"The world has altered since her time, mademoiselle," said John, falsely and lamely.

"Has it? It burnt her; even in those days it did its best according to its lights," she answered bitterly. "Only in these days there are no heroines to burn. No heroines . . . no fires . . . and even in our needlework we must be demure, and not touch a garment that has been touched with blood! Monsieur, was this man a coward?" She lifted the tunic.

"He was a vain fellow and a bully, mademoiselle, but by no means a coward."

"He fought for France?"

"Yes; and, I believe, with credit."

"Then, monsieur, because he was a bully, I commend the man who killed him fairly. And because he was brave and fought for France, I am proud to handle his tunic."

As John a Cleeve gazed at her kindled face, the one thought that rose above his own shame was a thought that her earnestness marvellously made her beautiful.



CHAPTER XV.

THE SECOND DISPATCH.

Dominique Guyon departed shortly before noon; and a week later half a dozen habitants arrived from Boisveyrac to work at the entrenchment which the Commandant had already opened across Sans Quartier's cabbage plot. The Commandant himself donned a blouse and dug with the rest; and M. Etienne; and even old Jeremie Tripier, though grumbling over his rheumatism almost as bitterly as Sans Quartier over his wasted cabbages. Every one, in fact, toiled, and with a will, at the King's corvee: every one, that is, except the women, and John, and Menehwehna (whose Indian dignity revolted against spade-work), and old Father Joly, the chaplain of the fort, who was too infirm.

From him, as they sat together and watched the diggers, John learned much of the fort's history, and something, too, of his hosts'; for Father Joly delighted in gossip, and being too deaf to derive much profit from asking questions kept the talk to himself—greatly to John's relief. His gossip, be it said, was entirely innocent. The good man seemed to love every one in his small world, except Father Launoy. And again this exception was fortunate; for on learning that John had been visited and exhorted at Boisveyrac by Father Launoy, Father Joly showed no further concern in his spiritual health. He was perhaps the oldest parochial priest in New France, and since leaving the seminary at Quebec had spent almost all his days at Boisveyrac. He remembered the Seigneur's father (he always called the Commandant "the Seigneur"). "Such a man, monsieur! He stood six feet four inches in his stockings, and could lift and cast a grown bullock with his own hands." John pointed out that the present Seigneur—in his working blouse especially—made a fine figure of a man; but this the old priest could hardly be brought to allow. "A heart of gold, I grant you; but to have seen his father striding among his censitaires on St. Martin's Feast! It may be that, having watched the son from childhood, I still think of him as a boy. . . ."

Of Fort Amitie itself Father Joly had much to tell. It dated from the early days of the great Frontenac, who had planted a settlement here—a collection of wooden huts within a stockade—to be an entrepot of commerce with the Indians of the Upper Lakes. Later it became a favourite haunt of deserters from the army and coureurs de bois outlawed by royal edict; and, strangely enough, these had been the days of its prosperity. Its real decline began when the Governor, toward the end of his rule, replaced the wooden huts with a fortress of stone. The traders, trappers, ne'er-do-wells and Indians deserted the lake-head, which had been a true camp of amity, and moved their rendezvous farther west, leaving the fortress to its Commandant and a sleepy garrison.

From that time until the war the garrison had been composed of regulars, who lived on the easiest terms with their Commandant and his officers, and retired at the age of forty or fifty, when King Louis presented them with a farm and farm stock and provisions for two or three years, and often completed the outfit with a wife.

"A veritable Age of Gold, monsieur! But war has put an end to it all—war, and the greed of these English, whom God will confound! The regulars went their ways, leaving only Sergeant Bedard; who had retired upon a farm, but was persuaded by the Seigneur to come back and drill the recruits of the militia."

—"Who take very kindly to garrison life, so far as I can see."

"Fort Amitie has its amenities, monsieur," said Father Joly, catching John's glance rather than hearing the words. "There are the allotments, to begin with—the fences between them, you may not have observed, are made of stakes from the original palisade; the mould is excellent. The Seigneur, too, offers prizes for vegetable-growing and poultry-raising; he is an unerring judge of poultry, as one has need to be at Boisveyrac, where the rents are mostly paid in fowls. Indeed, yes, the young recruits are well enough content. The Seigneur feeds them well, and they can usually have a holiday for the asking and go a-hunting in the woods or a-fishing in the river. But, for my part, I regret Boisveyrac. A man of my years does not readily bear transplanting. And here is a curious thing, monsieur; deaf though I am, I miss the sound of the rapids. I cannot tell you how; nevertheless it seems to me that something has gone out of my daily life, and the landscape here is still and empty."

"And how," John managed to make him hear, "did the Seigneur come to command Fort Amitie?"

