, the ample shine of the fire, trained service, and housing
+from the chill spring night, abundant food and flask, all failed to
+bring up the spirits of Van Corlaer. Antonia did not return to the
+table. The servingmen went and came betwixt hall and cook-house. Every
+time one of them opened the door, the world of darkness peered in, and
+over the night quiet of the fort could be heard the tidal up-rush of the
+river.
+
+"The men can now bring our ship to anchor," observed Marie. Father
+Jogues and his donne, eating with the habitual self-denial of men who
+must inure themselves to hunger, still spoke with Van Corlaer about
+their mission. But during all his talk he furtively watched the
+stairway.
+
+The dwarf sat on her accustomed stool beside her lady, picking up bits
+from a well heaped silver platter on her knees; and she watched Van
+Corlaer's discomfiture when Lady Dorinda took him in hand and Antonia
+yet remained away.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+JONAS BRONCK'S HAND.
+
+
+The guests had deserted the hall fire and a sentinel was set for the
+night before Madame La Tour knocked at Antonia's door.
+
+Antonia was slow to open it. But she finally let Marie into her chamber,
+where the fire had died on the hearth, and retired again behind the
+screen to continue dabbing her face with water. The candle was also
+behind the screen, and it threw out Antonia's shadow, and showed her
+disordered flax-white hair flung free of its cap and falling to its
+length. Marie sat down in the little world of shadow outside the screen.
+The joists directly above Antonia flickered with the flickering light.
+One window high in the wall showed the misty darkness which lay upon
+Fundy Bay. The room was chilly.
+
+"Monsieur Corlaer is gone, Antonia," said Marie.
+
+Antonia's shadow leaped, magnifying the young Dutchwoman's start.
+
+"Madame, you have not sent him off on his journey in the night?"
+
+"I sent him not. I begged him to remain. But he had such cold welcome
+from his own countrywoman that he chose the woods rather than the
+hospitality of Fort St. John."
+
+Much as Antonia stirred and clinked flasks, her sobs grew audible behind
+the screen. She ran out with her arms extended and threw herself on the
+floor at Marie's knees, transformed by anguish. Marie in full compassion
+drew the girlish creature to her breast, repenting herself while Antonia
+wept and shook.
+
+"I was cruel to say Monsieur Corlaer is gone. He has only left the
+fortress to camp with his men at the falls. He will be here two more
+days, and to-morrow you must urge him to stay our guest."
+
+"Madame, I dare not see him at all!"
+
+"But why should you not see Monsieur Corlaer?"
+
+Antonia settled to the floor and rested her head and arms on her
+friend's lap.
+
+"For you love him."
+
+"O madame! I did not show that I loved him? No. It would be horrible for
+me to love him."
+
+"What has he done? And it is plain he has come to court you."
+
+"He has long courted me, madame."
+
+"And you met him as a stranger and fled from him as a wolf!--this
+Hollandais gentleman who hath saved our French people--even
+priests--from the savages!"
+
+"All New Amsterdam and Fort Orange hold him in esteem," said Antonia,
+betraying pride. "I have heard he can do more with the Iroquois tribes
+than any other man of the New World." She uselessly wiped her eyes. She
+was weak from long crying.
+
+"Then why do you run from him?"
+
+"Because he hath too witching a power on me, madame. I cannot spin or
+knit or sew when he is by; I must needs watch every motion of his if he
+once fastens my eyes."
+
+"I have noticed he draws one's heart," laughed Marie.
+
+"He does. It is like witchcraft. He sets me afloat so that I lose my
+feet and have scarce any will of my own. I never was so disturbed by my
+husband Jonas Bronck," complained Antonia.
+
+"Did you love your husband?" inquired Marie.
+
+"We always love our husbands, madame. Mynheer Bronck was very good to
+me."
+
+"You have never told me much of Monsieur Bronck, Antonia."
+
+"I don't like to speak of him now, madame. It makes me shiver."
+
+"You are not afraid of the dead?"
+
+"I was never afraid of him living. I regarded him as a father."
+
+"But one's husband is not to be regarded as a father."
+
+"He was old enough to be my father, madame. I was not more than sixteen,
+besides being an orphan, and Mynheer Bronck was above fifty, yet he
+married me, and became the best husband in the colony. He was far from
+putting me in such states as Mynheer Van Corlaer does."
+
+"The difference is that you love Monsieur Corlaer."
+
+"Do not speak that word, madame."
+
+"Would you have him marry another woman?"
+
+"Yes," spoke Antonia in a stoical voice, "if that pleased him best. I
+should then be driven to no more voyages. He followed me to New
+Amsterdam; and I ventured on a long journey to Boston, where I had
+kinspeople, as you know. But there I must have broken down, madame, if I
+had not met you. It was fortunate for me that the English captain
+brought you out of your course. For mynheer set out to follow me there.
+And now he has come across the wilderness even to this fort!"
+
+"Confess," said Marie, giving her a little shake, "how pleased you are
+with such a determined lover!"
+
+But instead of doing this, Antonia burst again into frenzied sobbing and
+hugged her comforter.
+
+"O madame, you are the only person I dare love in the world!"
+
+Marie smoothed the young widow's damp hair with the quieting stroke
+which calms children.
+
+"Let mother help thee," she said; and neither of them remembered that
+she was scarcely as old as Antonia. In love and motherhood, in military
+peril, and contact with riper civilizations, to say nothing of inherited
+experience, the lady of St. John had lived far beyond Antonia Bronck.
+
+"Your husband made you take an oath not to wed again,--is it so?"
+
+"No, madame, he never did."
+
+"Yet you told me he left you his money?"
+
+"Yes. He was very good to me. For I had neither father nor mother."
+
+"And he bound you by no promise?
+
+"None at all, madame."
+
+"What, then, can you find to break your heart upon in the suit of
+Monsieur Corlaer? You are free. Even as my lord--if I were dead--would
+be free to marry any one; not excepting D'Aulnay's widow."
+
+Marie smiled at that improbable union.
+
+"No, I do not feel free." Antonia shivered close to her friend's knees.
+"Madame, I cannot tell you. But I will show you the token."
+
+"Show me the token, therefore. And a sound token it must be, to hold you
+wedded to a dead man whom in life you regarded as a father."
+
+Antonia rose upon her feet, but stood dreading the task before her.
+
+"I have to look at it once every month," she explained, "and I have
+looked at it once this month already."
+
+The dim chill room with its one eye fixed on darkness was an eddy in
+which a single human mind resisted that century's current of
+superstition. Marie sat ready to judge and destroy whatever spell the
+cunning old Hollandais had left on a girl to whom he represented law and
+family.
+
+Antonia beckoned her behind the screen, and took from some ready
+hiding-place a small oak box studded with nails, which Marie had never
+before seen. How alien to the simple and open life of the Dutch widow
+was this secret coffer! Her face changed while she looked at it; grieved
+girlhood passed into sunken age. Her lips turned wax-white, and drooped
+at the corners. She set the box on a dressing-table beside the candle,
+unlocked it and turned back the lid. Marie was repelled by a faint odor
+aside from its breath of dead spices.
+
+Antonia unfolded a linen cloth and showed a pallid human hand, its stump
+concealed by a napkin. It was cunningly preserved, and shrunken only by
+the countless lines which denote approaching age. It was the right hand
+of a man who must have had imagination. The fingers were sensitively
+slim, with shapely blue nails, and without knobs or swollen joints. It
+was a crafty, firm-possessing hand, ready to spring from its nest to
+seize and eternally hold you.
+
+The lady of St. John had seen human fragments scattered by cannon, and
+sword and bullet had done their work before her sight. But a faintness
+beyond the touch of peril made her grasp the table and turn from that
+ghastly hand.
+
+"It cannot be, Antonia"--
+
+"Yes, it is Mynheer Bronck's hand," whispered Antonia, subduing herself
+to take admonition from the grim digits.
+
+"Lock it up; and come directly away from it. Come out of this room. You
+have opened a grave here."
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+The Mending.
+
+
+But Antonia delayed to set in order her hair and cap and all her
+methodical habits of life. When Jonas Bronck's hand was snugly locked in
+its case and no longer obliged her to look at it, she took a pensive
+pleasure in the relic, bred of usage to its company. She came out of her
+chamber erect and calm. Marie was at the stairs speaking to the soldier
+stationed in the hall below. He had just piled up his fire, and its
+homely splendor sent back to remoteness all human dreads. He hurried up
+the stairway to his lady.
+
+"Go knock at the door of the priest, Father Jogues, and demand his
+cassock," she said.
+
+The man halted, and asked,--
+
+"What shall I do with it?"
+
+"Bring it hither to me."
+
+"But if he refuses to have it brought?"
+
+"The good man will not refuse. Yet if he asks why," said Madame La Tour
+smiling, "tell him it is the custom of the house to take away at night
+the cassock of any priest who stays here."
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+The soldier kept to himself his opinion of meddling with black gowns,
+and after some parleying at the door of Father Jogues' apartment,
+received the garment and brought it to his lady.
+
+"We will take our needles, and sit by the hall fire," said Marie to
+Antonia. "Did you note the raggedness of Father Jogues' cassock? I am an
+enemy to papists, especially D'Aulnay de Charnisay; but who can harden
+her heart against a saint because he patters prayers on a rosary? Thou
+and I will mend his black gown. I cannot see even a transient member of
+my household uncomfortable."
+
+The soldier put two waxlights on the table by the hearth, and withdrew
+to the stairway. He was there to guard as prisoner the priest for whom
+his lady set herself to work. She drew her chair to Antonia's and they
+spread the cassock between them. It had been neatly beaten and picked
+clear of burrs, but the rents in it were astonishing. Even within
+sumptuous fireshine the black cloth taxed sight; and Marie paused
+sometimes to curtain her eyes with her hand, but Antonia worked on with
+Dutch steadiness. The touch of a needle within a woman's fingers cools
+all her fevers. She stitches herself fast to the race. There is safety
+and saneness in needlework.
+
+"This spot wants a patch," said Antonia.
+
+"Weave it together with stitches," said Marie. "Daughter of presumption!
+would you add to the gown of a Roman priest?"
+
+"Priest or dominie," commented Antonia, biting a fresh thread, "he would
+be none the worse for a stout piece of cloth to his garment."
+
+"But we have naught to match with it. I would like to set in a little
+heresy cut from one of the Sieur de la Tour's good Huguenot doublets."
+
+The girlish faces, bent opposite, grew placid with domestic interest.
+Marie's cheeks ripened by the fire, but the whiter Hollandaise warmed
+only through the lips. This hall's glow made more endurable the image of
+Jonas Bronck's hand. "When was it cut off, Antonia?" murmured Marie,
+stopping to thread a needle.
+
+The perceptible blight again fell over Antonia's face as she replied,--
+
+"After he had been one day dead."
+
+"Then he did not grimly lop it off himself?"
+
+"Oh, no," whispered Antonia with deep sighing. "Mynheer the doctor did
+that, on his oath to my husband. He was the most learned cunning man in
+medicine that ever came to our colony. He kept the hand a month in his
+furnace before it was ready to send to me."
+
+"Did Monsieur Bronck, before he died, tell you his intention to do
+this?" pressed Marie, feeling less interest in the Dutch embalmer's
+method than in the sinuous motive of a man who could leave such a
+bequest.
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+"I do marvel at such an act!" murmured the lady of St. John, challenging
+Jonas Bronck's loyal widow to take up his instant defense.
+
+"Madame, he was obliged to do it by a dream he had."
+
+"He dreamed that his hand would keep off intruders?" smiled Marie.
+
+"Yes," responded Antonia innocently, "and all manner of evil fortune. I
+have to look at it once a month as long as I live, and carry it with me
+everywhere. If it should be lost or destroyed trouble and ruin would
+fall not only on me but on every one who loved me."
+
+The woman of larger knowledge did not argue against this credulity.
+Antonia was of the provinces, bred out of their darkest hours of
+superstition and savage danger. But it was easy to see how Jonas
+Bronck's hand must hold his widow from second marriage. What lover could
+she ask to share her monthly gaze upon it, and thus half realize the
+continued fleshly existence of Jonas Bronck? The rite was in its nature
+a secret one. Shame, gratitude, the former usages of her life, and a
+thousand other influences, were yet in the grip of that rigid hand. And
+if she lost or destroyed it, nameless and weird calamity, foreseen by a
+dying man, must light upon the very lover who undertook to separate her
+from her ghastly company.
+
+"The crafty old Hollandais!" thought Marie. "He was cunning in his
+knowledge of Antonia. But he hath made up this fist at a younger
+Hollandais who will scarce stop for dead hands."
+
+The Dutch gentlewoman snuffed both waxlights. Her lips were drawn in
+grieved lines. Marie glanced up at one of the portraits on the wall, and
+said:--
+
+"The agonies which men inflict on the beings they love best, must work
+perpetual astonishment in heaven. Look at the Sieur Claude de la Tour, a
+noble of France who could stoop to become the first English knight of
+Acadia, forcing his own son to take up arms against him."
+
+The elder La Tour frowned and flickered in his frame.
+
+"Yet he had a gracious presence," said Antonia. "Lady Dorinda says he
+was the handsomest man at the English court."
+
+"I doubt it not; the La Tours are a beautiful race. And it was that very
+graciousness which made him a weak prisoner in the hands of the English.
+They married him to one of the queen's ladies, and granted him all
+Acadia, which he had only to demand from his son, if he would turn it
+over to England and declare himself an English subject I can yet see his
+ships as they rounded Cape Sable; and the face of my lord when he read
+his father's summons to surrender the claims of France. We were to be
+loaded with honors. France had driven us out on account of our faith;
+England opened her arms. We should be enriched, and live forever a happy
+and united family, sole lords of Acadia."
+
+Marie broke off another thread.
+
+"The king of France, who has outlawed my husband and delivered him to
+his enemy, should have seen him then, Antonia. Sieur Claude La Tour put
+both arms around him and pleaded. It was, 'My little Charles, do not
+disgrace me by refusal;' and 'My father, I love you, but here I
+represent the rights of France.' 'The king of France is no friend of
+ours,' says Sieur Claude. 'Whether he rewards or punishes me,' says
+Charles, 'this province belongs to my country, and I will hold it while
+I have life to defend it.' And he was obliged to turn his cannon against
+His own father; and the ships were disabled and driven off."
+
+"Was the old mynheer killed?"
+
+"His pride was killed. He could never hold up his head in England again,
+and he had betrayed France. My lord built him a house outside our fort,
+yet neither could he endure Acadia. He died in England. You know I
+brought his widow thence with me last year. She should have her dower of
+lands here, if we can hold them against D'Aulnay de Charnisay."
+
+The lady of the fort shook out Father Jogues' cassock and rose from the
+mending. Antonia picked up their tools and flicked bits of thread from
+her skirt.
+
+"I am glad it is done, madame, for you look heavy-eyed, as any one
+ought, after tossing two nights on Fundy Bay and sewing on a black gown
+until midnight cock-crow of the third."
+
+"I am not now fit to face a siege," owned Marie. "We must get to bed.
+Though first I crave one more look at the dead baby Zelie hath in
+charge. There is a soft weakness in me which mothers even the outcast
+young of my enemy."
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+A FRONTIER GRAVEYARD.
+
+
+The next morning was gray and transparent: a hemisphere of mist filled
+with light; a world of vapor palpitating with some indwelling spirit.
+That lonesome lap of country opposite Fort St. John could scarcely be
+defined. Scraps of its dawning spring color showed through the mobile
+winding and ascending veil. Trees rose out of the lowlands between the
+fort and the falls.
+
+Van Corlaer was in the gorge, watching that miracle worked every day in
+St. John River. The tide was racing inland. The steep rapids within
+their throat of rock were clear of fog. Foam is the flower of water; and
+white petal after white petal was swept under by the driving waves. As
+the tide rose the tumult of falls ceased. The channel filled. All rocks
+were drowned. For a brief time another ship could have passed up that
+natural lock, as La Tour's ship had passed on the cream-smooth current
+at flood tide the day before.
+
+Van Corlaer could not see its ragged sails around the breast of rock,
+but the hammering of its repairers had been in his ears since dawn; and
+through the subsiding wash of water he now heard men's voices.
+
+The Indians whose village he had joined were that morning breaking up
+camp to begin their spring pilgrimage down the coast along various
+fishing haunts; for agriculture was a thing unknown to these savages.
+They were a seafaring people in canoes. At that time even invading
+Europeans had gained little mastery of the soil. Camp and fortress were
+on the same side of the river. Lounging braves watched indifferently
+some figures wading fog from the fort, perhaps bringing them a farewell
+word, perhaps forbidding their departure. The Indian often humored his
+invader's feudal airs, but he never owned the mastery of any white man.
+Squaws took down cone-shaped tents, while their half-naked babies
+sprawled in play upon the ashes of last winter's fires. Van Corlaer's
+men sauntered through the vanishing town, trying at times to strike some
+spark of information from Dutch and Etchemin jargon.
+
+Near the river bank, between camp and fort, was an alluvial spot in
+which the shovel found no rock. A rough line of piled stones severed it
+from surrounding lands, and a few trees stood there, promising summer
+shade, though, darkly moist along every budded twig, they now swayed in
+tuneless nakedness. Here the dead of Fort St. John were buried; and
+those approaching figures entered a gap of the inclosure instead of
+going on to the camp. Three of La Tour's soldiers, with Father Jogues
+and his donne, had come to bury the outcast baby. One of the men was
+Zelie's husband, and she walked beside him. Marguerite lay sulking in
+the barracks. The lady had asked Father Jogues to consecrate with the
+rites of his church the burial of this little victim probably born into
+his faith. But he would have followed it in any case, with that instinct
+which drove him to baptize dying Indian children with rain-drops and
+attempt to pluck converts from the tortures of the stake.
+
+"Has this child been baptized?" he inquired of Zelie on the path down
+from the fort.
+
+She answered, shedding tears of resentment against Marguerite, and with
+fervor she could not restrain,--
+
+"I'll warrant me it never had so much as a drop of water on its head,
+and but little to its body, before my lady took it."
+
+"But hath it not believing parents?"
+
+"Our Swiss says," stated Zelie, with a respectful heretic's sparing of
+this priest, "that it is the child of D'Aulnay de Charnisay." And she
+added no comment. The soldiers set their spades to last year's sod, cut
+an oblong wound, and soon had the earth heaped out and a grave made.
+Father Jogues, perplexed, and heavy of heart for the sins of his
+enlightened as well as his savage children, concluded to consecrate the
+baby's bed. The Huguenot soldiers stood sullenly by while a Romish
+service went on. They or their fathers had been driven out of France by
+the bitterness of that very religion which Father Jogues expressed in
+sweetness. They had not the broad sympathy of their lady, who could
+excuse and even stoop to mend a priest's cassock; and they made their
+pause as brief as possible.
+
+While the spat and clink of spades built up one child's hillock, Zelie
+was on her knees beside another some distance from it, scraping away
+dead leaves. Her lady had bid her look how this grave fared, and she
+noticed fondly that fern was beginning to curl above the buried lad's
+head. The heir of the La Tours lay with his feet toward the outcast of
+the Charnisays, but this was a chance arrangement. Soldiers and
+servants of the house were scattered about the frontier burial ground,
+and Zelie noted to report to her lady that winter had partly effaced and
+driven below the surface some recent graves. Instead of being marked by
+a cross, each earthen door had a narrow frame of river stones built
+around it.
+
+Van Corlaer left the drowned falls and passed his own tents, and waited
+outside the knee-high inclosure for Father Jogues. The missionary, in
+his usual halo of prayer, dwelt upon the open breviary. Many a tree
+along the Mohawk valley yet bore the name of Jesu which he had carved in
+its bark, as well as rude crosses. Such marks helped him to turn the
+woods into one wide oratory. But unconverted savages, tearing with their
+teeth the hands lifted up in supplication for them, had scarcely taxed
+his heart as heretics and sinful believers taxed it now. The soldiers,
+having finished, took up their tools, and Van Corlaer joined Father
+Jogues as the party came out of the cemetery.
+
+The day was brightening. Some sea-birds were spreading their white
+breasts and wing-linings like flashes of silver against shifting vapor.
+The party descended to a wrinkle in the land which would be dry at
+ebb-tide. Now it held a stream flowing inland upon grass--unshriveled
+long grass bowed flat and sleeked to this daily service. It gave
+beholders a delicious sensation to see the clean water rushing up so
+verdant a course. A log which would seem a misplaced and useless
+foot-bridge when the tide was out, was crossed by one after another; and
+as Van Corlaer fell back to step beside Father Jogues, he said:--
+
+"The Abenakis take to the woods and desert their fishing, and these
+Etchemins leave the woods and take to the coast. You never know where to
+have your savage. Did you note that the village was moving?"
+
+"Yes, I saw that, Monsieur Corlaer; and I must now take leave of the
+lady of the fort and join myself to them."
+
+"If you do you will give deep offense to La Tour," said the Dutchman,
+pushing back some strands of light hair which had fallen over his
+forehead, and turning his great near-sighted eyes on his friend. "These
+Indians are called Protestant. They are in La Tour's grant. Thou knowest
+that he and D'Aulnay de Charnisay have enough to quarrel about without
+drawing churchmen into their broil."
+
+Father Jogues trod on gently. He knew he could not travel with any
+benighted soul and not try to convert it. These poor Etchemins appealed
+to his conscience; but so did the gracious lady of the fort.
+
+"If I could mend the rents in her faith," he sighed, "as she hath mended
+the rents in my cassock!"
+
+Two of the soldiers turned aside with their spades to a slope behind the
+fortress, where there was a stable for the ponies and horned cattle, and
+where last year's garden beds lay blackened under last year's refuse
+growth. Having planted the immortal seed, their next duty was to
+prepare for the trivial resurrections of the summer. Frenchmen love
+green messes in their soup. The garden might be trampled by besiegers,
+but there were other chances that it would yield something. Zelie's
+husband climbed the height to escort the priest and report to his lady,
+but he had his wife to chatter beside him. Father Jogues' donne walked
+behind Van Corlaer, and he alone overheard the Dutchman's talk.
+
+"This lady of Fort St. John, Father Jogues, so housed, and so ground
+between the millstones of La Tour and D'Aulnay--she hath wrought up my
+mind until I could not forbear this journey. It is well known through
+the colonies that La Tour can no longer get help, and is outlawed by his
+king. This fortress will be sacked. La Tour would best stay at home to
+defend his own. But what can any other man do? I am here to defend my
+own, and I will take it and defend it."
+
+Van Corlaer looked up at the walls, and his chest swelled with a large
+breath of regret.
+
+"God He knoweth why so sweet a lady is set here to bear the brunts of a
+frontier fortress, where no man can aid her without espousing her
+husband's quarrel!--while hundreds of evil women degrade the courts of
+Europe. But I can only do mine errand and go. And you will best mend
+your own expedition at this time by a new start from Montreal, Father
+Jogues."
+
+The priest turned around on the ascent and looked toward the vanishing
+Indian camp. He was examining as self-indulgence his strong and
+gentlemanly desire not to involve Madame La Tour in further troubles by
+proselyting her people.
+
+"Whatever way is pointed out to me, Monsieur Corlaer," he answered,
+"that way I must take. For the mending of an expedition rests not in the
+hands of the poor instrument that attempts it."
+
+Their soldier signaled for the gates to be opened, and they entered the
+fort. Marie was on her morning round of inspection. She had just given
+back to a guard the key of the powder magazine. Well, storehouse,
+fuel-house, barracks, were in military readiness. But refuse stuff had
+been thrown in spots which her people were now severely cleaning. She
+greeted her returning guests, and heard the report of Zelie's husband. A
+lace mantle was drawn over her head and fastened under the chin,
+throwing out from its blackness the warm brown beauty of her face.
+
+"So our Indians are leaving the falls already?" she repeated, fixing
+Zelie's husband with a serious eye.
+
+"Yes, madame," witnessed Zelie. "I myself saw women packing tents."
+
+"Have they heard any rumor which scared them off early,--our good lazy
+Etchemins, who hate fighting?"
+
+"No, madame," Van Corlaer answered, being the only person who came
+directly from the camp, "I think not, though their language is not clear
+to me like our western tongues. It is simply an early spring, calling
+them out."
+
+"They have always waited until Paques week heretofore," she remembered.
+But the wandering forth of an irresponsible village had little to do
+with the state of her fort. She was going upon the walls to look at the
+cannon, and asked her guests to go with her.
+
+The priest and his donne and Van Corlaer ascended a ladder, and Madame
+La Tour followed.
+
+"I do not often climb like a sailor," she said, when Van Corlaer gave
+her his hand at the top. "There is a flight of steps from mine own
+chamber to the level of the walls. And here Madame Bronck and I have
+taken the air on winter days when we felt sure of its not blowing us
+away. But you need not look sad over our pleasures, monsieur. We have
+had many a sally out of this fort, and monsieur the priest will tell you
+there is great freedom on snowshoes."
+
+"Madame Bronck has allowed herself little freedom since I came to Fort
+St. John," observed Van Corlaer.
+
+They all walked the walls from bastion to bastion, and Marie examined
+the guns, and spoke with her soldiers. On the way back Father Jogues and
+Lalande paused to watch the Etchemins trail away, and to commune on what
+their duty directed them to do. Marie walked on with Van Corlaer toward
+the towered bastion, talking quickly, and ungloving her right hand to
+help his imagination with it. A bar of sunlight rested with a long slant
+through vapor on the fortress. Far blue distances were opened on the
+bay. The rippling full river had already begun to subside and sink line
+by line from its island.
+
+Van Corlaer gave no attention to the beautiful world. He listened to
+Madame La Tour with a broadening humorous face and the invincible port
+of a man who knows nothing of defeat. The sentinel trod back and forth
+without disturbing this intent conference, but other feet came rushing
+up the stone steps which let from Marie's room to the level of the wall.
+
+"Madame--madame!" exclaimed Antonia Bronck; but her flaxen head was
+arrested in ascent beside Van Corlaer's feet, and her distressed eyes
+met in his a whimsical look which stung her through with suspicion and
+resentment.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+VAN CORLAER.
+
+
+"What is it, Antonia?" demanded Marie.
+
+"Madame, it is nothing."
+
+Antonia owned her suitor's baring of his head, and turned upon the
+stairs.
+
+"But some alarm drove you out."
+
+Marie leaned over the cell inclosing the stone steps. It was not easy to
+judge from Antonia's erect bearing what had so startled her. Her friend
+followed her to the door below, and the voices of the two women hummed
+indistinctly in that vault-like hollow.
+
+"You have told him," accused Antonia directly. "He is laughing about
+Mynheer Bronck's hand!"
+
+"He does take a cheerful view of the matter," conceded the lady of the
+fort. Antonia looked at her with all the asperity which could be
+expressed in a fair Dutch face.
+
+"As long as I kept my trouble to myself I could bear it. But I show it
+to another, and the worst befalls me."
+
+"Is that hand lost, Antonia?"
+
+"I cannot find it, or even the box which held it."
+
+"Never accuse me with your eye," said Marie with droll pathos. "If it
+were lost or destroyed by accident, I could bear without a groan to see
+you so bereaved. But the slightest thing shall not be filched in Fort
+St. John. When did you first miss it?"
+
+"A half hour since. I left the box on my table last night instead of
+replacing it in my chest;--being so disturbed."
+
+"Every room shall be searched," said Marie. "Where is Le Rossignol?"
+
+"She went after breakfast to call her swan in the fort."
+
+"I saw her not. And I have neglected to send her to the turret for her
+punishment. That little creature has a magpie's fondness for plunder.
+Perhaps she has carried off your box. I will send for her."
+
+Marie left the room. Antonia lingered to glance through a small square
+pane in the door--an eye which the commandants of the fort kept on their
+battlements. It had an inner tapestry, but this remained as Marie had
+pushed it aside that morning to take her early look at the walls. Van
+Corlaer was waiting on the steps, and as he detected Antonia in the
+guilty act of peeping at him, his compelling voice reached her in Dutch.
+She returned into the small stone cell formed by the stairs, and closed
+the door, submitting defiantly to the interview.
+
+"Will you sit here?" suggested Van Corlaer, taking off his cloak and
+making for her a cushion upon the stone. Antonia reflected that he would
+be chilly and therefore hold brief talk, so she made no objection, and
+sat down on one end of the step while he sat down on the other. They
+spoke Dutch: with their formal French fell away the formal phases of
+this meeting in Acadia. The sentinel's walk moved almost overhead, and
+died away along the wall and returned again, but noises within the fort
+scarcely intruded to their rocky cell. They did not hear even the voices
+of Lalande and Father Jogues descending the ladder.
+
+"We have never had any satisfactory talk together, Antonia," began Van
+Corlaer.
+
+"No, mynheer," breathed the girlish relict of Bronck, feeling her heart
+labor as she faced his eyes.
+
+"It is hard for a man to speak his mind to you."
+
+"It hath seemed easy enough for Mynheer Van Corlaer, seeing how many
+times he hath done so," observed Antonia, drawing her mufflings around
+her neck.
+
+"No. I speak always with such folly that you will not hear me. It is not
+so when I talk among men or work on the minds of savages. Let us now
+begin reasonably. I do believe you like me, Antonia."
+
+"A most reasonable beginning," noted Antonia, biting her lips.
+
+"Now I am a man in the stress and fury of mid-life, hard to turn from my
+purpose, and you well know my purpose. Your denials and puttings-off and
+flights have pleased me. But your own safety may waste no more good time
+in further play. I have not come into Acadia to tinkle a song under your
+window, but to wed you and carry you back to Fort Orange with me."
+
+Antonia stirred, to hide her trembling.
+
+"Are you cold?" inquired Van Corlaer.
+
+"No, mynheer."
+
+"If the air chills you I will warm your hands in mine."
+
+"My hands are well muffled, mynheer."
+
+He adjusted his back against the wall and again opened the conversation.
+
+"I brought a young dominie with me. He wished to see Montreal. And I
+took care to have with him such papers as might be necessary to the
+marriage."
+
+"He had best get my leave," observed Madame Bronck.
+
+"That is no part of his duty. But set your mind at rest; he is a young
+dominie of credit. When I was in Boston I saw a rich sedan chair made
+for the viceroy of Mexico, but brought to the colonies for sale. It put
+a thought in my head, and I set skilled fellows to work, and they made
+and we have carried through the woods the smallest, most
+cunning-fashioned sedan chair that woman ever stepped into. I brought it
+for the comfortable journeying of Madame Van Corlaer."
+
+"That unknown lady will have much satisfaction in it," murmured Antonia.
+
+"I hope so. And be better known than she was as Jonas Bronck's wife."
+
+She colored, but hid a smile within her muffling. Her good-humored
+suitor leaned toward her, resting his arms upon his knees.
+
+"Touching a matter which has never been mentioned between us;--was the
+curing of Bronck's hand well approved by you?"
+
+"Mynheer, I am angry at Madame La Tour. Or did he," gasped Antonia, not
+daring to accuse by name the colonial doctor who had managed her dark
+secret, "did he show that to you?"
+
+"Would the boldest chemist out of Amsterdam cut off and salt the member
+of any honest burgher without leave of the patroon?" suggested Van
+Corlaer. "Besides, my skill was needed, for I was once learned in
+chemistry."
+
+It was so surprising to see this man over-ride her terror that Antonia
+stared at him.
+
+"Mynheer, had you no dread of the sight?"
+
+"No; and had I known you would dread it the hand had spoiled in the
+curing. I thought less of Jonas Bronck, that he could bequeath a morsel
+of himself like dried venison."
+
+"Mynheer Bronck was a very good man," asserted Antonia severely.
+
+"But thou knowest in thy heart that I am a better one," laughed Van
+Corlaer.
+
+"He was the best of husbands," she insisted, trembling with a woman's
+anxiety to be loyal to affection which she has not too well rewarded.
+"It was on my account that he had his hand cut off."
+
+"I will outdo Bronck," determined Van Corlaer. "I will have myself
+skinned at my death and spread out as a rug to your feet. So good a
+housekeeper as Antonia will beat my pelt full often, and so be obliged
+to think on me."
+
+Afloat in his large personality as she always was in his presence, she
+yet tried to resist him.
+
+"The relic that you joke about, Mynheer Van Corlaer, I have done worse
+with; I have lost it."
+
+"Bronck's hand?"
+
+"Yes. It hath been stolen."
+
+"Why, I commend the taste of the thief!"
+
+"And misfortune is sure to follow."
+
+"Well, let misfortune and the hand go together."
+
+"It was not so said." She looked furtively at Bronck's powerful rival,
+loath to reveal to him the sick old man's prophecies.
+
+"I have heard of the hearts of heroes being sealed in coffers and
+treasured in the cities from which they sprung," said Van Corlaer,
+taking his hat from the step and holding it to shield his eyes from
+mounting light. "But Jonas was no hero. And I have heard of papists
+venerating little pieces of saints' bones. Father Jogues might do so,
+and I could behold him without smiling. But a Protestant woman should
+have no superstition for relics."
+
+"What I cannot help dreading," confessed Antonia, moving her hands
+nervously in their wrapping, "is what may follow this loss."
+
+"Why, let the hand go! What should follow its loss?"
+
+"Some trouble might befall the people who are kindest to me."
+
+"Because Bronck's hand has been mislaid?" inquired Van Corlaer with
+shrewd light in his eyes.
+
+"Yes, mynheer," hesitated Antonia. He burst into laughter and Antonia
+looked at him as if he had spoken against religion.
+
+She sighed.
+
+"It was my duty to open the box once every month."
+
+Van Corlaer threw his hat down again on the step above.
+
+"Are you cold, mynheer?" inquired Antonia considerately.
+
+"No. I am fired like a man in mid-battle. Will nothing move you to show
+me a little love, madame? Why, look you, there were French women among
+captives ransomed from the Mohawks who shed tears on these hands of
+mine. Strangers and alien people have some movement of feeling, but you
+have none."
+
+"Mynheer," pleaded Antonia, goaded to inconsistent and trembling
+asperity, "you make my case very hard. I could not tell you why I dare
+not wed again, but since you know, why do you cruelly blame me? A woman
+does not weep the night away without some movement of feeling. Yes,
+mynheer, you have taunted me, and I will tell you the worst. I have
+thought of you more than of any other person in the world, and felt such
+satisfaction in your presence that I could hardly forego it. Yet holding
+me thus bound to you, you are by no means satisfied," sobbed Antonia.
+
+Van Corlaer glowed over her a moment with some smiling compunction, and
+irresistibly took her in his arms. From the instant that Antonia found
+herself there unstartled, her point of view was changed. She looked at
+her limitations no longer alone, but through Van Corlaer's eyes, and saw
+them vanishing. The sentinel, glancing down from time to time with a
+furtive cast of his eye, saw Antonia nodding or shaking her flaxen head
+in complete unison with Van Corlaer's nods and negations, and caught the
+sweet monotone of her voice repeating over and over:--
+
+"Yes, mynheer. Yes, mynheer."
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+THE TURRET.
+
+
+While Antonia continued her conference on the stone steps leading to the
+wall, the dwarf was mounting a flight which led to the turret. Klussman
+walked ahead, carrying her instrument and her ration for the day. There
+was not a loophole to throw glimmers upon the blackness. The ascent
+wound about as if carved through the heart of rock, and the tall Swiss
+stooped to its slope. Such a mountain of unseen terraces made Le
+Rossignol pant. She lifted herself from step to step, growing dizzy with
+the turns and holding to the wall.
+
+"Wait for me," she called up the gloom, and shook her fist at the unseen
+soldier because he gave her no reply. Klussman stepped out on the turret
+floor and set down his load. Stretching himself from the cramp of the
+stairway, he stood looking over bay and forest and coast. The
+battlemented wall was quite as high as his shoulder. One small cannon,
+brought up with enormous labor, was here trained through an embrasure to
+command the mouth of the river.
+
+Le Rossignol emerged into the unroofed light and the sea air like a
+potentate, dragging a warm furred robe. She had fastened great hoops of
+gold in her ears, and they gave her peaked face a barbaric look. It was
+her policy to go in state to punishment. The little sovereign stalked
+with long steps and threw out her arm in command.
+
+"Monsieur the Swiss, stoop over and give me thy back until I mount the
+battlement."
+
+Klussman, full of his own bitter and confused thinking, looked blankly
+down at her heated countenance.
+
+"Give me thy back!" sang the dwarf in the melodious scream which anger
+never made harsh in her.
+
+"Faith, yes, and my entire carcass," muttered the Swiss. "I care not
+what becomes of me now."
+
+"Madame Marie sent you to escort me to this turret. You have the honor
+because you are an officer. Now do your duty as lieutenant of this
+fortress, and make me a comfortable prisoner."
+
+Klussman set his hands upon his sides and smiled down upon his prisoner.
+
+"What is your will?"
+
+"Twice have I told you to stoop and give me your back, that I may mount
+from the cannon to the battlements. Am I to be shut up here without an
+outlook?"
+
+"May I be hanged if I do that," exclaimed Klussman. "Make a footstool of
+myself for a spoiled puppet like thee?"
+
+Le Rossignol ran towards him and kicked his boots with the heel of her
+moccasin. The Swiss, remonstrating and laughing, moved back before her.
+
+"Have some care--thou wilt break a deer-hoof on my stout leather. And
+why mount the battlements? A fall from this turret edge would spread
+thee out like a raindrop. Though the fewer women there are in the world
+the better," added Klussman bitterly.
+
+"Presume not to call me a woman!"
+
+"Why, what art thou?"
+
+"I am the nightingale."
+
+"By thy red head thou art the woodpecker. Here is my back, clatterbill.
+Why should I not crawl the ground to be walked over? I have been worse
+used than that."
+
+He grinned fiercely as he bent down with his hands upon his knees. Le
+Rossignol mounted the cannon, and with a couple of light bounds, making
+him a perch midway, reached an embrasure and sat arranging her robes.
+
+"Now you may hand me my clavier," she said, "and then you shall have my
+thanks and my pardon."
+
+The Swiss handed her the instrument. His contempt was ruder than he
+knew. Le Rossignol pulled her gull-skin cap well down upon her ears,
+for though the day was now bright overhead, a raw wind came across the
+bay. She leaned over and looked down into the fortress to call her swan.
+The cook was drawing water from the well, and that soft sad note lifted
+his eyes to the turret. Le Rossignol squinted at him, and the man went
+into the barracks and told his wife that he felt shooting pains in his
+limbs that instant.
+
+"Come hither, gentle Swiss," said the dwarf striking the plectrum into
+her mandolin strings, "and I will reward thee for thy back and all thy
+courtly services."
+
+Klussman stepped to the wall and looked with her into the fort.
+
+"Take that sweet sight for my thanks," said Le Rossignol, pointing to
+Marguerite below. The miserable girl had come out of the barracks and
+was sitting in the sun beside the oven. She rested her head against it
+and met the sky light with half-shut eyes, lovely in silken hair and
+pallid flesh through all her sullenness and dejection. As Klussman saw
+her he uttered an oath under his breath, which the dwarf's hand on the
+mandolin echoed with a bang. He turned his back on the sight and betook
+himself to the stairway, the dwarf's laughter following him. She felt
+high in the world and played with a good spirit. The sentinel below
+heard her, but he took care to keep a steady and level eye. When the
+swan rose past him, spreading its wings almost against his face, he
+prudently trod the wall without turning his head.
+
+"He, Shubenacadie," said the human morsel to her familiar as the wide
+wings composed themselves beside her. "We had scarce said good-morning
+when I must be haled before my lady for that box of the Hollandaise."
+The swan was a huge white creature of his kind, with fiery eyes. There
+was satin texture delightful to the touch in the firm and glistening
+plumage of his swelling breast. Le Rossignol smoothed it.
+
+"They have few trinkets in that barbarous Fort Orange in the west. I
+detest that Hollandaise more since she carries about such a casket. Let
+us be cozy. Kiss me, Shubenacadie."
+
+The swan's attachment and obedience to her were struggling against some
+swan-like instinct which made him rear a lofty head and twist it
+riverward.
+
+"Kiss me, I say! Shall I have to beat thee over the head with my clavier
+to teach thee manners?"
+
+Shubenacadie darted his snake neck downward and touched bills with her.
+She patted his coral nostrils.
+
+"Not yet. Before you take to the water we must have some talk. I am shut
+up here to stay this whole day. And for what? Not because of the casket,
+for they know not what I have done with it. But because thou and I
+sometimes go out without the password. Stick out thy toes and let me
+polish them."
+
+Shubenacadie resisted this mandate, and his autocrat promptly dragged
+one foot from under him, causing him to topple on the parapet. He
+hissed at her. Le Rossignol looked up at the threatening flat head and
+hissed back.
+
+"You are as bad as that Swiss," she laughed. "I will put a yoke on you.
+I will tie you to the settle in the hall. Why have all man creatures
+such tempers? Thank heaven I was not born to hose and doublet. Never did
+I see a mild man in my life except Edelwald. As for this Swiss, I am
+done with him. He hath a wife, Shubenacadie. She sits down there by the
+oven now; a miserable thing turned off by D'Aulnay de Charnisay. Have I
+told thee the Swiss had a soul above a common soldier and I picked him
+out to pay court to me? Beat me for it. Pull the red hair he condemned.
+I would have had him sighing for me that I might pity him. The populace
+is beneath us, but we must amuse ourselves. Beat me, I demand. Punish me
+well for abasing my eyes to that Swiss."
+
+Shubenacadie understood the challenge and the tone. He was used to
+rendering such service when his mistress repented of her sins. Yet he
+gave his tail feathers a slight flirt and quavered some guttural to
+sustain his part in the conversation, and to beg that he might be
+excused from holding the sword this time. As she continued to prod him,
+however, he struck her with his beak. Le Rossignol was human in never
+finding herself able to bear the punishment she courted. She flew at the
+swan, he spread his wings for ardent warfare, and they both dropped to
+the stone floor in a whirlwind of mandolin, arms, and feathers. The
+dwarf kept her hold on him until he cowered and lay with his neck along
+the pavement.
+
+"Thou art a Turk, a rascal, a horned beast!" panted Le Rossignol.
+Shubenacadie quavered plaintively, and all her wrath was gone. She
+spread out one of his wings and smoothed the plumes. She nursed his head
+in her lap and sung to him. Two of his feathers, plucked out in the
+contest, she put in her bosom. He flirted his tail and gathered himself
+again to his feet, and she broke her loaf and fed him and poured water
+into her palm for his bill.
+
+Le Rossignol esteemed the military dignity given to her imprisonment,
+and she was a hardy midget who could bear untold exposure when wandering
+at her own will. She therefore received with disgust her lady's summons
+to come down long before the day was spent, the messenger being only
+Zelie.
+
+"Ah--h, mademoiselle," warned the maid, stumping ponderously out of the
+stone stairway, "are you about to mount that swan again?"
+
+"Who has ever seen me mount him?"
+
+"I would be sworn there are a dozen men in the fort that have."
+
+"But you never have."
+
+"No. I have been absent with my lady."
+
+"Well, you shall see me now."
+
+The dwarf flung herself on Shubenacadie's back, and thrust her feet down
+under his wings. He began to rise, and expanded, stretching his neck
+forward, and Zelie uttered a yell of terror. The weird little woman
+leaped off and turned her laughing beak toward the terrified maid. Her
+ear-hoops swung as she rolled her mocking head.
+
+"Oh, if it frightens you I will not ride to-day," she said. Shubenacadie
+sailed across the battlements, and though they could no longer see him
+they knew he had taken to the river.
+
+"If I tell my lady this," shivered Zelie, "she will never let you out of
+the turret. And she but this moment sent me to call you down out of the
+chill east wind."
+
+"Tell Madame Marie," urged the dwarf insolently.
+
+"And do you ride that way over bush and brier, through mirk and
+daylight?"
+
+"I was at Penobscot this week," answered Le Rossignol.
+
+Zelie gazed with a bristling of even the hairs upon her lip.
+
+"It goeth past belief," she observed, setting her hands upon her sides.
+"And the swan, what else can he do besides carry thee like a dragon?"
+
+"He sings to me," boldly asserted Le Rossignol. "And many a good bit of
+advice have I taken from his bill."
+
+"It would be well if he turned his mind more to thinking and less to
+roving," respectfully hinted Zelie. "I will go before you downstairs and
+leave the key in the turret door," she suggested.
+
+"Take up these things and go when you please, and mind that I do not
+hear my clavier striking the wall."
+
+"Have you not felt the wind in this open donjon?"
+
+"The wind and I take no note of each other," answered the dwarf, lifting
+her chilled nose skyward. "But the cold water and bread have worked me
+most discomfort in this imprisonment. Go down and tell the cook for me
+that he is to make a hot bowl of the broth I like."
+
+"He will do it," said Zelie.
+
+"Yes, he will do it," said the dwarf, "and the sooner he does it the
+better."
+
+"Will you eat it in the hall?"
+
+"I will eat it wherever Madame Marie is."
+
+"But that you cannot do. There is great business going forward and she
+is shut with Madame Bronck in our other lady's room."
+
+"I like it when you presume to know better than I do what is going
+forward in this fort!" exclaimed the dwarf jealously, a flush mounting
+her slender cheeks.
+
+"I should best know what has happened since you left the hall,"
+contended Zelie.
+
+"Do you think so, poor heavy-foot? You can only hearken to what is
+whispered past your ear; but I can sit here on the battlements and read
+all the secrets below me."
+
+"Can you, Mademoiselle Nightingale? For instance, where is Madame
+Bronck's box?"
+
+The maid drew a deep breath at her own daring.
+
+"It is not about Madame Bronck's box that they confer. It is about the
+marriage of the Hollandaise," answered Le Rossignol with a bold guess.
+"I could have told you that when you entered the turret."
+
+Zelie experienced a chill through her flesh which was not caused by the
+damp breath of Fundy Bay.
+
+"How doth she find out things done behind her back--this clever little
+witch? And perhaps you will name the bridegroom, mademoiselle?"
+
+"Who could that be except the big Hollandais who hath come out of the
+west after her? Could she marry a priest or a common soldier?"
+
+"That is true," admitted Zelie, feeling her superstition allayed.
+
+"There must be as few women as trinkets in that wilderness Fort of
+Orange from which he came," added the dwarf.
+
+"Why?" inquired Zelie, wrinkling her nose and squinting in the sunlight.
+
+But Le Rossignol took no further trouble than to give her a look of
+contempt, and lifted the furred garment to descend the stairs.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+AN ACADIAN POET.
+
+
+"The woman who dispenses with any dignity which should attend her
+marriage, doth cheapen herself to her husband," said Lady Dorinda to
+Antonia Bronck, leaning back in the easiest chair of the fortress. It
+was large and stiff, but filled with cushions. Lady Dorinda's chamber
+was the most comfortable one in Fort St. John. It was over the front of
+the great hall, and was intended for a drawing-room, being spacious,
+well warmed by a fireplace and lighted by windows looking into the fort.
+A stately curtained bed, a toilet table with swinging mirror, bearing
+many of the ornaments and beauty-helpers of an elderly belle, and
+countless accumulations which spoke her former state in the world, made
+this an English bower in a French fort.
+
+Her dull yellow hair was coifed in the fashion of the early Stuarts. She
+held a hand-screen betwixt her face and the fire, but the flush which
+touched its usual sallowness was not caused by heat. A wedding was a
+diversion of her exile which Lady Dorinda had never hoped for. There had
+been some mating in the fort below among soldiers and peasant women, to
+which she did not lower her thoughts. The noise of resulting
+merrymakings sufficiently sought out and annoyed her ear. But the
+wedding of the guest to a man of consequence in the Dutch colony was
+something to which she might unbend herself.
+
+Antonia had been brought against her will to consult with this faded
+authority by Marie, who sat by, supporting her through the ordeal. There
+was never any familiar chat between the lady of the fort and the widow
+of Claude La Tour. Neither forgot their first meeting behind cannon, and
+the tragedy of a divided house. Lady Dorinda lived in Acadia because she
+could not well live elsewhere. And she secretly nursed a hope that in
+her day the province would fall into English hands, her knight be
+vindicated, and his son obliged to submit to a power he had defied to
+the extremity of warring with a father.
+
+If the two women had no love for each other they at least stinted no
+ceremony. Marie presented the smallest surface of herself to her
+mother-in-law. It is true they had been of the same household only a few
+months; but months and years are the same betwixt us and the people who
+solve not for us this riddle of ourselves. Antonia thought little of
+Lady Dorinda's opinions, but her saying about the dignity of marriage
+rites had the force of unexpected truth. Arendt Van Corlaer had used up
+his patience in courtship. He was now bent on wedding Antonia and
+setting out to Montreal without the loss of another day. His route was
+planned up St. John River and across-country to the St. Lawrence.
+
+"I would therefore give all possible state to this occasion," added
+Lady Dorinda. "Did you not tell me this Sir Van Corlaer is an officer?"
+
+"He is the real patroon of Fort Orange, my lady."
+
+"He should then have military honors paid him on his marriage," observed
+Lady Dorinda, to whom patroon suggested the barbarous but splendid
+vision of a western pasha. "Salutes should be fired and drums sounded.
+In thus recommending I hope I have not overstepped my authority, Madame
+La Tour?"
+
+"Certainly not, your ladyship," murmured Marie.
+
+"The marriage ceremony hath length and solemnity, but I would have it
+longer, and more solemn. A woman in giving herself away should greatly
+impress a man with the charge he hath undertaken. There be not many
+bridegrooms like Sir Claude de la Tour, who fasted an entire day before
+his marriage with me. The ceremonial of that marriage hath scarce been
+forgotten at court to this hour."
+
+Lady Dorinda folded her hands and closed her eyes to sigh. Her voice had
+rolled the last words in her throat. At such moments she looked very
+superior. Her double chins and dull light eyes held great reserves of
+self-respect. A small box of aromatic seeds lay in her lap, and as her
+hands encountered it she was reminded to put a seed in her mouth and
+find pensive comfort in chewing it.
+
+"Edelwald should be here to give the proper grace to this event," added
+Lady Dorinda.
+
+"I thought of him," said Marie. "Edelwald has so much the nature of a
+troubadour."
+
+"The studies which adorn a man were well thought of when I was at
+court," said Lady Dorinda. "Edelwald is really thrown away upon this
+wilderness."
+
+Antonia was too intent on Van Corlaer and his fell determination to turn
+her mind upon Edelwald. She had, indeed, seen very little of La Tour's
+second in command, for he had been away with La Tour on expeditions
+much of the time she had spent in Acadia. Edelwald was the only man of
+the fortress called by his baptismal name, yet it was spoken with
+respect and deference like a title. He was of the family of De Born. In
+an age when religion made political ties stronger than the ties of
+nature, the La Tours and De Borns had fought side by side through
+Huguenot wars. When a later generation of La Tours were struggling for
+foothold in the New World, it was not strange that a son of the De
+Borns, full of songcraft and spirit inherited from some troubadour
+soldier of the twelfth century, should turn his face to the same land.
+From his mother Edelwald took Norman and Saxon strains of blood. He had
+left France the previous year and made his voyage in the same ship with
+Madame La Tour and her mother-in-law, and he was now La Tour's trusted
+officer.
+
+Edelwald could take up any stringed instrument, strike melody out of it
+and sing songs he had himself made. But such pastimes were brief in
+Acadia. There was other business on the frontier; sailing, hunting,
+fighting, persuading or defying men, exploring unyielded depths of
+wilderness. The joyous science had long fallen out of practice. But
+while the grim and bloody records of our early colonies were being made,
+here was an unrecorded poet in Acadia. La Tour held this gift of
+Edelwald's in light esteem. He was a man so full of action and of
+schemes for establishing power that he touched only the martial side of
+the young man's nature, though in that contact was strong comradeship.
+Every inmate of the fortress liked Edelwald. He mediated between
+commandant and men, and jealousies and bickerings disappeared before
+him.
+
+"It would be better," murmured Antonia, breaking the stately silence by
+Lady Dorinda's fire, "if Mynheer Van Corlaer journeyed on to Montreal
+and returned here before any marriage takes place."
+
+"Think of the labor you will thereby put upon him," exclaimed Marie. "I
+speak for Monsieur Corlaer and not for myself," she added; "for by that
+delay I should happily keep you until summer. Besides, the priest we
+have here with us himself admits that the town of Montreal is little to
+look upon. Ville-Marie though it be named by the papists, what is it but
+a cluster of huts in the wilderness?"
+
+"I was six months preparing to be wedded to Mynheer Bronck," remembered
+Antonia.
+
+"And will Monsieur Corlaer return here from Montreal?"
+
+"No, madame. He will carry me with him."
+
+"I like him better for it," said Marie smiling, "though it pleases me
+ill enough."
+
+This was Antonia's last weak revolt against the determination of her
+stalwart suitor. She gained a three days' delay from him by submitting
+to the other conditions of his journey. It amused Marie to note the
+varying phases of Antonia's surrender. She was already resigned to the
+loss of Jonas Bronck's hand, and in no slavish terror of the
+consequences.
+
+"And it is true I am provided with all I need," she mused on, in the
+line of removing objections from Van Corlaer's way.
+
+"I have often promised to show you the gown I wore at my marriage," said
+Lady Dorinda, roused from her rumination on the aromatic seed, and
+leaving her chair to pay this gracious compliment to the Dutch widow.
+"It hath faded, and been discolored by the sea air, but you will not
+find a prettier fashion of lace in anything made since."
+
+She had no maid, for the women of the garrison had all been found too
+rude for her service. When she first came to Acadia with Claude La Tour,
+an English gentlewoman gladly waited on her. But now only Zelie gave her
+constrained and half-hearted attention, rating her as "my other lady,"
+and plainly deploring her presence. Lady Dorinda had one large box
+bound with iron, hidden in a nook beyond her bed. She took the key from
+its usual secret place and busied herself opening the box. Marie and
+Antonia heard her speak a word of surprise, but the curtained bed hid
+her from them. The raised lid of her box let out sweet scents of
+England, but that breath of old times, though she always dreaded its
+sweep across her resignation, had not made her cry out.
+
+She found a strange small coffer on the top of her own treasures. Its
+key stood in its lock, and Lady Dorinda at once turned that key, as a
+duty to herself. Antonia's loss of some precious casket had been
+proclaimed to her, but she recollected that in her second thought, when
+she had already laid aside the napkin and discovered Jonas Bronck's
+hand. Lady Dorinda snapped the lid down and closed her own chest. She
+rose from her place and stretched both arms toward the couch at the foot
+of her bed. Having reached the couch she sank down, her head meeting a
+cushion with nice calculation.
+
+"I am about to faint," said Lady Dorinda, and having parted with her
+breath in one puff, she sincerely lost consciousness and lay in extreme
+calm, her clay-colored eyelids shut on a clay-colored face. Marie was
+used to these quiet lapses of her mother-in-law, for Lady Dorinda had
+not been a good sailor on their voyage; but Antonia was alarmed. They
+bathed her face with a few inches of towel dipped in scented water, and
+rubbed her hands and fanned her. She caught life in again with a gasp,
+and opened her eyes to their young faces.
+
+"Your ladyship attempted too much in opening that box," said Marie. "It
+is not good to go back through old sorrows."
+
+"Madame La Tour may be right," gasped Claude's widow.
+
+"I could not now look at that gown, Lady Dorinda," protested Antonia.
+When her ladyship was able to sit again by the fire, she asked both of
+them to leave her; and being alone, she quieted her anxiety about her
+treasures in the chest by a forced search. Nothing had been disturbed.
+The coals burned down red while Lady Dorinda tried to understand this
+happening. She dismissed all thought of the casket's belonging to
+Antonia Bronck;--a mild and stiff-mannered young provincial who had
+nothing to do with ghastly tokens of war. That hand was a political
+hint, mysteriously sent to Lady Dorinda and embodying some important
+message.
+
+D'Aulnay de Charnisay may have sent it as a pledge that he intended to
+do justice to the elder La Tour while chastising the younger. There was
+a strange girl in the fort, accused of coming from D'Aulnay. Lady
+Dorinda could feel no enmity towards D'Aulnay. Her mind swarmed with
+foolish thoughts, harmless because ineffectual. She felt her importance
+grow, and was sure that the seed of a deep political intrigue lay hidden
+in her chest.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+MARGUERITE.
+
+
+The days which elapsed before Antonia Bronck's marriage were lived
+joyfully by a people who lost care in any festival. Van Corlaer brought
+the sleek-faced young dominie from camp and exhibited him in all his
+potency as the means of a Protestant marriage service. He could not
+speak a word of French, but only Dutch was required of him. All
+religious rites were celebrated in the hall, there being no chapel in
+Fort St. John, and this marriage was to be witnessed by the garrison.
+
+During this cheerful time a burning unrest, which she concealed from her
+people, drove Marie about her domain. She fled up the turret stairs and
+stood on the cannon to look over the bay. Her husband had been away but
+eight days. "Yet he often makes swift journeys," she thought. The load
+of his misfortunes settled more heavily upon her as she drew nearer to
+the end of woman companionship.
+
+In former times, before such bitterness had grown in the feud between
+D'Aulnay and La Tour, she had made frequent voyages from Cape Sable up
+Fundy Bay to Port Royal. The winters were then merry among noble
+Acadians, and the lady of Fort St. Louis at Cape Sable was hostess of a
+rich seigniory. Now she had the sickness of suspense, and the wasting of
+life in waiting. Frequently during the day she met Father Jogues, who
+also wandered about disturbed by the evident necessity of his return to
+Montreal.
+
+"Monsieur," said Marie once, "can you on your conscience bless a
+heretic?"
+
+"Madame," said Father Jogues, "heaven itself blesses a good and
+excellent woman."
+
+"Well, monsieur, if you could lift up your hand, even with the sign
+which my house holds idolatrous, and say a few words of prayer, I
+should then feel consecrated to whatever is before me."
+
+Perhaps Father Jogues was tempted to have recourse to his vial of holy
+water and make the baptismal signs. Many a soul he truly believed he had
+saved from burning by such secret administration. And if savages could
+be thus reclaimed, should he hold back from the only opportunity ever
+given by this beautiful soul? His face shone. But with that gracious
+instinct to refrain from intermeddling which was beyond his times, he
+only lifted his stumps of fingers and spoke the words which she craved.
+A maimed priest is deprived of his sacred offices, but the pope had made
+a special dispensation for Father Jogues.
+
+"Thanks, monsieur," said Marie. "Though it be sin to declare it, I will
+say your religion hath mother-comfort in it. Perhaps you have felt, in
+the woods among Iroquois, that sometime need of mother-comfort which a
+civilized woman may feel who has long outgrown her childhood."
+
+The mandolin was heard in the barracks once during those days, for Le
+Rossignol had come out of the house determined to seek out Marguerite.
+She found the Swiss girl beside the powder magazine, for Marguerite had
+brought out a stool, and seemed trying to cure her sick spirit in the
+sun. The dwarf stood still and looked at her with insolent eyes.
+Soldiers' wives hid themselves within their doors, cautiously watching,
+or thrusting out their heads to shake at one another or to squall at any
+child venturing too near the encounter. They did not like the strange
+girl, and besides, she was in their way. But they liked the Nightingale
+less, and pitied any one singled out for her attack.
+
+"Good day to madame the former Madame Klussman," said the dwarf.
+Marguerite gathered herself in defense to arise and leave her stool. But
+Le Rossignol gathered her mandolin in equal readiness to give pursuit.
+And not one woman in the barracks would have invited her quarry.
+
+"I was in Penobscot last week," announced Le Rossignol, and heads popped
+out of all the doors to lift eyebrows and open mouths at each other. The
+swan-riding witch! She confessed to that impossible journey!
+
+"I was in Penobscot last week," repeated Le Rossignol, holding up her
+mandolin and tinkling an accompaniment to her words, "and there I saw
+the house of D'Aulnay de Charnisay, and a very good house it is; but my
+lord should burn it. It is indeed of rough logs, and the windows are so
+high that one must have wings to look through them; but quite good
+enough for a woman of your rank, seeing that D'Aulnay hath a palace for
+his wife in Port Royal."
+
+"I know naught about the house," spoke Marguerite, a yellow sheen of
+anger appearing in her eyes.
+
+"Do you know naught about the Island of Demons, then?"
+
+The Swiss girl muttered a negative and looked sidewise at her
+antagonist.
+
+"I will tell you that story," said Le Rossignol.
+
+She played a weird prelude. Marguerite sat still to be baited, like a
+hare which has no covert. The instrument being heavy for the dwarf, she
+propped it by resting one foot on the abutting foundation of the
+powder-house, and all through her recital made the mandolin's effects
+act upon her listener.
+
+"The Sieur de Roberval sailed to this New World, having with him among a
+shipload of righteous people one Marguerite." She slammed her emphasis
+on the mandolin.
+
+"There have ever been too many such women, and so the Sieur de Roberval
+found, though this one was his niece. Like all her kind, madame, she had
+a lover to her scandal. The Sieur de Roberval whipped her, and prayed
+over her, and shut her up in irons in the hold; yet live a godly life
+she would not. So what could he do but set her ashore on the Island of
+Demons?"
+
+"I do not want to hear it," was Marguerite's muttered protest.
+
+But Le Rossignol advanced closer to her face.
+
+"And what does the lover do but jump overboard and swim after her? And
+well was he repaid." Bang! went the mandolin. "So they went up the rocky
+island together, and there they built a hut. What a horrible land was
+that!
+
+"All day long fiends twisted themselves in mist. The waves made a sadder
+moaning there than anywhere else on earth. Monsters crept out of the sea
+and grinned with dull eyes and clammy lips. No fruit, no flower,
+scarcely a blade of grass dared thrust itself toward the sky on that
+scaly island. Daylight was half dusk there forever. But the nights, the
+nights, madame, were full of howls, of contending beasts--the nights
+were storms of demons let loose to beat on that island!
+
+"All the two people had to eat were the stores set ashore by the Sieur
+de Roberval. Now a child was born in their hut, and the very next night
+a bear knocked at the door and demanded the child. Marguerite full
+freely gave it to him."
+
+The girl shrunk back, and Le Rossignol was delighted until she herself
+noticed that Klussman had come in from some duty outside the gates. His
+eye detected her employment, and he sauntered not far off with his
+shoulder turned to the powder-house.
+
+"Next night, madame," continued Le Rossignol, and her tone and the
+accent of the mandolin made an insult of that unsuitable title, "a
+horned lion and two dragons knocked at the door and asked for the lover,
+and Marguerite full freely gave him to them. Kind soul, she would do
+anything to save herself!"
+
+"Go away!" burst out the girl.
+
+"And from that time until a ship took her off, the demons of Demon
+Island tried in vain to get Marguerite. They howled around her house
+every night, and gaped down her chimney, and whispered through the
+cracks and sat on the roof. But thou knowest, madame, that a woman of
+her kind, so soft and silent and downward-looking, is more than a match
+for any demon; sure to live full easily and to die a fat saint."
+
+"Have done with this," said Klussman behind the dwarf, who turned her
+grotesque beak and explained,--
+
+"I am but telling the story of the Island of Demons to Madame Klussman."
+
+As soon as she had spoken the name the Swiss caught her in his hand,
+mandolin and all, and walked across the esplanade, holding her at arm's
+length, as he might have carried an eel. Le Rossignol ineffectually
+squirmed and kicked, raging at the spectacle she made for laughing women
+and soldiers. She tried to beat the Swiss with her mandolin, but he
+twisted her in another direction, a cat's weight of fury. Giving her no
+chance to turn upon him, he opened the entrance and shut her inside the
+hall, and stalked back to make his explanation to his wife. Klussman had
+avoided any glimpse of Marguerite until this instant of taking up her
+defense.
+
+"I pulled that witch-midget off thee," he said, speaking for the
+fortress to hear, "because I will not have her raising tumults in the
+fort. Her place is in the hall to amuse her ladies."
+
+Marguerite's chin rested on her breast.
+
+"Go in the house," said Klussman roughly. "Why do you show yourself out
+here to be mocked at?"
+
+The poor girl raised her swimming eyes and looked at him in the fashion
+he remembered when she was ill; when he had nursed her with agonies of
+fear that she might die. The old relations between them were thus
+suggested in one blinding flash. Klussman turned away so sick that the
+walls danced around him. He went outside the fort again, and wandered
+around the stony height, turning at every few steps to gaze and strain
+his eyes at that new clay in the graveyard.
+
+"When she lies beside that," muttered the soldier, "then I can be soft
+to her," though he knew he was already soft to her, and that her look
+had driven through him.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+D'AULNAY.
+
+
+The swelling spring was chilled by cold rain, driving in from the bay
+and sweeping through the half budded woods. The tide went up St. John
+River with an impulse which flooded undiked lowlands, yet there was no
+storm dangerous to shipping. Some sails hung out there in the whirl of
+vapors with evident intention of making port.
+
+Marie took a glass up to the turret and stood on the cannon to watch
+them. Rain fine as driven stings beat her face, and accumulated upon her
+muffling to run down and drip on the wet floor. She could make out
+nothing of the vessels. There were three of them, each by its sails a
+ship. They could not be the ships of Nicholas Denys carrying La Tour's
+recruits. She was not foolish enough, however great her husband's
+prosperity with Denys, to expect of him such a miraculous voyage around
+Cape Sable.
+
+Sails were a rare sight on that side of the bay. The venturesome seamen
+of the Massachusetts colony chose other courses. Fundy Bay was aside
+from the great sea paths. Port Royal sent out no ships except
+D'Aulnay's, and on La Tour's side of Acadia his was the only vessel.
+
+Certain of nothing except that these unknown comers intended to enter
+St. John River, Madame La Tour went downstairs and met Klussman on the
+wall. He turned from his outlook and said directly,--
+
+"Madame, I believe it is D'Aulnay."
+
+"You may be right," she answered. "Is any one outside the gates?"
+
+"Two men went early to the garden, but the rain drove them back.
+Fortunately, the day being bad, no one is hunting beyond the falls."
+
+"And is our vessel well moored?"
+
+"Her repairing was finished some days ago, you remember, madame, and she
+sits safe and comfortable. But D'Aulnay may burn her. When he was here
+before, my lord was away with the ship."
+
+"Bar the gates and make everything secure at once," said Marie. "And
+salute these vessels presently. If it be D'Aulnay, we sent him back to
+his seigniory with fair speed once before, and we are no worse equipped
+now."
+
+She returned down the stone steps where Van Corlaer's courtship had
+succeeded, and threw off her wet cloak to dry herself before the fire in
+her room. She kneeled by the hearth; the log had burned nearly away. Her
+mass of hair was twisted back in the plain fashion of the Greeks--that
+old sweet fashion created with the nature of woman, to which the world
+periodically returns when it has exhausted new devices. The smallest
+curves, which were tendrils rather than curls of hair, were blown out of
+her fleece over forehead and ears. A dark woman's beauty is independent
+of wind and light. When she is buffeted by weather the rich inner color
+comes through her skin, and the brightest dayshine can do nothing
+against the dusk of her eyes.
+
+If D'Aulnay was about to attack the fort, Marie was glad that Monsieur
+Corlaer had taken his bride, the missionaries, and his people and set
+out in the opposite direction. Barely had they escaped a siege, for they
+were on their way less than twenty-four hours. She had regretted their
+first day in a chill rain. But chill rain in boundless woods is better
+than sunlight in an invested fortress. Father Jogues' happy face with
+its forward droop and musing eyelids came before Marie's vision.
+
+"I need another of his benedictions," she said in undertone, when a
+knock on her door and a struggle with its latch disturbed her.
+
+"Enter, Le Rossignol," said Madame La Tour. And Le Rossignol entered,
+and approached the hearth, standing at full length scarcely as high as
+her lady kneeling. The room was a dim one, for all apartments looking
+out of the fort had windows little larger than portholes, set high in
+the walls. Two or three screens hid its uses as bedchamber and
+dressing-room, and a few pieces of tapestry were hung, making occasional
+panels of grotesque figures. A couch stood near the fireplace. The
+dwarf's prominent features were gravely fixed, and her bushy hair stood
+in a huge auburn halo around them. She wet her lips with that sudden
+motion by which a toad may be seen to catch flies.
+
+"Madame Marie, every one is running around below and saying that
+D'Aulnay de Charnisay is coming again to attack the fort."
+
+"Your pretty voice has always been a pleasure to me, Nightingale."
+
+"But is it so, madame?"
+
+"There are three ships standing in."
+
+Le Rossignol's russet-colored gown moved nearer to the fire. She
+stretched her claws to warm and then lifted one of them near her lady's
+nose.
+
+"Madame Marie, if D'Aulnay de Charnisay be coming, put no faith in that
+Swiss!"
+
+"In Klussman?"
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+"Klussman is the best soldier now in the fort," said Madame La Tour
+laughing. "If I put no faith in him, whom shall I trust?"
+
+"Madame Marie, you remember that woman you brought back with you?"
+
+"I have not seen her or spoken with her," said Marie self-reproachfully,
+"since she vexed me so sorely about her child. She is a poor creature.
+But they feed and house her well in the barracks."
+
+"Madame Marie, Klussman hath been talking with that woman every day this
+week."
+
+The dwarf's lady looked keenly at her.
+
+"Oh, no. There could be no talk between those two."
+
+"But there hath been. I have watched him. Madame Marie, he took me up
+when I went into the fort before Madame Bronck's marriage--when I was
+but playing my clavier before that sulky knave to amuse her--he took me
+up in his big common-soldier fingers, gripping me around the waist, and
+flung me into the hall."
+
+"Did he so?" laughed Marie. "I can well see that my Nightingale can put
+no more faith in the Swiss. But hearken to me, thou bird-child. There!
+Hear our salute!"
+
+The cannon leaped almost over their heads, and the walls shook with its
+boom and rebound. Marie kept her finger up and waited for a reply.
+Minute succeeded minute. The drip of accumulated rain-drops from the
+door could be heard, but nothing else. Those sullen vessels paid no
+attention to the inquiry of Fort St. John.
+
+"Our enemy has come."
+
+She relaxed from her tense listening and with a deep breath looked at Le
+Rossignol.
+
+"Do not undermine the faith of one in another in this fortress. We must
+all hold together now. The Swiss may have a tenderness for his wretched
+wife which thou canst not understand. But he is not therefore faithless
+to his lord."
+
+Taking the glass and throwing on her wet cloak, Marie again ran up to
+the wall. But Le Rossignol sat down cross-legged by the fire, wise and
+brooding.
+
+"If I could see that Swiss hung," she observed, "it would scratch in my
+soul a long-felt itch."
+
+When calamity threatens, we turn back to our peaceful days with
+astonishment that they ever seemed monotonous. Marie watched the ships,
+and thought of the woman days with Antonia before Van Corlaer came; of
+embroidery, and teaching the Etchemins, and bringing sweet plunder from
+the woods for the child's grave; of paddling on the twilight river when
+the tide was up, brimming and bubble-tinted; of her lord's coming home
+to the autumn-night hearth; of the little wheels and spinning, and
+Edelwald's songs--of all the common joys of that past life. The clumsy
+glass lately brought from France to master distances in the New World,
+wearied her hands before it assured her eyes.
+
+D'Aulnay de Charnisay was actually coming to attack Fort St. John a
+second time. He warily anchored his vessels out of the fort's range; and
+hour after hour boats moved back and forth landing men and artillery on
+the cape at the mouth of the river, a position which gave as little
+scope as possible to St. John's guns. All that afternoon tents and
+earthworks were rising, and detail by detail appeared the deliberate and
+careful preparations of an enemy who was sitting down to a siege.
+
+At dusk camp-fires began to flame on the distant low cape, and voices
+moved along air made sensitively vibrant by falling damp. There was the
+suggested hum of a disciplined small army settling itself for the night
+and for early action.
+
+Madame La Tour came out to the esplanade of the fort, and the Swiss met
+her, carrying a torch which ineffectual rain-drops irritated to constant
+hissing. He stood, tall and careworn, holding it up that his lady might
+see her soldiers. Everything in the fort was ready for the siege. The
+sentinels were about to be doubled, and sheltered by their positions.
+
+"I have had you called together, my men," she spoke, "to say a word to
+you before this affair begins."
+
+The torch flared its limited circle of shine, smoke wavering in a
+half-seen plume at its tip, and showed their erect figures in line, none
+very distinct, but all keenly suggestive of life. Some were
+black-bearded and tawny, and others had tints of the sun in flesh and
+hair. One was grizzled about the temples, and one was a smooth-cheeked
+youth. The roster of their familiar names seemed to her as precious as a
+rosary. They watched her, feeling her beauty as keenly as if it were a
+pain, and answering every lambent motion of her spirit.
+
+All the buildings were hinted through falling mist, and glowing hearths
+in the barracks showed like forge lights; for the wives of the half
+dozen married soldiers had come out, one having a child in her arms.
+They stood behind their lady, troubled, but reliant on her. She had with
+them the prestige of success; she had led the soldiers once before, and
+to a successful defense of the fort.
+
+"My men," said Marie, "when the Sieur de la Tour set out to northern
+Acadia he dreaded such a move as this on D'Aulnay's part. But I assured
+him he need not fear for us."
+
+The soldiers murmured their joy and looked at one another smiling.
+
+"The Sieur de la Tour will soon return, with help or without it. And
+D'Aulnay has no means of learning how small our garrison is. Bind
+yourselves afresh to me as you bound yourselves before the other
+attack."
+
+"My lady, we do!"
+
+Out leaped every right hand, Klussman's with the torch, which lost and
+caught its flame again with the sudden sweep.
+
+"That is all: and I thank you," said Marie. "We will do our best."
+
+She turned back to the tower under the torch's escort, her soldiers
+giving her a full cheer which might further have deceived D'Aulnay in
+the strength of the garrison.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+THE SECOND DAY.
+
+
+The exhilaration of fighting quickened every pulse in the fort. By next
+dawn the cannon began to speak. D'Aulnay had succeeded in planting
+batteries on a height eastward, and his guns had immediate effect. The
+barracks were set on fire and put out several times during the day. All
+the inmates gathered in the stone hall, and at its fireplace the cook
+prepared and distributed rations. Great balls plowed up the esplanade,
+and the oven was shattered into a storm of stone and mortar, its
+adjoining mill being left with a gap in the side.
+
+Responsive tremors from its own artillery ran through the fortress'
+walls. The pieces, except that one in the turret, were all brought into
+two bastions, those in the southeast bastion being trained on
+D'Aulnay's batteries, and the others on his camp. The gunner in the
+turret also dropped shot with effect among the tents, and attempted to
+reach the ships. But he was obliged to use nice care, for the iron
+pellets heaped on the stone floor behind him represented the heavy labor
+of one soldier who tramped at intervals up the turret stair, carrying
+ammunition.
+
+The day had dawned rainless but sullen. It was Good Friday. The women
+huddling in the hall out of their usual haunts noticed Marguerite's
+refusal even of the broth the cook offered her. She was restless, like a
+leopard, and seemed full of electrical currents which found no discharge
+except in the flicker of her eyes. Leaving the group of settles by the
+fireplace where these simple families felt more at home and least
+intrusive on the grandeur of the hall, she put herself on a distant
+chair with her face turned from them. This gave the women a chance to
+backbite her, to note her roused mood, and to accuse her among
+themselves of wishing evil to the fort and consequently to their
+husbands.
+
+"She hath the closest mouth in Acadia," murmured one. "Doth anybody in
+these walls certainly know that she came from D'Aulnay?"
+
+"The Swiss, her husband, told it."
+
+"And if she find means to go back to D'Aulnay, it will appear where she
+came from," suggested Zelie.
+
+"I would he had her now," said the first woman. "I have that feeling for
+her that I have for a cat with its hairs on end."
+
+Madame La Tour came to the hall and sat briefly and alone at her own
+table to take her dinner and supper. Later in the siege she stood and
+merely took food from the cook's hands, talking with and comforting her
+women while she ate. The surgeon of the fort was away with La Tour. She
+laid bandages ready, and felt obliged to dress not only the first but
+every wound received.
+
+Pierre Doucett was brought from one of the bastions stunned and
+bleeding, and his wife rose up with her baby in her arms, filling the
+hall with her cries. The baby and her neighbors' children were moved to
+join her. But the eye of her lady was as awful as Pierre's wound. Her
+outcry sunk to a whimper; she hushed the children, and swept them off
+the settle so Pierre could lie there, and even paid out the roll of
+bandage with one hand while her lady used it. Marie controlled her own
+faintness; for a woman on whom a man's labors are imposed must bear
+them.
+
+The four little children stood with fingers in their mouths, looking at
+these grim tokens of war. All day long they heard the crashing or
+thumping of balls, and felt the leap and rebound of cannon. The cook,
+when he came down from a bastion to attend to his kettles, gave them
+nice bits to eat, and in spite of solemnity, they counted it a holiday
+to be in the hall. Pierre Doucett groaned upon his settle, and Madame
+La Tour being on the lookout in the turret, Pierre Doucett's wife again
+took to wailing over him. The other women comforted her with their
+ignorant sympathy, and Marguerite sat with her back to it all. But the
+children adapted themselves to the situation, and trooped across to the
+foot of the stairway to play war. On that grim pavement door which led
+down into the keep they shot each other with merry cannonading and were
+laid out in turn on the steps.
+
+Le Rossignol passed hours of that day sitting on the broad door-sill of
+the tower. She loved to watch the fiery rain; but she was also waiting
+for a lull in the cannonading that she might release her swan. He was
+always forbidden the rooms in the tower by her lady; for he was a
+pugnacious creature, quick to strike with beak or wings any one who
+irritated him. Especially did he seem tutored in the dwarf's dislike of
+Lady Dorinda. In peaceful times when she descended to the ground and
+took a sylvan excursion outside the fort, he ruffled all his feathers
+and pursued her even from the river. Le Rossignol had a forked branch
+with which she yoked him as soon as D'Aulnay's vessels alarmed the fort.
+She also tied him by one leg under his usual shelter, the pent-house of
+the mill. He always sulked at restraint, but Le Rossignol maintained
+discipline. In the destruction of the oven and the reeling of the mill,
+Shubenacadie leaped upward and fell back flattened upon the ground. The
+fragments had scarcely settled before his mistress had him in her arms.
+At the risk of her life she dragged him across to the entrance, and sat
+desolately crumbling away between her fingers such feathers as were
+singed upon him, and sleeking his long gasping neck. She swallowed
+piteously with suspense, but could not bring herself to examine his
+body. He had his feet; he had his wings; and finally he sat up of his
+own accord, and quavered some slight remark about the explosion.
+
+"What ails thee?" exclaimed the dwarf indignantly. "Thou great coward!
+To lie down and gasp and sicken my heart for the singeing of a few
+feathers!"
+
+She boxed the place where a swan's ear should be, and Shubenacadie bit
+her. It was a serene and happy moment for both of them. Le Rossignol
+opened the door and pushed him in. Shubenacadie stood awkwardly with his
+feet sprawled on the hall pavement, and looked at the scenes to which
+his mistress introduced him. He noticed Marguerite, and hissed at her.
+
+"Be still, madman," admonished the dwarf. "Thou art an intruder here.
+The peasants will drive thee up chimney. Low-born people, when they get
+into good quarters, always try to put their betters out."
+
+Shubenacadie waddled on, scarcely recovered from the prostration of his
+fright, and inclined to hold the inmates of the tower accountable for
+it. Marie had just left Pierre Doucett, and his nurses were so busy with
+him that the swan was not detected until he scattered the children from
+the stairs.
+
+"Now, Mademoiselle Nightingale," said Zelie, coming heavily across the
+flags, "have we not enough strange cattle in this tower, that you must
+bring that creature in against my lady's orders?"
+
+"He shall not stand out there under D'Aulnay's guns. Besides, Madame
+Marie hath need of him," declared Le Rossignol impudently. "She would
+have me ride to D'Aulnay's camp and bring her word how many men have
+fallen there to-day."
+
+Zelie shivered through her indignation.
+
+"Do you tell me such a tale, when you were shut in the turret for that
+very sin?"
+
+"Sin that is sin in peace is virtue in war," responded Le Rossignol.
+"Mount, Shubenacadie."
+
+"My lady will have his neck, wrung," threatened Zelie.
+
+"She dare not. The chimney will tumble in. The fort will be taken."
+
+"Art thou working against us?" demanded the maid wrathfully.
+
+"Why should I work for you? You should, indeed, work for me. Pick me up
+this swan and carry him to the top of the stairs."
+
+"I will not do it!" cried Zelie, revolting through every atom of her
+ample bulk. "Do I want to be lifted over the turret like thistledown?"
+
+The dwarf laughed, and caught her swan by the back of his neck. With
+webbed toes and beating wings he fought every step; but she pulled
+herself up by the balustrade and dragged him along. His bristling
+plumage scraped the upper floor until he and his wrath were shut within
+the dwarf's chamber.
+
+"Naught but muscle and bone and fire and flax went to the making of that
+stunted wight," mused Zelie, setting her knuckles in her hips. "What a
+pity that she escapes powder and ball, when poor Pierre Doucett is shot
+down!--a man with wife and child, and useful to my lady besides."
+
+It was easy for Claude La Tour's widow to fill her idleness with visions
+of political alliance, but when D'Aulnay de Charnisay began to batter
+the walls round her ears, her common sense resumed sway. She could be of
+no use outside her apartment, so she took her meals there, trembling,
+but in her fashion resolute and courageous. The crash of cannon-shot was
+forever associated with her first reception in Acadia. Therefore this
+siege was a torture to her memory as well as a peril to her body. The
+tower had no more sheltered place, however, than Lady Dorinda's room.
+Zelie had orders to wait upon her with strict attention. The cannonading
+dying away as darkness lifted its wall between the opposed forces, she
+hoped for such sleep as could be had in a besieged place, and waited
+Zelie's knock. War, like a deluge, may drive people who detest each
+other into endurable contact; and when, without even a warning stroke on
+the panel, Le Rossignol slipped in as nimbly as a spider, Lady Dorinda
+felt no such indignation as she would have felt in ordinary times.
+
+"May I sit by your fire, your highness?" sweetly asked the dwarf. Lady
+Dorinda held out a finger to indicate the chimney-side and to stay
+further progress. The sallow and corpulent woman gazed at the beak-faced
+atom.
+
+"It hath been repeated a thousand times, but I will say again I am no
+highness."
+
+Le Rossignol took the rebuke as a bird might have taken it, her bright
+round eyes reflecting steadily the overblown mortal opposite. She had
+never called Lady Dorinda anything except "her highness." The dullest
+soldier grinned at the apt sarcastic title. When Marie brought her to
+account for this annoyance, she explained that she could not call Lady
+Dorinda anything else. Was a poor dwarf to be punished because people
+made light of every word she used? Yet this innocent creature took a
+pleasure of her own in laying the term like an occasional lash on the
+woman who so despised her. Le Rossignol sat with arms around her knees,
+on the hearth corner. Lady Dorinda in her cushioned chair chewed
+aromatic seeds.
+
+The room, like a flower garden, exhaled all its perfumes at evening.
+Bottles of essences and pots of pomade and small bags of powders were
+set out, for the luxurious use of its inmate when Zelie prepared her for
+the night. Le Rossignol enjoyed these scents. The sweet-odored
+atmosphere which clung about Lady Dorinda was her one attribute approved
+by the dwarf. Madame Marie never in any way appealed to the nose. Madame
+Marie's garments were scentless as outdoor air, and the freshness of
+outdoor air seemed to belong to them. Le Rossignol liked to have her
+senses stimulated, and she counted it a lucky thing to sit by that deep
+fire and smell the heavy fragrance, of the room. A branched silver
+candlestick held two lighted tapers on the dressing-table. The bed
+curtains were parted, revealing a huge expanse of resting-place within;
+and heavy folds shut the starlit-world from the windows. One could here
+forget that the oven was blown up, and the ground of the fort plowed
+with shot and sown with mortar.
+
+"Is there no fire in the hall?" inquired Lady Dorinda.
+
+"It hath all the common herd from the barracks around it," explained Le
+Rossignol. "And Pierre Doucett is stretched there, groaning over the
+loss of half his face."
+
+"Where is Madame La Tour?"
+
+"She hath gone out on the walls since the firing stopped. Our gunner in
+the turret told me that two guns are to be moved back before moonrise
+into the bastions they were taken from. Madame Marie is afraid D'Aulnay
+will try to encompass the fort to-night."
+
+"And what business took thee into the turret?"
+
+"Your highness"--
+
+"Ladyship," corrected Lady Dorinda.
+
+--"I like to see D'Aulnay's torches," proceeded the dwarf, without
+accepting correction. "His soldiers are burying the dead over there. He
+needs a stone tower with walls seven feet thick like ours, does
+D'Aulnay."
+
+Lady Dorinda put another seed in her mouth, and reflected that Zelie's
+attendance was tardier than usual. She inquired with shadings of
+disapproval,--
+
+"Is Madame La Tour's woman also on the walls?"
+
+"Not Zelie, your highness"--
+
+"Ladyship," insisted Lady Dorinda.
+
+"That heavy-foot Zelie," chuckled the dwarf, deaf to correction, "a fine
+bit of thistledown would she be to blow around the walls. Zelie is
+laying beds for the children, and she hath come to words with the cook
+through trying to steal eggs to roast for them. We have but few wild
+fowl eggs in store."
+
+"Tell her that I require her," said Lady Dorinda, fretted by the
+irregularities of life in a siege. "Madame La Tour will account with her
+if she neglects her rightful duties."
+
+Le Rossignol crawled reluctantly up to stand in her dots of moccasins.
+
+"Yes, your highness"--
+
+"Ladyship," repeated Claude La Tour's widow, to whom the sting was
+forever fresh, reminding her of a once possible regency.
+
+"But have you heard about the woman that was brought into the fortress
+before Madame Bronck went away?"
+
+"What of her?"
+
+"The Swiss says she comes from D'Aulnay."
+
+"It is Zelie that I require," said Lady Dorinda with discouraging
+brevity. Le Rossignol dropped her face, appearing to give round-eyed
+speculation to the fire.
+
+"It is believed that D'Aulnay sent by that strange woman a box of poison
+into the fort to work secret mischief. But," added the dwarf, looking up
+in open perplexity, "that box cannot now be found."
+
+"Perhaps you can tell what manner of box it was," said Lady Dorinda with
+irony, though a dull red was startled into her cheeks.
+
+"Madame Marie says it was a tiny box of oak, thick set with nails. She
+would not alarm the fort, so she had search made for it in Madame
+Bronck's name."
+
+Lady Dorinda, incredulous, but trembling, divined at once that the dwarf
+had hid that coffer in her chest. Perhaps the dwarf had procured the
+hand and replaced some valuable of Madame Bronck's with it. She longed
+to have the little beast shaken and made to confess. While she was
+considering what she could do with dignity, Zelie rapped and was
+admitted, and Le Rossignol escaped into outside darkness.
+
+Hours passed, however, before Shubenacadie's mistress sought his
+society. She undressed in her black cell which had but one loophole
+looking toward the north, and taking the swan upon her bed tried to
+reconcile him to blankets. But Shubenacadie protested with both wings
+against a woolly covering which was not in his experience. The times
+were disjointed for him. He took no interest in Lady Dorinda and the
+box of Madame Bronck, and scratched the pallet with his toes and the
+nail at the end of his bill. But Le Rossignol pushed him down and
+pressed her confidences upon this familiar.
+
+"So her highness threw that box out into the fort. I had to shiver and
+wait until Zelie left her, but I knew she would choose to rid herself of
+it through a window, for she would scarce burn it, she hath not
+adroitness to drop it in the hall, show it to Madame Marie she would
+not, and keep it longer to poison her court gowns she dare not. She hath
+found it before this. Her looking-glass was the only place apter than
+that chest. I would give much to know what her yellow highness thought
+of that hand. Here, mine own Shubenacadie, I have brought thee this
+sweet biscuit moistened with water. Eat, and scratch me not.
+
+"And little did its studding of nails avail the box, for the fall split
+it in three pieces; and I hid them under rubbish, for mortar and stones
+are plentiful down there. You should have seen my shade stretch under
+the moon like a tall hobgoblin. The nearest sentinel on the wall
+challenges me. 'Who is there?' 'Le Rossignol.' 'What are you doing?'
+'Looking: for my swan's yoke.' Then he laughs--little knowing how I
+meant to serve his officer. The Hollandais mummy hath been of more use
+to me than trinkets. I frightened her highness with it, and now it is
+set to torment the Swiss. Let me tell thee, Shubenacadie: punishment
+comes even on a swan who would stretch up his neck and stand taller than
+his mistress. Wert thou not blown up with the oven? Hide thy head and
+take warning."
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN POWERS.
+
+
+The dwarf's report about Klussman forced Madame La Tour to watch the
+strange girl; but Marguerite seemed to take no notice of any soldier who
+came and went in the hall. As for the Swiss, he carried trouble on his
+self-revealing face, but not treachery. Klussman camped at night on the
+floor with other soldiers off guard; screens and the tall settles being
+placed in a row between this military bivouac and women and children of
+the household protected near the stairs. He awoke as often as the guard
+was changed, and when dawn-light instead of moonlight appeared with the
+last relief, he sprang up, and took the breastplate which had been laid
+aside for his better rest. Out of its hollow fell Jonas Bronck's hand,
+bare and crouching with stiff fingers on the pavement. The soldiers
+about to lie down laughed at themselves and Klussman for recoiling from
+it, and fury succeeded pallor in his blond face.
+
+"Did you do that?" he demanded of the men, but before they could utter
+denials, his suspicion leaped the settles. Spurning Jonas Bronck's
+treasured fragment with his boot in a manner which Antonia could never
+have forgiven, Klussman sent it to the hearth and strode after it. He
+had not far to look for Marguerite. As his eye traveled recklessly into
+the women's camp, he encountered her beside him, sitting on the floor
+behind a settle and matching the red of a burning tree trunk with the
+red of her bruised eyelids.
+
+"Did you put that in my breastplate?" said Klussman, pointing to the
+hand as it lay palm upwards. Marguerite shuddered and burst out crying.
+This had been her employment much of the night, but the nervous fit of
+childish weeping swept away all of Klussman's self-control.
+
+"No; no;" she repeated. "You think I do everything that is horrible."
+And she sobbed upon her hands.
+
+Klussman stooped down and tossed the hand like an escaped coal behind
+the log. As he stooped he said,--
+
+"I don't think that. Don't cry. If you cry I will shoot myself."
+
+Marguerite looked up and saw his helplessness in his face. He had sought
+her before, but only with reproaches. Now his resentment was broken.
+Twice had the dwarfs mischief thrown Marguerite on his compassion, and
+thereby diminished his resistance to her. Jonas Bronck's hand, in its
+red-hot seclusion behind the log, writhed and smoked, discharging its
+grosser parts up the chimney's shaft. Unseen, it lay a wire-like outline
+of bone; unseen, it became a hand of fairy ashes, trembling in every
+filmy atom; finally an ember fell upon it, and where a hand had been
+some bits of lime lay in a white glow.
+
+Klussman went out and mounted one of the bastions, where the gunners
+were already preparing for work. The weather had changed in the night,
+and the sky seemed immeasurably lifted while yet filled with the
+uncertainties of dawn. Fundy Bay revealed more and more of its clean
+blue-emerald level, and far eastward the glassy water shaded up to a
+flushing of pink. Smoke rose from the mess fires in D'Aulnay's camp. The
+first light puff of burnt powder sprung from his batteries, and the
+artillery duel again began.
+
+"If we had but enough soldiers to make a sally," said Madame La Tour to
+her officer, as she also came for an instant to the bastion, "we might
+take his batteries. Oh, for monsieur to appear on the bay with a stout
+shipload of men."
+
+"It is time he came," said the Swiss.
+
+"Yes, we shall see him or have news of him soon."
+
+In the tumult of Klussman's mind Jonas Bronck's hand never again came
+uppermost. He cared nothing and thought nothing about that weird
+fragment, in the midst of living disaster. It had merely been the
+occasion of his surrendering to Marguerite. He determined that when La
+Tour returned and the siege was raised, if he survived he would take his
+wife and go to some new colony. Live without her he could not. Yet
+neither could he reespouse her in Fort St. John, where he had himself
+openly denounced her.
+
+Spring that day leaped forward to a semblance of June. The sun poured
+warmth; the very air renewed life. But to Klussman it was the brilliancy
+of passing delirium. He did not feel when gun-metal touched his hands.
+The sound of the incoming tide, which could be heard betwixt artillery
+boomings, and the hint of birds which that sky gave, were mute against
+his thoughts.
+
+Though D'Aulnay's loss was visibly heavy, it proved also an ill day for
+the fort. The southeast bastion was raked by a fire which disabled the
+guns and killed three men. Five others were wounded at various posts.
+The long spring twilight sunk through an orange horizon rim and filled
+up the measure which makes night, before firing reluctantly stopped.
+Marie had ground opened near the powder magazine to make a temporary
+grave for her three dead. They had no families. She held a taper in her
+hand and read a service over them. One bastion and so many men being
+disabled, a sentinel was posted in the turret after the gunners
+descended. The Swiss took this duty on himself, and felt his way up the
+pitch-black stairs. He had not seen Marguerite in the hall when he
+hurriedly took food, but she was safe in the tower. No woman ventured
+out in the storm of shot. The barracks were charred and battered.
+
+As Klussman reached the turret door he exclaimed against some human
+touch, but caught his breath and surrendered himself to Marguerite's
+arms, holding her soft body and smoothing her silk-stranded hair.
+
+"I heard you say you would come up here," murmured Marguerite. "And the
+door was unlocked."
+
+"Where have you been since morning?"
+
+"Behind a screen in the great hall. The women are cruel."
+
+Klussman hated the women. He kissed his wife with the first kiss since
+their separation, and all the toils of war failed to unman him like that
+kiss.
+
+"But there was that child!" he groaned.
+
+"That was not my child," said Marguerite.
+
+"The baby brought here with you!"
+
+"It was not mine."
+
+"Whose was it?"
+
+"It was a drunken soldier's. His wife died. They made me take care of
+it," said Marguerite resentfully.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me that?" exclaimed Klussman. "You made me lie to
+my lady!"
+
+Marguerite had no answer. He understood her reticence, and the
+degradation which could not be excused.
+
+"Who made you take care of it?"
+
+"He did."
+
+"D'Aulnay?" Klussman uttered through his teeth.
+
+"Yes; I don't like him."
+
+"_I_ like him!" said the savage Swiss.
+
+"He is cruel," complained Marguerite, "and selfish."
+
+The Swiss pressed his cheek to her soft cheek.
+
+"I never was selfish and cruel to thee," he said, weakly.
+
+"No, you never were."
+
+"Then why," burst out the husband afresh, "did you leave me to follow
+that beast of prey?"
+
+Marguerite brought a sob from her breast which was like a sword through
+Klussman. He smoothed and smoothed her hair.
+
+"But what did I ever do to thee, Marguerite?"
+
+"I always liked you best," she said. "But he was a great lord. The women
+in barracks are so hateful, and a common soldier is naught."
+
+"You would be the lady of a seignior," hissed Klussman.
+
+"Thou knowest I was fit for that," retorted Marguerite with spirit.
+
+"I know thou wert. It is marrying me that has been thy ruin." He groaned
+with his head hanging.
+
+"We are not ruined yet," she said, "if you care for me."
+
+"That was a stranger child?" he repeated.
+
+"All the train knew it to be a motherless child. He had no right to
+thrust it on me."
+
+"I demand no testimony of D'Aulnay's followers," said Klussman roughly.
+
+He let her go from his arms, and stepped to the battlements. His gaze
+moved over the square of the fortress, and eastward to that blur of
+whiteness which hinted the enemy's tents, the hint being verified by a
+light or two.
+
+"I have a word to tell you," said Marguerite, leaning beside her
+husband.
+
+"I have this to tell thee," said the Swiss. "We must leave Acadia." His
+arm again fondled her, and he comforted his sore spirit with an
+instant's thought of home and peace somewhere.
+
+"Yes. We can go to Penobscot," she said.
+
+"Penobscot?" he repeated with suspicion.
+
+"The king will give you a grant of Penobscot."
+
+"The king will give it to--me?"
+
+"Yes. And it is a great seigniory."
+
+"How do you know the king will do that?"
+
+"He told me to tell you; he promised it."
+
+"The king? You never saw the king."
+
+"No."
+
+"D'Aulnay?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I would I had him by the throat!" burst out Klussman. Marguerite leaned
+her cheek on the stone and sighed. The bay seemed full of salty spice.
+It was a night in which the human soul must beat against casements to
+break free and roam the blessed dark. All of spring was in the air.
+Directly overhead stood the north star, with slow constellations
+wheeling in review before him.
+
+"So D'Aulnay sent you to spy on my lord, as my lord believed?"
+
+"You shall not call me a spy. I came to my husband. I hate him," she
+added in a resentful burst. "He made me walk the marshes, miles and
+miles alone, carrying that child."
+
+"Why the child?"
+
+"Because the people from St. John would be sure to pity it."
+
+"And what word did he send you to tell me?" demanded Klussman. "Give me
+that word."
+
+Marguerite waited with her face downcast.
+
+"It was kind of him to think of me," said the Swiss; "and to send you
+with the message!"
+
+She felt mocked, and drooped against the wall. And in the midst of his
+scorn he took her face in his hands with a softness he could not master.
+
+"Give me the word," he repeated. Marguerite drew his neck down and
+whispered, but before she finished whispering Klussman flung her against
+the cannon with an oath.
+
+"I thought it would be, betray my lord's fortress to D'Aulnay de
+Charnisay! Go down stairs, Marguerite Klussman. When I have less matter
+in hand, I will flog thee! Hast thou no wit at all? To come from a man
+who broke faith with thee, and offer his faith to me! Bribe me with
+Penobscot to betray St. John to him!"
+
+Marguerite sat on the floor. She whispered, gasping,--
+
+"Tell not the whole fortress."
+
+Klussman ceased to talk, but his heels rung on the stone as he paced the
+turret. He felt himself grow old as silence became massive betwixt his
+wife and him. The moon rose, piercing the cannon embrasure, and showed
+Marguerite weeping against the wall. The mass of silence drove him
+resistless before her will. That soft and childlike shape did not
+propose treason to him. He understood that she thought only of herself
+and him. It was her method of bringing profit out of the times. He heard
+his relief stumble at the foot of the turret stairs, and went down the
+winding darkness to stop and send the soldier back to bed.
+
+"I am not sleepy," said Klussman. "I slept last night. Go and rest till
+daybreak." And the man willingly went. Marguerite had not moved a fold
+of her gown when her husband again came into the lighted tower. The
+Swiss lifted her up and made her stand beside him while he stanched her
+tears.
+
+"You hurt me when you threw me against the cannon," she said.
+
+"I was rough. But I am too foolish fond to hold anger. It has worn me
+out to be hard on thee. I am not the man I was."
+
+Marguerite clung around him. He dumbly felt his misfortune in being
+thralled by a nature of greater moral crudity than his own. But she was
+his portion in the world.
+
+"You flung me against the cannon because I wanted you made a seignior."
+
+"It was because D'Aulnay wanted me made a traitor."
+
+"What is there to do, indeed?" murmured Marguerite. "He said if you
+would take the sentinels off the wall on the entrance side of the fort,
+at daybreak any morning, he will be ready to scale that wall."
+
+"But how will he know I have taken the sentinels off?"
+
+"You must hold up a ladder in your hands."
+
+"The tower is between that side of the fort and D'Aulnay's camp. No one
+would see me standing with a ladder in my hands."
+
+"When you set the ladder against the outside wall, it is all you have to
+do, except to take me with you as you climb down. It is their affair to
+see the signal."
+
+"So D'Aulnay plans an ambush between us and the river? And suppose I did
+all that and the enemy failed to see the signal? I should go down there
+to be hung, or my lady would have me thrown into the keep here, and
+perhaps shot. I ought to be shot."
+
+"They will see the signal," insisted Marguerite. "I know all that is to
+be done. He made me say it over until I tired of it. You must mount the
+wall where the gate is: that side of the fort toward the river, the camp
+being on another side."
+
+Klussman again smoothed her hair and argued with her as with a child.
+
+"I cannot betray my lady. You see how madame trusts me."
+
+She grieved against his hard breastplate with insistence which pierced
+even that.
+
+"I am indeed not fit to be thought on beside the lady!"
+
+"I would do anything for thee but betray my lady."
+
+"And when you have held her fort for her will she advance you by so much
+as a handful of land?"
+
+"I was made lieutenant since the last siege."
+
+"But now you may be a seignior with a holding of your own," repeated
+Marguerite. So they talked the night away. She showed him on one hand a
+future of honor and plenty which he ought not to withhold from her; and
+on the other, a wandering forth to endless hardships. D'Aulnay had
+worked them harm; but this was in her mind an argument that he should
+now work them good. Being a selfish lord, powerful and cruel, he could
+demand this service as the condition of making her husband master of
+Penobscot; and the service itself she regarded as a small one compared
+to her lone tramping of the marshes to La Tour's stockade. D'Aulnay was
+certain to take Fort St. John some time. He had the king and all France
+behind him; the La Tours had nobody. Marguerite was a woman who could
+see no harm in advancing her husband by the downfall of his mere
+employers. Her husband must be advanced. She saw herself lady of
+Penobscot.
+
+The Easter dawn began to grow over the world. Klussman remembered what
+day it was, and lifted her up to look over the battlements at light
+breaking from the east.
+
+Marguerite turned her head from point to point of the dewy world once
+more rising out of chaos. She showed her husband a new trench and a line
+of breastworks between the fort and the river. These had been made in
+the night, and might have been detected by him if he had guarded his
+post. The jutting of rocks probably hid them from sentinels below.
+
+"D'Aulnay is coming nearer," said the Swiss, looking with haggard
+indifferent eyes at these preparations, and an occasional head venturing
+above the fresh ridge. Marguerite threw her arms around her husband's
+neck, and hung on him with kisses.
+
+"Come on, then," he said, speaking with the desperate conviction of a
+man who has lost himself. "I have to do it. You will see me hang for
+this, but I'll do it for you."
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+A SOLDIER.
+
+
+Marie felt herself called through the deepest depths of sleep, and sat
+up in the robe of fur which she had wrapped around her for her night
+bivouac. There was some alarm at her door. The enemy might be on the
+walls. She tingled with the intense return of life, and was opening the
+door without conscious motion. Nobody stood outside in the hall except
+the dwarf, whose aureole of foxy hair surrounded features pinched by
+anxiety.
+
+"Madame Marie--Madame Marie! The Swiss has gone to give up the fort to
+D'Aulnay."
+
+"Has gone?"
+
+"He came down from the turret with his wife, who persuaded him. I
+listened all night on the stairs. D'Aulnay is ready to mount the wall
+when he gives the signal. I had to hide me until the woman and the Swiss
+passed below. They are now going to the wall to give the signal."
+
+Through Marie passed that worst shock of all human experience. To see
+your trusted ally transmuted into your secret most deadly foe, sickens
+the heart as death surely cannot sicken it. Like many a pierced wretch
+who has collapsed suddenly into the dust while the stab yet held the
+knife, she whispered feebly,--
+
+"He could not do that!"
+
+The stern blackness of her eyes seemed to annihilate all the rest of her
+face. Was rock itself stable under-foot? Why should one care to prolong
+life, when life only proved how cruel and worthless are the people for
+whom we labor?
+
+"Madame Marie, he is now doing it. He was to hold up a ladder on the
+wall."
+
+"Which wall?"
+
+"This one--where the gate is."
+
+Marie looked through the glass in her door which opened toward the
+battlements, rubbed aside moisture, and looked again. While one breath
+could be drawn Klussman was standing in the dawn-light with a ladder
+raised overhead. She caught up a pair of long pistols which had lain
+beside her all night.
+
+"Rouse the men below--quick!" she said to Le Rossignol, and ran up the
+steps to the wall. No sentinels were there. The Swiss had already
+dropped down the ladder outside and was out of sight, and she heard the
+running, climbing feet of D'Aulnay's men coming to take the advantage
+afforded them. Sentinels in the other two bastions turned with surprise
+at her cry. They had seen Klussman relieving the guard, but his subtle
+action escaped their watch-worn eyes. They only noticed that he had the
+strange woman with him.
+
+D'Aulnay's men were at the foot of the wall planting ladders. They were
+swarming up. Marie met them with the sentinels joining her and the
+soldiers rushing from below. The discharge of firearms, the clash of
+opposing metals, the thuds of falling bodies, cries, breathless
+struggling, clubbed weapons sweeping the battlements--filled one vast
+minute. Ladders were thrown back to the stones, and D'Aulnay's repulsed
+men were obliged to take once more to their trench, carrying the stunned
+and wounded. A cannon was trained on their breastworks, and St. John
+belched thunder and fire down the path of retreat. The Swiss's treason
+had been useless to the enemy. The people of the fort saw him hurried
+more like a prisoner than an ally towards D'Aulnay's camp, his wife
+beside him.
+
+"Oh, Klussman," thought the lady of St. John, as she turned to station
+guards at every exposed point and to continue that day's fight, "you
+knew in another way what it is to be betrayed. How could you put this
+anguish upon me?"
+
+The furious and powder-grimed men, her faithful soldiers, hooted at the
+Swiss from their bastions, not knowing what a heart he carried with
+him. He turned once and made them a gesture of defiance, more pathetic
+than any wail for pardon, but they saw only the treason of the man, and
+shot at him with a good will. Through smoke and ball-plowed earth,
+D'Aulnay's soldiers ran into camp, and his batteries answered. Artillery
+echoes were scattered far through the woods, into the very depths of
+which that untarnished Easter weather seemed to stoop, coaxing growths
+from the swelling ground.
+
+Advancing and pausing with equal caution, a man came out of the northern
+forest toward St. John River. No part of his person was covered with
+armor. And instead of the rich and formal dress then worn by the
+Huguenots even in the wilderness, he wore a complete suit of hunter's
+buckskin which gave his supple muscles a freedom beautiful to see. His
+young face was freshly shaved, showing the clean fine texture of the
+skin. For having nearly finished his journey from the head of Fundy
+Bay, he had that morning prepared himself to appear what he was in Fort
+St. John--a man of good birth and nurture. His portables were rolled
+tightly in a blanket and strapped to his shoulders. A hunting-knife and
+two long pistols armed him. His head was covered with a cap of beaver
+skin, and he wore moccasins. Not an ounce of unnecessary weight hampered
+him.
+
+The booming of cannon had met him so far off on that day's march that he
+understood well the state of siege in which St. John would be found; and
+long before there was any glimpse of D'Aulnay's tents and earthworks,
+the problem of getting into the fort occupied his mind. For D'Aulnay's
+guards might be extended in every direction. But the first task in hand
+was to cross the river. One or two old canoes could be seen on the other
+side; cast-off property of the Etchemin Indians who had broken camp.
+Being on the wrong bank these were as useless to him as dream canoes.
+But had a ferryman stood in waiting, it was perilous to cross in open
+day, within possible sight of the enemy. So the soldier moved carefully
+down to a shelter of rocks below the falls, opposite that place where
+Van Corlaer had watched the tide sweep up and drown the rapids. From
+this post he got a view of La Tour's small ship, yet anchored and safe
+at its usual moorings. No human life was visible about it.
+
+"The ship would afford me good quarters," said the soldier to himself,
+"had I naught to do but rest. But I must get into the fort this night;
+and how is it to be done?"
+
+All the thunders of war, and all the effort and danger to be undertaken,
+could not put his late companions out of his mind. He lay with hands
+clasped under his head, and looked back at the trees visibly leafing in
+the warm Easter air. They were much to this man in all their differences
+and habits, their whisperings and silences. They had marched with him
+through countless lone long reaches, passing him from one to another
+with friendly recommendation. It hurt him to notice a broken or deformed
+one among them; but one full and nobly equipped from root to top crown
+was Nature's most triumphant shout. There is a glory of the sun and a
+glory of the moon, but to one who loves them there is another glory of
+the trees.
+
+"In autumn," thought the soldier, "I have seen light desert the skies
+and take to the trees and finally spread itself beneath them, a material
+glow, flake on flake. But in the spring, before their secret is spoken,
+when they throb, and restrain the force driving through them, then have
+I most comfort with them, for they live as I live."
+
+Shadows grew on the river, and ripples were arrested and turned back to
+flow up stream. There was but one way for him to cross the river, and
+that was to swim. And the best time to swim was when the tide brimmed
+over the current and trembled at its turn, a broad and limpid expanse
+of water, cold, dangerous, repellent to the chilled plunging body; but
+safer and more easily paddled through than when the current, angular as
+a skeleton, sought the bay at its lowest ebb.
+
+Fortunately tide and twilight favored the young soldier together. He
+stripped himself and bound his weapons and clothes in one tight packet
+on his head. At first it was easy to tread water: the salt brine upheld
+him. But in the middle of the river it was wise to sink close to the
+surface and carry as small a ripple as possible; for D'Aulnay's guards
+might be posted nearer than he knew. The water, deceptive at its outer
+edges in iridescent reflection of warm clouds, was cold as glacier
+drippings in midstream. He swam with desperate calmness, guarding
+himself by every stroke against cramp. The bundle oppressed him. He
+would have cast it off, but dared not change by a thought of variation
+the routine of his struggle. Hardy and experienced woodsman as he was,
+he staggered out on the other side and lay a space in the sand, too
+exhausted to move.
+
+The tide began to recede, leaving stranded seaweed in green or brown
+streaks, the color of which could be determined only by the dullness or
+vividness of its shine through the dusk. As soon as he was able, the
+soldier sat up, shook out his blanket and rolled himself in it. The
+first large stars were trembling out. He lay and smelled gunpowder
+mingling with the saltiness of the bay and the evening incense of the
+earth.
+
+There was a moose's lip in his wallet, the last spoil of his wilderness
+march, taken from game shot the night before and cooked at his morning
+fire. He ate it, still lying in the sand. Lights began to appear in the
+direction of D'Aulnay's camp, but the fort held itself dark and close.
+He thought of the grassy meadow rivulet which was always empty at low
+tide, and that it might afford him some shelter in his nearer approach
+to the fort. He dressed and put on his weapons, but left everything else
+except the blanket lying where he had landed. In this venture little
+could be carried except the man and his life. The frontier graveyard
+outlined itself dimly against the expanse of landscape. The new-turned
+clay therein gave him a start. He crept over the border of stones, went
+close, and leaned down to measure the length of the fresh grave with his
+outstretched hands. A sigh of relief which was as strong as a sob burst
+from the soldier.
+
+"It is only that child we found at the stockade," he murmured, and
+stepped on among the older mounds and leaped the opposite boundary, to
+descend that dip of land which the tide invaded. Water yet shone there
+on the grass. Too impatient to wait until the tide ran low, he found the
+log, and moved carefully forward, through increasing dusk, on hands and
+knees within closer range of the fort. Remembering that his buckskin
+might make an inviting spot on the slope, he wrapped his dark blanket
+around him. The chorus of insect life and of water creatures, which had
+scarcely been tuned for the season, began to raise experimental notes.
+And now a splash like the leap of a fish came from the river. The moon
+would be late; he thought of that with satisfaction. There was a little
+mist blown aloft over the stars, yet the night did not promise to be
+cloudy.
+
+The whole environment of Fort St. John was so familiar to the young
+soldier that he found no unusual stone in his way. That side toward the
+garden might be the side least exposed to D'Aulnay's forces at night. If
+he could reach the southwest bastion unseen, he could ask for a ladder.
+There was every likelihood of his being shot before the sentinels
+recognized him, yet he might be more fortunate. Balancing these chances,
+he moved toward that angle of shadow which the fortress lifted against
+the southern sky. Long rays of light within the walls were thrown up and
+moved on darkness like the pulsing motions of the aurora.
+
+"Who goes there?" said a voice.
+
+The soldier lay flat against the earth. He had imagined the browsing
+sound of cattle near him. But a standing figure now condensed itself
+from the general dusk, some distance up the slope betwixt him and the
+bastion. The challenger was entirely apart from the fort. As he
+flattened himself in breathless waiting for a shot which might follow, a
+clatter began at his very ears, some animal bounded over him with a
+glancing cut of its hoof, and galloped toward the trench below St.
+John's gate. He heard another exclamation,--this rapid traveler had
+probably startled another sentinel. The man who had challenged him
+laughed softly in the darkness. All the Sable Island ponies must be
+loose upon the slope. D'Aulnay's men had taken possession of the stable
+and cattle, and the wild and frightened ponies were scattered. As his
+ear lay so near the ground the soldier heard other little hoofs startled
+to action, and a snort or two from suspicious nostrils. He crept away
+from the sentinel without further challenge. It was evident that
+D'Aulnay had encompassed the fort with guards.
+
+The young soldier crept slowly down the rocky hillock, avoided another
+sentinel, and, after long caution and self-restraint and polishing the
+earth with his buckskin, crawled into the empty trench. The Sable Island
+ponies continually helped him. They were so nervous and so agile that
+the sentinels ceased to watch moving shadows.
+
+The soldier looked up at St. John and its tower, knowing that he must
+enter in some manner before the moon rose. He dreaded the red brightness
+of moon-dawn, when guards whom he could discern against the stony ascent
+might detect his forehead above the breastwork. Behind him stretched an
+alluvial flat to the river's sands. The tide was running swiftly out,
+and under starlight its swirls and long muscular sweeps could be
+followed by a practiced eye.
+
+As the soldier glanced warily in every direction, two lights left
+D'Aulnay's camp and approached him, jerking and flaring in the hands of
+men who were evidently walking over irregular ground. They might be
+coming directly to take possession of the trench. But why should they
+proclaim their intention with torches to the batteries of Fort St. John?
+He looked around for some refuge from the advancing circle of smoky
+shine, and moved backwards along the bottom of the trench. The light
+stretched over and bridged him, leaving him in a stream of deep shadow,
+protected by the breastwork from sentinels above. He could therefore
+lift a cautious eye at the back of the trench, and scan the group now
+moving betwixt him and the river. There were seven persons, only one of
+whom strode the stones with reckless feet. This man's hands were tied
+behind his back, and a rope was noosed around his neck and held at the
+other end by a soldier.
+
+"It is Klussman, our Swiss!" flashed through the soldier in the trench,
+with a mighty throb of rage and shame, and anxiety for the lady in the
+fort. If Klussman had been taken prisoner, the guns of St. John would
+surely speak in his behalf when he was about to be hanged before its
+very gate. Such a parade of the act must be discovered on the walls. It
+was plain that Klussman had deserted to D'Aulnay, and was now enjoying
+D'Aulnay's gratitude.
+
+"The tree that doth best front the gates," said one of the men, pointing
+with his torch to an elm in the alluvial soil: "my lord said the tree
+that doth best front the gates."
+
+"That hath no fit limbs," objected another.
+
+"He said the tree that doth best front the gates," insisted the first
+man. "Besides this one, what shrub hereabouts is tall enough for our
+use?"
+
+They moved down towards the elm. A stool carried by one man showed its
+long legs grotesquely behind his back. There were six persons besides
+the prisoner, all soldiers except one, who wore the coarse, long,
+cord-girdled gown of a Capuchin. His hood was drawn over his face, and
+the torches imperfectly showed that he was of the bare-footed order and
+wore only sandals. He held up a crucifix and walked close beside
+Klussman. But the Swiss gazed all around the dark world which he was so
+soon to leave, and up at the fortress he had attempted to betray, and
+never once at the murmuring friar.
+
+The soldier in the trench heard a breathing near him, and saw that a
+number of the ponies, drawn by the light, had left their fitful grazing
+and were venturing step by step beyond the end of the trench. Some
+association of this scene with soldiers who used to feed them at night,
+after a hard day of drawing home the winter logs, may have stirred
+behind their shaggy foreheads. He took his hunting-knife with sudden and
+desperate intention, threw off his moccasins, cut his leggins short at
+the middle of the leg, and silently divided his blanket into strips.
+
+Preparations were going forward under the elm. One of the soldiers
+climbed the tree and crept out upon an arched limb, catching the rope
+end thrown up to him. Both torches were given to one man, that all the
+others might set themselves to the task. Klussman stood upon the stool,
+which they had brought for the purpose from the cook's galley in one of
+their ships. His blond face, across which all his thoughts used to
+parade, was cast up by the torches like a stiffened mask, hopeless yet
+fearless in its expression.
+
+"Come, Father Vincent," said the man who had made the knot, sliding down
+the tree. "This is a Huguenot fellow, and good words are lost on him. I
+wonder that my lord let him have a friar to comfort him."
+
+"Retire, Father Vincent," said the men around the stool, with more
+roughness than they would have shown to a favorite confessor of
+D'Aulnay's. The Capuchin turned and walked toward the trench.
+
+The soldier in the trench could not hear what they said, but he had time
+for no further thought of Klussman. He had been watching the ponies
+with the conviction that his own life hung on what he might drive them
+to do. They alternately snuffed at Klussman's presence and put their
+noses down to feel for springing grass. Before they could start and
+wheel from the friar, the soldier had thrown his hunting-knife. It
+struck the hind leg of the nearest pony and a scampering and snorting
+hurricane swept down past the elm. Klussman's stool and the torch-bearer
+were rolled together. Both lights were stamped out by the panic-struck
+men, who thought a sally had been made from the fort. Father Vincent saw
+the knife thrown, and turned back, but the man in the trench seized him
+with steel muscles and dragged him into its hollow. If the good father
+uttered cry against such violence, there was also noise under the elm,
+and the wounded pony yet galloped and snorted toward the river. The
+young soldier fastened his mouth shut with a piece of blanket, stripped
+off his capote and sandals and tied him so that he could not move.
+Having done all most securely and put the capote and sandals upon
+himself, the soldier whispered at the friar's ear an apology which must
+have amused them both,--
+
+"Pardon my roughness, good father. Perhaps you will lend me your
+clothes?"
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+THE CAMP.
+
+
+D'Aulnay's sentinels about the walls, understanding that all this
+confusion was made by a stampede of ponies, kept the silence which had
+been enjoined on them. But some stir of inquiry seemed to occur in the
+bastions. Father Vincent, lying helpless in the trench, and feeling the
+chill of lately opened earth through his shaven head and partly nude
+body, wondered if he also had met D'Aulnay's gratitude for his recent
+inquiry into D'Aulnay's fitness to receive the sacraments.
+
+"But I will tell my lord of Charnisay the truth about his sins," thought
+Father Vincent, unable to form any words with a pinioned mouth, "though
+he should go the length of procuring my death."
+
+The soldier with his buckskin covered by Father Vincent's capote stepped
+out into the starlight and turned his cowled face toward the fort. He
+intended to tell the sentinels that D'Aulnay had sent him with a message
+to the commandant of St. John. The guards, discerning his capote, would
+perhaps obey a beckoning finger, and believe that he had been charged
+with silence; for not having heard the churchman's voice he dared not
+try to imitate it, and must whisper. But that unforeseen element which
+the wisest cannot rule out of their fate halted him before he took a
+dozen steps up the hill.
+
+"Where is Father Vincent de Paris?" called some impatient person below
+the trench. Five figures coming from the tree gained distinctness as
+they advanced, but it was a new-comer who demanded again,--
+
+"Where is Father Vincent de Paris? Did he not leave the camp with you?"
+
+The soldier went down directly where his gray capote might speak for
+itself to the eye, and the man who carried the stool pointed with it
+toward the evident friar.
+
+"There stands the friar behind thee. He hath been tumbled into the
+trench, I think."
+
+"Is your affair done?"
+
+"And well done, except that some cattle ran mad among us but now, and we
+thought a sally had been made, so we put out our torches."
+
+"With your stupid din," said the messenger from camp, "you will wake up
+the guns of the fort at the very moment when Sieur D'Aulnay would send
+his truce bearer in."
+
+"I thank the saints I am not like to be used for his agent," said the
+man who had been upset with the torches, "if the walls are to be stormed
+as they were this morning."
+
+"He wants Father Vincent de Paris," said the under officer from camp.
+"Good father, you took more license in coming hither than my lord
+intended."
+
+The soldier made some murmured noise under his cowl. He walked beside
+the officer and heard one man say to another behind him,--
+
+"These holy folks have more courage than men-at-arms. My lord was minded
+to throw this one out of the ship when he sailed from Port Royal."
+
+"The Sieur D'Aulnay hath too much respect to his religion to do that,"
+answered the other.
+
+"You had best move in silence," said the officer, turning his head
+toward them, and no further words broke the march into camp. D'Aulnay's
+camp was well above the reach of high tide, yet so near the river that
+soft and regular splashings seemed encroaching on the tents. The soldier
+noticed the batteries on their height, and counted as ably as he could
+for the cowl and night dimness the number of tents holding this little
+army. Far beyond them the palpitating waters showed changeful surfaces
+on Fundy Bay.
+
+The capote was long for him. He kept his hands within the sleeves.
+Before the guard-line was passed he saw in the middle of the camp an
+open tent. A long torch stood in front of it with the point stuck in the
+ground. The floating yellow blaze showed the tent's interior, its simple
+fittings for rest, the magnificent arms and garments of its occupant,
+and first of all, D'Aulnay de Charnisay himself, sitting with a rude
+camp table in front of him. He was half muffled in a furred cloak from
+the balm of that Easter night. Papers and an ink-horn were on the table,
+and two officers stood by, receiving orders.
+
+This governor of Acadia had a triangular face with square temples and
+pointed beard, its crisp fleece also concealing his mouth except the
+thin edges of his lips. It was a handsome nervous face of black tones;
+one that kept counsel, and was not without humor. He noticed his
+subordinate approaching with the friar. The men sent to execute Klussman
+were dispersed to their tents.
+
+"The Swiss hath suffered his punishment?" he inquired.
+
+"Yes, my lord D'Aulnay. I met the soldiers returning."
+
+"Did he say anything further concerning the state of the fort?"
+
+"I know not, my lord. But I will call the men to be questioned."
+
+"Let it be. He hath probably not lied in what he told me to-day of its
+weak garrison. But help is expected soon with La Tour. Perhaps he told
+more to the friar in their last conference."
+
+"Heretics do not confess, my lord."
+
+"True enough; but these churchmen have inquisitive minds which go into
+men's affairs without confession," said the governor of Acadia with a
+smile which lengthened slightly the thread-lines of his lips. D'Aulnay
+de Charnisay had an eye with a keen blue iris, sorting not at all with
+the pigments of his face. As he cast it on the returned friar his mere
+review deepened to a scrutiny used to detecting concealments.
+
+"Hath this Capuchin shrunk?" exclaimed D'Aulnay. "He is not as tall as
+he was."
+
+All present looked with quickened attention at the soldier, who expected
+them to pull off his cowl and expose a head of thrifty clusters which
+had never known the tonsure. His beaver cap lay in the trench with the
+real Father Vincent.
+
+He folded his arms on his breast with a gesture of patience which had
+its effect. D'Aulnay's followers knew the warfare between their seignior
+and Father Vincent de Paris, the only churchman in Acadia who insisted
+on bringing him to account; and who had found means to supplant a
+favorite priest on this expedition, for the purpose of watching him.
+D'Aulnay bore it with assumed good-humor. He had his religious scruples
+as well as his revenges and ambitions. But there were ways in which an
+intruding churchman could be martyred by irony and covert abuse, and by
+discomfort chargeable to the circumstances of war. Father Vincent de
+Paris, on his part, bore such martyrdom silently, but stinted no word of
+needed rebuke. A woman's mourning in the dusky tent next to D'Aulnay's
+now rose to such wildness of piteous cries as to divert even him from
+the shrinkage of Father Vincent's height. No other voice could be heard,
+comforting her. She was alone with sorrow in the midst of an army of
+fray-hardened men. A look of embarrassment passed over De Charnisay's
+face, and he said to the officer nearest him,--
+
+"Remove that woman to another part of the camp."
+
+"The Swiss's wife, my lord?"
+
+"The Swiss's widow, to speak exactly." He turned again with a frowning
+smile to the silent Capuchin. "By the proofs she gives, my kindness hath
+not been so great to that woman that the church need upbraid me."
+
+Marguerite came out of the tent at a peremptory word given by the
+officer at its opening. She did not look toward D'Aulnay de Charnisay,
+the power who had made her his foolish agent to the destruction of the
+man who loved her. Muffling her heartbroken cries she followed the
+subaltern away into darkness--she who had meant at all costs to be
+mistress of Penobscot. When distance somewhat relieved their ears,
+D'Aulnay took up a paper lying before him on the table and spoke in some
+haste to the friar.
+
+"You will go with escort to the walls of the fort, Father Vincent, and
+demand to speak with Madame La Tour. She hath, it appears, little
+aversion to being seen on the walls. Give into her hand this paper."
+
+The soldier under the cowl, dreading that his unbroken silence might be
+noted against him, made some muttering remonstrance, at which D'Aulnay
+laughed while tying the packet.
+
+"When churchmen go to war, Father Vincent, they must expect to share its
+risks, at least in offices of mediation. Look you: they tell me the
+Jesuits and missionaries of Quebec and Montreal are ever before the
+soldier in the march upon this New World. But Capuchins are a lazy,
+selfish order. They would lie at their ease in a monastery, exerting
+themselves only to spy upon their neighbors."
+
+He held out the packet. The soldier in the capote had to step forward to
+receive it, and D'Aulnay's eye fell upon the sandal advanced near the
+torch.
+
+"Come, this is not our Capuchin," he exclaimed grimly. "This man hath a
+foot whiter than my own!"
+
+The feeling that he was detected gave the soldier desperate boldness and
+scorn of all further caution. He stood erect and lifted his face. Though
+the folds of the cowl fell around it, the governor caught his
+contemptuous eye.
+
+"Wash thy heart as I have washed my feet, and it also will be white,
+D'Aulnay de Charnisay!"
+
+"There spoke the Capuchin," said D'Aulnay with a nod. His close face
+allowed itself some pleasure in baiting a friar, and if he had suspected
+Father Vincent of changed identity, his own men were not sure of his
+suspicion the next instant.
+
+"Our friar hath washed his feet," he observed insolently, pointing out
+the evident fact. "Such penance and ablution he hath never before put
+upon himself since he came to Acadia! I will set it down in my
+dispatches to the king, for his majesty will take pleasure in such
+news:--'Father Vincent de Paris, on this blessed Paques day of the year
+1645, hath washed his feet.'"
+
+The men laughed in a half ashamed way which apologized to the holy man
+while it deferred to the master, and D'Aulnay dismissed his envoy with
+seriousness. The two officers who had taken his orders lighted another
+torch at the blaze in front of the tent, and led away the willing friar.
+D'Aulnay watched them down the avenue of lodges, and when their figures
+entered blurred space, watched the moving star which indicated their
+progress. The officer who had brought Father Vincent to this conference,
+also stood musing after them with unlaid suspicion.
+
+"Close my tent," said D'Aulnay, rising, "and set the table within."
+
+"My lord," spoke out the subordinate, "I did not tell you the men were
+thrown into confusion around the Swiss."
+
+"Well, monsieur?" responded D'Aulnay curtly, with an attentive eye.
+
+"There was a stampede of the cattle loosened from the stable. Father
+Vincent fell into the empty trench. They doubtless lost sight of him
+until he came out again."
+
+"Therefore, monsieur?"
+
+"It seemed to me as your lordship said, that this man scarce had the
+bearing of a friar, until, indeed, he spoke out in denunciation, and
+then his voice sounded a deeper tone than I ever heard in it before."
+
+"Why did you not tell me this directly?"
+
+"My lord, I had not thought it until he showed such readiness to move
+toward yon fort."
+
+"Did you examine the trench?"
+
+"No, my lord. I hurried the friar hither at your command."
+
+"It was the part of a prudent soldier," sneered his master, "to leave a
+dark trench possibly full of La Tour's recruits, and trot a friar into
+camp."
+
+"But the sentinels are there, monsieur, and they gave no alarm."
+
+"The sentinels are like you. They will think of giving an alarm
+to-morrow sunrise, when the fort is strengthened by a new garrison. Take
+a company of men, surround that trench, double the guards, send me back
+that friar, and do all with such haste as I have never seen thee show in
+my service yet."
+
+"Yes, my lord."
+
+While the officer ran among the tents, D'Aulnay walked back and forth
+outside, nervously impatient to have his men gone. He whispered with a
+laugh in his beard, "Charles de Menou, D'Aulnay de Charnisay, are you to
+be twice beaten by a woman? If La Tour hath come back with help and
+entered the fort, the siege may as well be raised to-morrow."
+
+The cowled soldier taxed his escort in the speed he made across that
+dark country separating camp and fortress.
+
+"Go softly, good father," remonstrated one of the officers, stumbling
+among stones. "The Sieur D'Aulnay meant not that we should break our
+necks at this business."
+
+But he led them with no abatement and a stern and offended mien;
+wondering secretly if the real Father Vincent would by this time be able
+to make some noise in the trench. Unaccountable night sounds startled
+the ear. He turned to the fortress ascent while the trench yet lay
+distant.
+
+"There is an easier way, father," urged one of the men, obliged,
+however, to follow him and bend to the task of climbing. The discomfort
+of treading stony soil in sandals, and the sensibility of his uncovered
+shins to even that soft night air, made him smile under the cowl. A
+sentinel challenged them and was answered by his companions. Passing on,
+they reached the wall near the gate. Here the hill sloped less abruptly
+than at the towered corner. The rocky foundation of Fort St. John made
+a moat impossible. Guards on the wall now challenged them, and the
+muzzles of three guns looked down, distinct eyes in the lifted
+torchlight, but at the sign of truce these were withdrawn.
+
+"The Sieur D'Aulnay de Charnisay sends this friar with dispatches to the
+lady of the fort," said one of the officers. "Call your lady to receive
+them into her own hand. These are our orders."
+
+"And put down a ladder," said the other officer, "that he may ascend
+with them."
+
+"We put down no ladders," answered the man leaning over the wall. "We
+will call our lady, but you must yourselves find an arm long enough to
+lift your dispatches to her."
+
+During this parley, the rush of men coming from the camp began to be
+heard. The guards on the wall listened, and two of them promptly trained
+the cannon in that direction.
+
+"You have come to surprise us again," taunted the third guard, leaning
+over the wall; "but the Swiss is not here now!"
+
+The soldier saw his escape was cut off, and desperately casting back his
+monk's hood, he shouted upwards,--
+
+"La Tour! La Tour! Put down the ladder--it is Edelwald!"
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+AN ACADIAN PASSOVER.
+
+
+At that name, down came a ladder as if shot from a catapult. Edelwald
+sprung up the rounds and both of D'Aulnay's officers seized him. He had
+drawn one of his long pistols and he clubbed it on their heads so that
+they staggered back. The sentinels and advancing men fired on him, but
+by some muscular flash he was flat upon the top of the wall, and the
+cannon sprung with a roar at his enemies. They were directly in its
+track, and they took to the trench. Edelwald, dragging the ladder up
+after him, laughed at the state in which they must find Father Vincent.
+The entire garrison rushed to the walls, and D'Aulnay's camp stirred
+with the rolling of drums. Then there was a pause, and each party
+waited further aggression from the other. The fort's gun had spoken but
+once. Perhaps some intelligence passed from trench to camp. Presently
+the unsuccessful company ventured from their breastwork and moved away,
+and both sides again had rest for the night.
+
+Madame La Tour stood in the fort, watching the action of her garrison
+outlined against the sky. She could no longer ascend the wall by her
+private stairs. Cannon shot had torn down her chimney and piled its rock
+in a barricade against the door. Sentinels were changed, and the
+relieved soldiers descended from the wall and returned to that great
+room of the tower which had been turned into a common camp. It seemed
+under strange enchantment. There was a hole beside the portrait of
+Claude La Tour, and through its tunnel starlight could be seen and the
+night air breathed in. The carved buffet was shattered. The usual log,
+however, burned in cheer, and families had reunited in distinct nests. A
+pavilion of tapestry was set up for Lady Dorinda and all her treasures,
+near the stairs: the southern window of her chamber had been made a
+target.
+
+Le Rossignol sat on a table, with the four expectant children still
+dancing in front of her. Was it not Paques evening? The alarm being over
+she again began her merriest tunes. Irregular life in a besieged
+fortress had its fascination for the children. No bedtime laws could be
+enforced where the entire household stirred. But to Shubenacadie such
+turmoil was scandalous. He also lived in the hall during the day, and as
+late at night as his mistress chose, but he lived a retired life,
+squatted in a corner, hissing at all who passed near him. Perhaps he
+pined for water whereon to spread his wings and sail. Sometimes he
+quavered a plaintive remark on society as he found it, and sometimes he
+stretched up his neck to its longest length, a sinuous white serpent,
+and gazed wrathfully at the paneled ceiling. The firelight revealed him
+at this moment a bundle of glistening satin, wrapped in sleep and his
+wings from the alarms of war.
+
+Marie stood at the hearth to receive Edelwald. He came striding from
+among her soldiers, his head showing like a Roman's above the cowl. It
+was dark-eyed, shapely of feature, and with a mouth and inward curve
+above the chin so beautiful that their chiseled strength was always a
+surprise. As he faced the lady of the fortress he stood no taller than
+she did, but his contour was muscular.
+
+After dropping on his knee to kiss her hand, he stood up to bear the
+search of her eyes. They swept down his friar's dress and found it not
+so strange that it should supplant her immediate inquiry,--
+
+"Your news? My lord is well?"
+
+"Yes, my lady."
+
+"Is he without?"
+
+"My lady, he is at the outpost at the head of Fundy Bay."
+
+Her face whitened terribly. She knew what this meant. La Tour could get
+no help. Nicholas Denys denied him men. There was no hope of rescue for
+Fort St. John. He was waiting in the outpost for his ship to bring him
+home--the home besieged by D'Aulnay. The blood returned to her face with
+a rush, her mouth quivered, and she sobbed two or three times without
+tears. La Tour could have taken her in his arms. But Edelwald folded his
+empty arms across his breast.
+
+"My lady, I would rather be shot than bring you this message."
+
+"Klussman betrayed us, Edelwald! and I know I hurt men, hurt them with
+my own hands, striking and shooting on the wall!"
+
+She threw herself against the settle and shook with weeping. It was the
+revolt of womanhood. The soldier hung his head. It relieved him to
+declare savagely,--
+
+"Klussman hath his pay. D'Aulnay's followers have just hanged him below
+the fort."
+
+"Hanged him! Hanged poor Klussman? Edelwald, I cannot have
+Klussman--hanged!"
+
+Le Rossignol had stopped her mandolin, and the children clustered near
+Edelwald waiting for his notice. One of them now ran with the news to
+her.
+
+"Klussman is hanged," she repeated, changing her position on the table
+and laying the mandolin down. "Faith, we are never satisfied with our
+good. I am in a rage now because they hanged not the woman in his
+stead."
+
+Marie wiped off her tears. The black rings of sleeplessness around her
+eyes emphasized her loss of color, but she was beautiful.
+
+"How foolish doth weariness make a woman! I expected no help from
+Denys--yet rested my last hope on it. You must eat, Edelwald. By your
+dress and the alarm raised you have come into the fort through danger
+and effort."
+
+"My lady, if, you will permit me first to go to my room, I will find
+something which sorts better with a soldier than this churchman's gown.
+My buckskin, I was obliged to mutilate to make me a proper friar."
+
+"Go, assuredly. But I know not what rubbish the cannon of D'Aulnay have
+battered down in your room. The monk's frock will scarce feel lonesome
+in that part of our tower now: we have had two Jesuits to lodge there
+since you left."
+
+"Did they carry away Madame Bronck? I do not see her among your women."
+
+"She is fortunate, Edelwald. A man loved her, and traveled hither from
+the Orange settlement. They were wed five days ago, and set out with the
+Jesuits to Montreal."
+
+Marie did not lift her heavy eyelids while she spoke, and anguish passed
+unseen across Edelwald's face. Whoever was loved and fortunate, he stood
+outside of such experience. He was young, but there was to be no wooing
+for him in the world, however long war might spare him. The women of the
+fort waited with their children for his notice. His stirring to turn
+toward them rustled a paper under his capote.
+
+"My lady," he said pausing, "D'Aulnay had me in his camp and gave me
+dispatches to you."
+
+"You were there in this friar's dress?"
+
+Marie looked sincerely the pride she took in his simple courage.
+
+"Yes, my lady, though much against my will. I was obliged to knock down
+a reverend shaveling and strip him. But the gown hath served fairly for
+the trouble."
+
+"Hath D'Aulnay many men?"
+
+"He is well equipped."
+
+Edelwald took the packet from his belt and gave it to her. Marie broke
+the thread and sat down on the settle, spreading D'Aulnay's paper to the
+firelight. She read it in silence, and handed it to Edelwald. He leaned
+toward the fire and read it also.
+
+D'Aulnay de Charnisay demanded the surrender of Fort St. John with all
+its stores, ammunition, moneys and plate, and its present small
+garrison. When Edelwald looked up, Marie extended her hand for the
+dispatch and threw it into the fire.
+
+"Let that be his answer," said Edelwald.
+
+"If we surrender," spoke the lady of the fort, "we will make our own
+terms."
+
+"My lady, you will not surrender."
+
+As she looked at Edelwald, the comfort of having him there softened the
+resolute lines of her face into childlike curves. Being about the same
+age she felt always a youthful comradeship with him. Her eyes again
+filled.
+
+"Edelwald, we have lost ten men."
+
+"D'Aulnay has doubtless lost ten or twenty times as many."
+
+"What are men to him? Cattle, which he can buy. But to us, they are
+priceless. To say nothing of your rank, Edelwald, you alone are worth
+more than all the armies D'Aulnay can muster."
+
+He sheltered his face with one hand as if the fire scorched him.
+
+"My lady, Sieur Charles would have us hold this place. Consider: it is
+his last fortress except that stockade."
+
+"You mistake him, Edelwald. He would save the garrison and let the fort
+go. If he or you had not come to-night I must have died of my
+troubles."
+
+She conquered some sobbing, and asked, "How does he bear this despair,
+Edelwald? for he knew it must come to this without help."
+
+"He was heartsick with anxiety to return, my lady."
+
+She leaned against the back of the settle.
+
+"Do not say things to induce me to sacrifice his men for his fort."
+
+"Do you think, my lady, that D'Aulnay would spare the garrison if he
+gets possession of this fort?"
+
+"On no other condition will he get the fort. He shall let all my brave
+men go out with the honors of war."
+
+"But if he accepts such terms--will he keep them?"
+
+"Is not any man obliged to keep a written treaty?"
+
+"Kings are scarce obliged to do that."
+
+"I see what you would do," said Marie, "and I tell you it is useless.
+You would frighten me with D'Aulnay into allowing you, our only
+officer, and these men, our only soldiers, to ransom this fort with your
+lives. It comes to that. We might hold out a few more days and end by
+being at his mercy."
+
+"Let the men themselves be spoken to," entreated Edelwald.
+
+"They will all, like you, beg to give themselves to the holding of
+Charles La Tour's property. I have balanced these matters night and day.
+We must surrender, Edelwald. We must surrender to-morrow."
+
+"My lady, I am one more man. And I will now take charge of the defense."
+
+"And what could I say to my lord if you were killed?--you, the friend of
+his house, the soldier who lately came with such hopes to Acadia. Our
+fortunes do you harm enough, Edelwald. I could never face my lord again
+without you and his men."
+
+"Sieur Charles loves me well enough to trust me with his most dangerous
+affairs, my lady. The keeping of this fortress shall be one of them."
+
+"O Edelwald, go away from me now!" she cried out piteously. He dropped
+his head and turned on the instant. The women met him and the children
+hung to him; and that little being who was neither woman nor child so
+resented the noise which they made about him as he approached her table
+that she took her mandolin and swept them out of her way.
+
+"How fares Shubenacadie?" he inquired over the claw she presented to
+him.
+
+"Shubenacadie's feathers are curdled. He hath greatly soured. Confess me
+and give me thy benediction, Father Edelwald for I have sinned."
+
+"Not since I took these orders, I hope," said Edelwald. "As a Capuchin I
+am only an hour old."
+
+"Within the hour, then, I have beaten my swan, bred a quarrel amongst
+these spawn of the common soldier, and wished a woman hanged."
+
+"A naughty list," said Edelwald.
+
+"Yes, but lying is worse than any of these. Lying doth make the soul
+sick."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"I have tried it," said Le Rossignol. "Many a time have I tried it.
+Scarce half an hour ago I told her forlorn old highness that the fort
+was surely taken this time, and I think she hath buried herself in her
+chest."
+
+"Edelwald," said a voice from the tapestried pavilion. Lady Dorinda's
+head and hand appeared, with the curtains drawn behind them.
+
+As the soldier bent to his service upon the hand of the old maid of
+honor, she exclaimed whimsically,--
+
+"What, Edelwald! Are our fortunes at such ebb that you are taking to a
+Romish cloister?"
+
+"No cloister for me. Your ladyship sees only a cover which I think of
+rendering to its owner again. He may not have a second capote in the
+world, being friar extraordinary to D'Aulnay de Charnisay, who is
+notable for seizing other men's goods."
+
+"Edelwald, you bring ill news?"
+
+"There was none other to bring."
+
+"Is Charles La Tour then in such straits that we are to have no relief
+in this fortress?"
+
+"We can look for nothing, Lady Dorinda."
+
+"Thou seest now, Edelwald, how France requites his service. If he had
+listened to his father he might to-day be second to none in Acadia, with
+men and wealth in abundance."
+
+"Yet, your ladyship, we love our France!"
+
+"Oh, you do put me out of patience! But the discomforts and perils of
+this siege have scarce left me any. We are walled together here like
+sheep."
+
+"It is trying, your ladyship, but if we succeed in keeping the butcher
+out we may do better presently."
+
+Marie sent her woman for writing tools, and was busy with them when
+Edelwald returned in his ordinary rich dark dress. She made him a place
+beside her on the settle, and submitted the paper to his eye. The women
+and children listened. They knew their situation was desperate.
+Whispering together they decided with their lady that she would do best
+to save her soldiers and sacrifice the fort.
+
+Edelwald read the terms she intended to demand, and then looked aside at
+the beautiful and tender woman who had borne the hardships of war. She
+should do anything she wished. It was worth while to surrender if
+surrendering decreased her care. All Acadia was nothing when weighed
+against her peace of mind. He felt his rage mounting against Charles La
+Tour for leaving her exposed in this frontier post, the instrument of
+her lord's ambition and political feud. In Edelwald's silent and
+unguessed warfare with his secret, he had this one small half hour's
+truce. Marie sat under his eyes in firelight, depending on the comfort
+of his presence. Rapture opened its sensitive flower and life
+culminated for him. Unconscious of it, she wrote down his suggestions,
+bending her head seriously to the task.
+
+Edelwald himself finally made a draft of the paper for D'Aulnay. The
+weary men had thrown themselves down to sleep, and heard no colloquy.
+But presently the cook was aroused from among them and bid to set out
+such a feast as he had never before made in Fort St. John.
+
+"Use of our best supplies," directed Marie. "To-morrow we may give up
+all we have remaining to the enemy. We will eat a great supper together
+this Paques night."
+
+The cook took an assistant and labored well. Kettles and pans multiplied
+on coals raked out for their service. Marie had the men bring such doors
+as remained from the barracks and lay them from table to table, making
+one long board for her household; and this the women dressed in the best
+linen of the house. They set on plate which had been in La Tour's
+family for generations. Every accumulation of prosperity was brought out
+for this final use. The tunnel in the wall was stopped with blankets,
+and wax candles were lighted everywhere. Odors of festivity filled the
+children with eagerness. It was like the new year when there was always
+merry-making in the hall, yet it was also like a religious ceremony. The
+men rose from their pallets and set aside screens, and the news was
+spread when sentinels were changed.
+
+Marie called Zelie up to her ruined apartment, and standing amidst stone
+and plaster, was dressed in her most magnificent gown and jewels. She
+appeared on the stairs in the royal blackness of velvet whitened by
+laces and sparkling with points of tinted fire. Edelwald led her to the
+head of the long board, and she directed her people to range themselves
+down its length in the order of their families.
+
+"My men," said Madame La Tour to each party in turn as they were
+relieved on the walls to sit down at the table below her, "we are
+holding a passover supper this Paques night because it may be our last
+night in Fort St. John. You all understand how Sieur de la Tour hath
+fared. We are reduced to the last straits. Yet not to the last straits,
+my men, if we can keep you. With such followers your lord can make some
+stand elsewhere. D'Aulnay has proposed a surrender. I refused his terms,
+and have set down others, which will sacrifice the fort but save the
+garrison. Edelwald, our only officer, is against surrender, because he,
+like yourselves, would give the greater for the less, which I cannot
+allow."
+
+"My lady," spoke Glaud Burge, a sturdy grizzled man, rising to speak for
+the first squad, "we have been talking of this matter together, and we
+think Edelwald is right. The fort is hard beset, and it is true there
+are fewer of us than at first, but we may hold out somehow and keep the
+walls around us. We have no stomach to strike flag to D'Aulnay de
+Charnisay."
+
+"My lady," spoke Jean le Prince, the youngest man in the fortress, who
+was appointed to speak for the second squad when their turn came to sit
+down at the table, "we also think Edelwald is right in counseling you
+not to give up Fort St. John. We say nothing of D'Aulnay's hanging
+Klussman, for Klussman deserved it. But we would rather be shot down man
+by man than go out by the grace of D'Aulnay."
+
+She answered both squads,--
+
+"Do not argue against surrender, my men. We can look for no help. The
+fort must go in a few more days anyhow, and by capitulating we can make
+terms. My lord can build other forts, but where will he find other
+followers like you? You will march out not by the grace of D'Aulnay but
+with the honors of war. Now speak of it no more, and let us make this a
+festival."
+
+So they made it a festival. With guards coming and going constantly,
+every man took the pleasure of the hall while the walls were kept.
+
+Such a night was never before celebrated in Fort St. John. A heavier
+race might have touched the sadness underlying such gayety; or have
+fathomed moonlight to that terrible burden of the elm-tree down the
+slope. But this French garrison lent themselves heartily to the hour,
+enjoying without past or future. Stories were told of the New World and
+of France, tales of persecuted Huguenots, legends which their fathers
+had handed down to them, and traditions picked up among the Indians.
+Edelwald took the dwarf's mandolin and stood up among them singing the
+songs they loved, the high and courageous songs, loving songs, and songs
+of faith. Lady Dorinda, having shut her curtain for the night, declined
+to take any part in this household festivity, though she contributed
+some unheard sighs and groans of annoyance during its progress. A
+phlegmatic woman, fond of her ease, could hardly keep her tranquillity,
+besieged by cannon in the daytime, and by chattering and laughter, the
+cracking of nuts and the thump of soldiers' feet half the night.
+
+But Shubenacadie came out of his corner and lifted his wings for battle.
+Le Rossignol first soothed him and then betrayed him into shoes of birch
+bark which she carried in her pocket for the purpose of making
+Shubenacadie dance. Shubenacadie began to dance in a wild untutored trot
+most laughable to see. He varied his paddling on the flags by sallies
+with bill and wings against the dear mistress who made him a spectacle;
+and finally at Marie's word he was relieved, and waddled back to his
+corner to eat and doze and mutter swan talk against such orgies in Fort
+St. John. The children had long fallen asleep with rapturous fatigue,
+when Marie stood up and made her people follow her in a prayer. The
+waxlights were then put out, screens divided the camp, and quiet
+followed.
+
+Of all nights in Le Rossignol's life this one seemed least likely to be
+chosen as her occasion for a flight. The walls were strictly guarded,
+and at midnight the moon spread its ghostly day over all visible earth.
+Besides, if the fortress was to be surrendered, there was immediate
+prospect of a voyage for all the household.
+
+The dwarf's world was near the ground, to which the thinking of the tall
+men and women around her scarcely stooped. But she seized on and weighed
+and tried their thoughts, arriving at shrewd issues. Nobody had asked
+her advice about the capitulation. Without asking anybody's advice she
+decided that the Hollandais Van Corlaer and the Jesuit priest Father
+Jogues would be wholesome checks upon D'Aulnay de Charnisay when her
+lady opened the fort to him. The weather must have prevented Van Corlaer
+from getting beyond the sound of cannon, and neither he nor the priest
+could indifferently leave the lady of St. John to her fate, and Madame
+Antonia would refuse to do it. Le Rossignol believed the party that had
+set out early in the week must be encamped not far away.
+
+Edelwald mounted a bastion with the sentinels. That weird light of the
+moon which seems the faded and forgotten ghost of day, rested
+everywhere. The shadow of the tower fell inward, and also partly covered
+the front wall. This enchanted land of night cooled Edelwald. He threw
+his arms upward with a passionate gesture to which the soldiers had
+become accustomed in their experience of the young chevalier.
+
+"What is that?" exclaimed the man nearest him, for there was disturbance
+in the opposite bastion. Edelwald moved at once across the interval of
+wall and found the sentinels in that bastion divided between laughter
+and superstitious awe.
+
+"She's out again," said one.
+
+"Who is out?" demanded Edelwald.
+
+"The little swan-riding witch."
+
+"You have not let the dwarf scale this wall? If she could do that
+unobserved, my men, we are lax."
+
+"She is one who will neither be let nor hindered. We are scarce sure we
+even saw her. There was but the swoop of wings."
+
+"Why, Renot, my lad," insisted Edelwald, "we could see her white swan
+now in this noon of moonlight, if she were abroad. Besides, D'Aulnay has
+sentinels stationed around this height. They will check her."
+
+"They will check the wind across Fundy Bay first," said the other man.
+
+"You cannot think Le Rossignol has risen in the air on her swan's back?
+That is too absurd," said Edelwald. "No one ever saw her play such
+pranks. And you could have winged the heavy bird as he rose."
+
+"I know she is out of Fort St. John at this minute," insisted Renot
+Babinet. "And how are you to wing a bird which gets out of sight before
+you know what has happened?"
+
+"I say it is no wonder we have trouble in this seigniory," growled the
+other man. "Our lady never could see a mongrel baby or a witch dwarf or
+a stray black gown anywhere, but she must have it into the fort and make
+it free of the best here."
+
+"And God forever bless her," said Edelwald, baring his head.
+
+"Amen," they both responded with force.
+
+The silent cry was mighty behind Edelwald's lips;--the cry which he
+intrusted not even to his human breath--
+
+"My love--my love! My royal lady! God, thou who alone knowest my secret,
+make me a giant to hold it down!"
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+THE SONG OF EDELWALD.
+
+
+At daybreak a signal on the wall where it could be seen from D'Aulnay's
+camp brought an officer and his men to receive Madame La Tour's
+dispatches. Glaud Burge handed them, down at the end of a ramrod.
+
+"But see yonder," he said to Francois Bastarack his companion, as they
+stood and watched the messengers tramp away. He pointed to Klussman
+below the fort--poor Klussman whom the pearly vapors of morning could
+not conceal. "I could have done that myself in first heat, but I like
+not treating with a man who did it coolly."
+
+Parleying and demurring over the terms of surrender continued until
+noon. All that time ax, saw and hammer worked in D'Aulnay's camp as if
+he had suddenly taken to ship-building. But the pastimes of a victorious
+force are regarded with dull attention by the vanquished. Finally the
+papers were handed up bearing D'Aulnay's signature. They guaranteed to
+Madame La Tour the safety of her garrison, who were to march out with
+their arms and personal belongings, the household goods of her people;
+and La Tour's ship with provisions enough to stock it for a voyage. The
+money, merchandise, stores, jewels and ordnance fell to D'Aulnay with
+the fort.
+
+D'Aulnay marched directly on his conquest. His drums approached, and the
+garrison ran to throw into a heap such things as they and their families
+were to take away. Spotless weather and a dimpled bay adorned this lost
+seigniory. It was better than any dukedom in France to these first
+exiled Acadians. Pierre Doucett's widow and another bereaved woman knelt
+to cry once more over the trench by the powder-house. Her baby, hid in a
+case like a bolster, hung across her shoulder. Lady Dorinda's
+belongings, numbered among the goods of the household, were also placed
+near the gate. She sat within the hall, wrapped for her journey,
+composed and silent. For when the evil day actually overtook Lady
+Dorinda, she was too thorough a Briton to cringe. She met her second
+repulse from Acadia as she had met her first, when Claude La Tour found
+her his only consolation. In this violent uprooting of family life so
+long grown to one place, Le Rossignol was scarcely missed. Each one
+thought of the person dearest to himself and of that person's comfort.
+Marie noted her absence, but the dwarf never came to harm. She was
+certain to rejoin the household somewhere, and who could blame her for
+avoiding the capitulation if she found it possible? The little
+Nightingale could not endure pain. Edelwald drew the garrison up in line
+and the gates were opened.
+
+D'Aulnay entered the fort with his small army. He was splendidly
+dressed, and such pieces of armor as he wore dazzled the eye. As he
+returned the salute of Edelwald and the garrison, he paused and whitened
+with chagrin. Klussman had told him something of the weakness of the
+place, but he had not expected to find such a pitiful remnant of men.
+Twenty-three soldiers and an officer! These were the precious creatures
+who had cost him so much, and whom their lady was so anxious to save! He
+smiled at the disproportionate preparations made by his hammers and
+saws, and glanced back to see if the timbers were being carried in. They
+were, at the rear of his force, but behind them intruded Father Vincent
+de Paris wrapped in a blanket which one of the soldiers had provided for
+him. The scantiness of this good friar's apparel should have restrained
+him in camp. But he was such an apostle as stalks naked to duty if need
+be, and he felt it his present duty to keep the check of religion upon
+the implacable nature of D'Aulnay de Charnisay.
+
+D'Aulnay ordered the gates shut. He would have shut out Father Vincent,
+but it could not be managed without great discourtesy, and there are
+limits to that with a churchman. The household and garrison ready to
+depart saw this strange action with dismay, and Marie stepped directly
+down from her hall to confront her enemy. D'Aulnay had seen her at Port
+Royal when he first came to Acadia. He remembered her motion in the
+dance, and approved of it. She was a beautiful woman, though her
+Huguenot gown and close cap now gave her a widowed look--becoming to a
+woman of exploits. But she was also the woman to whom he owed one defeat
+and much humiliation.
+
+He swept his plume at her feet.
+
+"Permit me, Madame La Tour, to make my compliments to an amazon. My own
+taste are women who stay in the house at their prayers, but the Sieur de
+la Tour and I differ in many things."
+
+"Doubtless, my lord De Charnisay," responded Marie with the dignity
+which cannot taunt, though she still believed the outcast child to be
+his. "But why have you closed on us the gates which we opened to you?"
+
+"Madame, I have been deceived in the terms of capitulation."
+
+"My lord, the terms of capitulation were set down plainly and I hold
+them signed by your hand."
+
+"But a signature is nothing when gross advantage hath been taken of one
+of the parties to a treaty."
+
+The mistake she had made in trusting to the military honor of D'Aulnay
+de Charnisay swept through Marie. But she controlled her voice to
+inquire,--
+
+"What gross advantage can there be, my lord D'Aulnay--unless you are
+about to take a gross advantage of us? We leave you here ten thousand
+pounds of the money of England, our plate and jewels and furs, and our
+stores except a little food for a journey. We go out poor; yet if our
+treaty is kept we shall complain of no gross advantage."
+
+"Look at those men," said D'Aulnay, shaking his glove at her soldiers.
+
+"Those weary and faithful men," said Marie: "I see them."
+
+"You will see them hanged as traitors, madame. I have no time to
+parley," exclaimed D'Aulnay. "The terms of capitulation are not
+satisfactory to me. I do not feel bound by them. You may take your women
+and withdraw when you please, but these men I shall hang."
+
+While he spoke he lifted and shook his hand as if giving a signal, and
+the garrison was that instant seized, by his soldiers. Her women
+screamed. There was such a struggle in the fort as there had been upon
+the wall, except that she herself stood blank in mind, and pulseless.
+The actual and the unreal shimmered together. But there stood her
+garrison, from Edelwald to Jean le Prince, bound like criminals,
+regarding their captors with that baffled and half ashamed look of the
+surprised and overpowered. Above the mass of D'Aulnay's busy soldiery
+timber uprights were reared, and hammers and spikes set to work on the
+likeness of a scaffold. The preparations of the morning made the
+completion of this task swift and easy. D'Aulnay de Charnisay intended
+to hang her garrison when he set his name to the paper securing their
+lives. The ringing of hammers sounded far off to Marie.
+
+"I don't understand these things," she articulated. "I don't understand
+anything in the world!"
+
+D'Aulnay gave himself up to watching the process, in spite of Father
+Vincent de Paris, whose steady remonstrances he answered only by shrugs.
+In that age of religious slaughter the Capuchin could scarcely object to
+decreasing heretics, but he did object as a man and a priest to such
+barbarous treachery toward men with whom a compact had been made. The
+refined nurture of France was not recent in D'Aulnay's experience, but
+he came of a great and honorable house, and the friar's appeal was made
+to inherited instincts.
+
+"Good churchman," spoke out Jean le Prince, the lad, shaking his hair
+back from his face, "your capote and sandals lie there by the door of
+the tower, where Edelwald took thought to place them for you. But you
+who have the soldier's heart should wear the soldier's dress, and hide
+D'Aulnay de Charnisay under the cowl."
+
+"You men-at-arms," Glaud Burge exhorted the guards drawn up, on each
+side of him and his fellow-prisoners, "will you hang us up like dogs? If
+we must die we claim the death of soldiers. You have your pieces in your
+hands; shoot us. Do us such grace as we would do you in like extremity."
+
+The guards looked aside at each other and then at their master, shamed
+through their peasant blood by the outrage they were obliged to put upon
+a courageous garrison. But Edelwald said nothing. His eyes were upon
+Marie. He would not increase her anguish of self-reproach by the change
+of a muscle in his face. The garrison was trapped and at the mercy of a
+merciless enemy. His most passionate desire was to have her taken away
+that she might not witness the execution. Why was Sieur Charles La Tour
+sitting in the stockade at the head of Fundy Bay while she must endure
+the sight of this scaffold?
+
+Marie's women knelt around her crying. Her slow distracted gaze traveled
+from Glaud Burge to Jean le Prince, from Renot Babinet to Francois
+Bastarack, from Ambroise Tibedeaux along the line of stanch faces to
+Edelwald. His calm uplifted countenance--with the horrible platform of
+death growing behind it--looked, as it did when he happily met the sea
+wind or went singing through trackless wilderness. She broke from her
+trance and the ring of women, and ran before D'Aulnay de Charnisay.
+
+"My lord," said Marie--and she was so beautiful in her ivory pallor, so
+wonderful with fire moving from the deep places of her dilated black
+eyes that he felt satisfaction in attending to her--"it is useless to
+talk to a man like you."
+
+"Quite, madame," said D'Aulnay. "I never discuss affairs with a woman."
+
+"But you may discuss them with the king when he learns that you have
+hanged with other soldiers of a ransomed garrison a young officer of the
+house of De Born."
+
+D'Aulnay ran his eye along the line. The unrest of Edelwald at Marie's
+slightest parley with D'Aulnay reminded the keen governor of the face he
+had last night seen under the cowl.
+
+"The king will be obliged to me," he observed, "when one less heretical
+De Born cumbers his realm."
+
+"The only plea I make to you, my lord D'Aulnay, is that you hang me
+also. For I deserve it. My men had no faith in your military honor, and
+I had."
+
+"Madame, you remind me of a fact I desired to overlook. You are indeed a
+traitor deserving death. But of my clemency, and not because you are a
+woman, for you yourself have forgotten that in meddling with war, I will
+only parade you upon the scaffold as a reprieved criminal. Bring hither
+a cord," called D'Aulnay, "and noose it over this lady's head." Edelwald
+raged in a hopeless tearing at his bonds. The guards seized him, but he
+struggled with unconquered strength to reach and protect his lady.
+Father Vincent de Paris had taken his capote and sandals at Jean le
+Prince's hint, and entered the tower. He clothed himself behind one of
+the screens of the hall, and thought his absence short, but during that
+time Marie was put upon the finished scaffold. A skulking reluctant
+soldier of D'Aulnay's led her by a cord. She walked the long rough
+planks erect. Her garrison to a man looked down, as they did at
+funerals, and Edelwald sobbed in his fight against the guards, the tears
+starting from under his eyelids as he heard her foot-fall pass near him.
+Back and forth she trod, and D'Aulnay watched the spectacle. Her
+garrison felt her degradation as she must feel their death. The grizzled
+lip of Glaud Burge moved first to comfort her.
+
+"My lady, though our hands be tied, we make our military salute to you,"
+he said.
+
+"Fret not, my lady," said Renot Babinet.
+
+"Edelwald can turn all these mishaps into a song, my lady," declared
+Jean le Prince. Marie had that sensation of lost identity which has
+confused us all. In her walk she passed the loops dangling ready for her
+men. A bird, poised for one instant on the turret, uttered a sweet long
+trill. She could hear the river. It was incredible that all those
+unknown faces should be swarming below her; that the garrison was
+obliged to stand tied; that Lady Dorinda had braved the rabble of
+soldiery and come out to wait weeping at the scaffold end. Marie looked
+at the row of downcast faces. The bond between these faithful soldiers
+and herself was that instant sublime.
+
+"I crave pardon of you all," said Marie as she came back and the rustle
+of her gown again passed them, "for not knowing how to deal with the
+crafty of this world. My foolishness has brought you to this scaffold."
+
+"No, my lady," said the men in full chorus.
+
+"We desire nothing better, my lady," said Edelwald, "since your walking
+there has blessed it."
+
+Father Vincent's voice from the tower door arrested the spectacle. His
+cowl was pushed back to his shoulders, baring the astonishment of his
+lean face.
+
+"This is the unworthiest action of your life, my son De Charnisay," he
+denounced, shaking his finger and striding down at the governor, who
+owned the check by a slight grimace.
+
+"It is enough," said D'Aulnay. "Let the scaffold now be cleared for the
+men."
+
+He submitted with impatience to a continued parley with the Capuchin.
+Father Vincent de Paris was angry. And constantly as D'Aulnay walked
+from him he zealously followed.
+
+The afternoon sunlight sloped into the walls, leaving a bank of shadow
+behind the timbered framework, which extended an etching of itself
+toward the esplanade. The lengthened figures of soldiers passed also in
+cloudy images along the broken ground, for a subaltern's first duty had
+been to set guards upon the walls. The new master of Fort St. John was
+now master of all southern and western Acadia; but he had heard nothing
+which secured him against La Tour's return with fresh troops.
+
+"My friends," said D'Aulnay, speaking to the garrison, "this good friar
+persuades in me more softness than becomes a faithful servant of the
+king. One of your number I will reprieve."
+
+"Then let it be Jean le Prince," said Edelwald, speaking for the first
+time to D'Aulnay de Charnisay. "The down has not yet grown on the lad's
+lip."
+
+"But I pardon him," continued the governor, "on condition that he hangs
+the rest of you."
+
+"Hang thyself!" cried the boy. "Thou art the only man on earth I would
+choke with a rope."
+
+"Will no one be reprieved?"
+
+D'Aulnay's eye, traveled from scorn to scorn along the row.
+
+"It is but the pushing aside of a slab. They are all stubborn heretics,
+Father Vincent. We waste time. I should be inspecting the contents of
+this fort."
+
+The women and children were flattening themselves like terrified
+swallows against the gate; for through the hum of stirring soldiery
+penetrated to them from outside a hint of voices not unknown. The
+sentinels had watched a party approaching; but it was so small, and
+hampered, moreover, by a woman and some object like a tiny gilded sedan
+chair, that they did not notify the governor. One of the party was a
+Jesuit priest by his cassock, and another his donne. These never came
+from La Tour. Another was a tall Hollandais; and two servants lightly
+carried the sedan up the slope. A few more people seemed to wait behind
+for the purpose of making a camp, and there were scarce a dozen of the
+entire company.
+
+Marie had borne without visible exhaustion the labors of this siege, the
+anguish of treachery and disappointment, her enemy's breach of faith and
+cruel parade of her. The garrison were ranged ready upon the plank; but
+she held herself in tense control, and waited beside Lady Dorinda, with
+her back toward the gate, while her friends outside parleyed with her
+enemy. D'Aulnay refused to admit any one until he had dealt with the
+garrison. The Jesuit was reported to him as Father Isaac Jogues, and the
+name had its effect, as it then had everywhere among people of the Roman
+faith. No soldier would be surprised at meeting a Jesuit priest anywhere
+in the New World. But D'Aulnay begged Father Jogues to excuse him while
+he finished a moment's duty, and he would then come out and escort his
+guest into the fortress.
+
+The urgent demand, however, of a missionary to whom even the king had
+shown favor, was not to be denied. D'Aulnay had the gates set ajar; and
+pushing through their aperture came in Father Jogues with his donne and
+two companions.
+
+The governor advanced in displeasure. He would have put out all but the
+priest, but the gates were slammed to prevent others from entering, and
+slammed against the chair in which the sentinels could see a red-headed
+dwarf. The weird melody of her screaming threats kept them dubious while
+they grinned. The gates being shut, Marie fled through ranks of
+men-at-arms to Antonia, clung to her and gave Father Jogues and Van
+Corlaer no time to stand aghast at the spectacle they saw. Crying and
+trembling, she put back the sternness of D'Aulnay de Charnisay, and the
+pity of Father Vincent de Paris, and pleaded with Father Jogues and the
+Hollandais for the lives of her garrison as if they had come with
+heavenly authority.
+
+"You see them with ropes around their necks, Monsieur Corlaer and
+Monsieur Jogues, when here is the paper the governor signed,
+guaranteeing to me their safety. Edelwald is scarce half a year from
+France. Speak to the governor of Acadia; for you, Monsieur Corlaer, are
+a man of affairs, and this good missionary is a saint--you can move
+D'Aulnay de Charnisay to see it is not the custom, even in warfare with
+women, to trap and hang a garrison who has made honorable surrender."
+
+A man may resolve that he will not meddle with his neighbor's feuds, or
+involve a community dependent on him with any one's formidable enemy.
+Yet he will turn back from his course the moment an appeal is made for
+his help, and face that enemy as Van Corlaer faced the governor of
+Acadia, full of the fury roused by outrage. But what could he and Father
+Jogues and the persevering Capuchin say to the parchment which the
+governor now deigned to pass from hand to hand among them in reply?--the
+permission of Louis XIII. to his beloved D'Aulnay de Charnisay (whom God
+hold in His keeping) to take the Fort of St. John and deal with its
+rebellious garrison as seemed to him fit, for which destruction of
+rebels his sovereign would have him in loving remembrance.
+
+During all this delay Edelwald stood with his beautiful head erect above
+the noose, and his self-repressed gaze still following Marie. The wives
+of other soldiers were wailing for their husbands. But he must die
+without wife, without love. He saw Antonia holding her and weeping with
+her. His blameless passion filled him like a great prayer. That changing
+phantasm which we call the world might pass from before his men and him
+at the next breath; yet the brief last song of the last troubadour burst
+from his lips to comfort the lady of Fort St. John.
+
+There was in this jubilant cry a gush and grandeur of power outmastering
+force of numbers and brute cunning. It reached and compelled every
+spirit in the fortress. The men in line with him stood erect and lifted
+their firm jaws, and gazed forward with shining eyes. Those who had
+faded in the slightest degree from their natural flush of blood felt the
+strong throbs which paint a man's best on his face. They could not sing
+the glory of death in duty, the goodness of God who gave love and valor
+to man; but they could die with Edelwald.
+
+The new master of Fort St. John was jealous of such dying as the song
+ceased and he lifted his hand to signal his executioners. Father Jogues
+turned away praying with tremulous lips. The Capuchin strode toward the
+hall. But Van Corlaer and Lady Dorinda and Antonia held with the
+strength of all three that broken-hearted woman who struggled like a
+giantess with her arms stretched toward the scaffold.
+
+"I _will_ save them--I _will_ save them! My brave Edelwald--all my brave
+soldiers shall not die!--Where are my soldiers, Antonia? It is dark. I
+cannot see them any more!"
+
+
+
+
+POSTLUDE.
+
+A TIDE-CREEK.
+
+
+When ordinary days had settled flake on flake over this tragedy in
+Acadia until memory looked back at it as at the soft outlines of a
+snow-obliterated grave, Madame Van Corlaer stood one evening beside the
+Hudson River, and for half an hour breathed again the salt breath of
+Fundy Bay. Usually she was abed at that hour. But Mynheer had been
+expected all day on a sailing vessel from New Amsterdam, and she could
+not resist coming down once more through her garden to the wharf.
+
+Van Corlaer's house, the best stone mansion in Rensselaerswyck--that
+overflow of settlement around the stockade of Fort Orange--stood up the
+slope, and had its farm appended. That delight of Dutchmen, an ample
+garden, extended its central path almost like an avenue to the river.
+Antonia need scarcely step off her own domain to meet her husband at the
+wharf. She had lingered down the garden descent; for sweet herbs were
+giving their souls to the summer night there; and not a cloud of a sail
+yet appeared on the river. Some fishing-boats lay at the wharf, but no
+men were idling around under the full moon. It was pleasanter to visit
+and smoke from door to door in the streets above.
+
+Antonia was not afraid of any savage ambush. Her husband kept the
+Iroquois on friendly terms with the settlement. The years through which
+she had borne her dignity of being Madame Van Corlaer constantly
+increased her respect for that colonial statesman. The savages in the
+Mohawk valley used the name Corlaer when they meant governor. Antonia
+felt sure that the Jesuit missionary, Father Isaac Jogues, need not have
+died a martyr's death if Van Corlaer had heard in time of his return to
+the Mohawks.
+
+At the bottom of her garden she rested her hands upon a gate in the low
+stone wall. The mansion behind her was well ordered and prosperous. No
+drop of milk was spilled in Antonia's domain without her knowledge. She
+had noted, as she came down the path, how the cabbages were rounding
+their delicately green spheres. Antonia was a housewife for whom maids
+labored with zeal. She could manipulate so deftly the comfort-making
+things of life. Neither sunset nor moonrise quite banished the dreamy
+blue light on these rolling lands around the head-waters of the Hudson.
+Across her tranquil commonplace happiness blew suddenly that ocean
+breath from Fundy Bay; for the dwarf of Fort St. John, leading a white
+waddling bird, whose feathers even in that uncertain light showed soil,
+appeared from the screening masonry of the wall.
+
+She stood still and looked at Antonia; and Antonia inside the gate
+looked at her. That instant was a bubble full of revolving dyes. It
+brought a thousand pictures to Antonia's sight. Thus silently had that
+same dwarf with her swan appeared to a camp in the Acadian woods,
+announcing trouble at Fort St. John.
+
+Again Antonia lived through confusion which was like pillage of the
+fort. Again she sat in her husband's tent, holding Marie's dying head on
+her arm while grief worked its swift miracle in a woman formed to such
+fullness of beauty and strength. Again she saw two graves and a long
+trench made in the frontier graveyard for Marie and her officer Edelwald
+and her twenty-three soldiers, all in line with her child. Once more
+Antonia saw the household turn from that spot weeping aloud; and De
+Charnisay's ships already sailing away with the spoil of the fort to
+Penobscot; and his sentinels looking down from the walls of St. John.
+She saw her husband dividing his own party, and sending all the men he
+could spare to navigate La Tour's ship and carry the helpless women and
+children to the head of Fundy Bay. All these things revolved before
+her, in that bubble of an instant, before her own voice broke it,
+saying,--
+
+"Is this you, Le Rossignol?"
+
+"Shubenacadie and I," responded the dwarf, lilting up sweetly.
+
+"Where do you come from?" inquired Antonia, feeling the weirdness of her
+visitor as she had never felt it in the hall at Fort St. John.
+
+"Port Royal. I have come from Port Royal on purpose to speak with you."
+
+"With me?"
+
+"With you, Madame Antonia."
+
+"You must then go directly to the house and eat some supper," said
+Antonia, speaking her first thought but reserving her second: "Our
+people will take to the fields when they see the poor little creature by
+daylight, and as for the swan, it is worse than a drove of Mynheer's
+Indians."
+
+"I am not eating to-night, I am riding," answered Le Rossignol, bold in
+mystery while the moon made half uncertain the draggled state of
+Shubenacadie's feathers. She placed her hands on his back and pressed
+him downward, as if his plumage foamed up from an over-full
+packing-case. Shubenacadie waddled a step or two reluctantly, and
+squatted, spreading his wings and curving his head around to look at
+her. The dwarf sat upon him as upon a throne, stroking his neck with her
+right hand while she talked. She seemed a part of the river's whisper,
+or of that world of summer night insects which shrilled around.
+
+"I have come to tell you about the death of D'Aulnay de Charnisay," said
+this pigmy.
+
+"We have long had that news," responded Antonia, "and worse which
+followed it."
+
+Madame Van Corlaer despised Charles La Tour for repossessing himself of
+all he had lost and becoming the first power in Acadia by marrying
+D'Aulnay's widow.
+
+"No ear," declared the dwarf, "hath ever heard how D'Aulnay de Charnisay
+died."
+
+"He was stuck in a bog," said Antonia.
+
+"He was stuck in no bog," said Le Rossignol, "for I alone was beside him
+at the time. And I ride from Port Royal to tell thee the whole of it and
+free my mind, lest I be obliged to fling it in my new lady's face the
+next time she speaks of his happy memory. Widows who take second
+husbands have no sense about the first one."
+
+Antonia slightly coughed. It is not pleasant to have your class
+disapproved of, even by a dwarf. And she did still secretly respect her
+first husband's prophecy. Had it not been fulfilled on the friend she
+best loved, if not on the husband she took?
+
+"Mynheer Van Corlaer will soon be home from New Amsterdam, whither he
+made a voyage to confer with the governor," said Antonia. "Let me take
+you to the house, where we can talk at our ease."
+
+"I talk most at my ease on Shubenacadie's back," answered Le Rossignol,
+holding her swan's head and rubbing her cheek against his bill. "You
+will not keep me a moment at Fort Orange. I fell out of patience with
+every place while we lived so long in poverty at that stockade at the
+head of Fundy Bay."
+
+"Did you live there long?" inquired Antonia.
+
+"Until D'Aulnay de Charnisay died out of my lord's way. What could my
+lord do for us, indeed, with nothing but a ship and scarce a dozen men?
+He left some to keep the stockade and took the rest to man his ship when
+he started to Newfoundland to send her forlorn old highness back to
+England. Her old highness hath had many a dower fee from us since that
+day."
+
+"Your lord hath mended his fortunes," remarked Antonia without approval.
+
+"Yes, we are now the greatest people in Acadia; we live in grand state
+at Port Royal. You would never know him for the careworn man he
+was--except once, indeed, when he came from viewing the ruins of Fort
+St. John. It is no longer maintained as a fortress. But I like not all
+these things. I rove more now than when Madame Marie lived."
+
+Silence was kept a moment after Madame La Tour's name, between Antonia
+and her illusive visitor. The dwarf seemed clad in sumptuous garments. A
+cap of rich velvet could be discerned on her flaring hair instead of the
+gull-breast covering she once made for herself.
+
+"Yet I roved much out of the peasants' way at the stockade," she
+continued, sending the night sounds again into background. "Peasants who
+have no master over them become like swine. We had two goats, and I
+tended them, and sat ages upon ages on the bank of a tide-creek which
+runs up among the marshes at the head of Fundy Bay. Madame Antonia, you
+should see that tide-creek. It shone like wet sleek red carnelian when
+the water was out of it. I loved its basin; and the goats would go down
+to lick the salt. They had more sense than D'Aulnay de Charnisay, for
+they knew where to venture. I thought D'Aulnay de Charnisay was one of
+our goats by his bleat, until I looked down and saw him part sunk in a
+quicksand at the bottom of the channel. The tide was already frothing in
+like yeast upon him. How gloriously the tide shoots up that tide-creek!
+It hisses. It comes like thousands of horses galloping one behind the
+other and tumbling over each other,--fierce and snorting spray, and
+climbing the banks, and still trampling down and flying over the ones
+who have galloped in first."
+
+"But what did D'Aulnay de Charnisay do?" inquired Antonia.
+
+"He stuck in the quicksand," responded Le Rossignol.
+
+"But did he not call for help?"
+
+"He did nothing else, indeed, until the tide's horses trampled him
+under."
+
+"But what did you do?"
+
+"I sat down and watched him," said the dwarf.
+
+"How could you?" shuddered Antonia, feeling how little this tiny being's
+humanity was developed.
+
+"We had some chat," said Le Rossignol. "He promised me a seigniory if I
+would run and call some men with ropes. 'I heard a Swiss's wife say
+that you promised him a seigniory,' quoth I. 'And you had enough ropes
+then.' He pledged his word and took oath to make me rich if I would get
+him only a priest. 'You pledged your word to the lady of Fort St. John,'
+said I. The water kept rising and he kept stretching his neck above it,
+and crying and shouting, and I took his humor and cried and shouted with
+him, naming the glorious waves as they rode in from the sea:--
+
+"'Glaud Burge!'
+
+"'Jean le Prince!'
+
+"'Renot Babinet!'
+
+"'Ambroise Tibedeaux!'
+
+"And so on until Francois Bastarack the twenty-third roller flowed over
+his head, and Edelwald did not even know he was beneath."
+
+Antonia dropped her face upon her hands.
+
+"So that is the true story," said Le Rossignol. "He died a good salt
+death, and his men pulled him out before the next tide."
+
+Presently Antonia looked up. Her eye was first caught by a coming sail
+on the river. It shone in the moonlight, moving slowly, for there was so
+little wind. Her husband must be there. She turned to say so to Le
+Rossignol; who was gone.
+
+Antonia opened the gate and stepped outside, looking in every direction
+for dwarf and swan. She had not even noticed a rustle, or the pat of
+Shubenacadie's feet upon sand. But Le Rossignol and her familiar had
+disappeared in the wide expanse of moonlight; whether deftly behind tree
+or rock, or over wall, or through air above, Antonia had no mind to find
+out.
+
+Even the approaching sail took weirdness. The ship was too distant for
+her to yet hear the hiss of water around its prow. But in that, Van
+Corlaer and the homely good happiness of common life was approaching.
+With the dwarf had disappeared that misty sweet sorrowful Acadian world.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LADY OF FORT ST. JOHN***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 18631.txt or 18631.zip *******
+
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