Father Joly glanced nervously down the slope and lowered his voice. "That was M. Armand's doing, monsieur." Then, seeing that John did not understand, "M. Armand—mademoiselle's brother and the Seigneur's only son. He went to Quebec, when the Governor had given him a post in his household; a small post, but with good prospects for a young man of his birth and address. He had wits, monsieur, and good looks; everything in short but money; and there is no better blood in the province than that of the des Noel-Tilly. They have held Boisveyrac now for five generations, and were Seigneurs of Deuxmanoirs and Preaux-Sources even before that. Well, as I say, the lad started with good prospects; but by and by he began to desert the Chateau Saint-Louis for the Intendant's Palace. Monsieur has heard of the Intendant Bigot—is perhaps acquainted with him? No? Then I may say without hurting any one's feelings what I would say to the Intendant himself were he here—that he is a corrupter of youth, and a corrupter of the innocence of women, and a corrupter of honest government. If New France lie under the scourge to-day, it is for the sins of such men as he." The old man's voice shook with sudden anger, but he calmed himself. "In brief, there was a gambling debt— a huge sum owing; and the Seigneur was forced to travel to Quebec and fetch the lad home. How he paid the amount I cannot tell you; belike he raised the money on Boisveyrac; but pay he did. Dominique Guyon went with him to Quebec, having just succeeded his father, old Bonhomme Guyon, as Boisveyrac's man of business; and doubtless Dominique made some arrangements with the merchants there. He has a head on his shoulders, that lad. M. de Vaudreuil, too, taking pity on a distressed gentleman of New France, gave the Seigneur the command of this fort, to grow fat on it, and hither we have all migrated. But our good Seigneur will never grow fat, monsieur; he is of the poor to whom shall belong the Kingdom of God."

John did not clearly understand this, being unacquainted with the official system of peculation by false vouchers—a system under which the command of a backwoods fort was reckoned to be worth a small fortune. His mind recurred to Dominique and to the Commandant's uneasiness at Dominique's mention of business.

"A queer fellow, that Dominique!" he muttered, half to himself; "and a queer fate that made him the brother of Bateese."

The priest heard, as deaf men sometimes will hear a word or two spoken below ordinary pitch.

"Ah!" said he, shaking his head. "You have heard of Bateese? A sad case—a very sad case!"

"There was an accident, I have heard."

Father Joly glanced at John's face and, reading the question, bent his own dim eyes on the river. John divined at once that the old man knew more than he felt inclined to tell.

"It was at Bord-a-Loup, a little above Boisveyrac, four years ago last St. Peter's tide. The two brothers were driving some timber which the Seigneur had cleared there; the logs had jammed around a rock not far from shore and almost at the foot of the fall. The two had managed to get across and were working the mass loose with handspikes when, just as it began to break up, Bateese slipped and fell between two logs."

"Through some careless push of Dominique's, was it not?"

But Father Joly did not hear, or did not seem to.

"He was hideously broken, poor Bateese. For weeks it did not seem possible that he could live. The habitants find Dominique a queer fellow, even as you do; and I have observed that even Mademoiselle Diane treats him somewhat impatiently. But in truth he is a lad grown old before his time. It is terrible when such a blow falls upon the young. He and Bateese adored one another."

And this was all John learned at the time. But three days later he heard more of the story, and from Mademoiselle Diane.

She was seated in an embrasure of the terrace—the same, in fact, in which she had taken measurements for John's new tunic. She was embroidering it now with the Bearnais badge, and had spread Barboux's tunic on the gun-breach to give her the pattern. John, passing along the terrace in a brown study, while his eyes followed the evolutions of Sergeant Bedard's men at morning parade in the square below, did not catch sight of her until she called to him to come and admire her handiwork.

"Monsieur is distrait, it appears," she said, mischievously. "It must be weary work for him, whiling away the hours in this contemptible fortress?"

"I do not find Fort Amitie contemptible, mademoiselle."

She shook her head and laughed. "If you wish to please me, monsieur, you must find some warmer praise for it. For in some sort it is my ancestral home, and I love every stone of it."

"Mademoiselle speaks in riddles. I had thought that every one of the Commandant's household—except the Commandant himself, perhaps—was pining to get back to Boisveyrac."

She let her needlework lie for a moment, and sat with her eyes resting on the facade of the Commandant's quarters across the square.

"It is foolish in me," she said musingly; "for in the days of which I am thinking not one of these stones was laid. You must know, monsieur, that in those days many and many a young man of family took to the woods; no laws, no edicts would restrain them; the life of the forest seemed to pass into their blood and they could not help themselves . . . ah, I myself understand that, sometimes!" she added, after a pause.

"Well, monsieur," she went on, "there came to Fort Amitie a certain young Raoul de Tilly, who suffered from this wandering fever. The Government outlawed him in the end; but as yet his family had hopes to reclaim him, and, being powerful in New France, they managed to get his sentence delayed. He came here, and here he fell in love with an Indian girl, and married her—putting, they say, a pistol at the priest's head. The girl was a Wyandot from Lake Huron, and had been baptised but a week before. For a year they lived together in the Fort here; but when a child was born the husband sent her down the river to his father's Seigniory below Three Rivers, and himself wandered westward into the Lakes, and was never again heard of. The mother died on the voyage, it is said; but the child— a daughter—reached the Seigniory and was acknowledged, and lived to marry a cousin, a de Tilly of Roc Sainte-Anne. My mother was her grand-daughter."

Why had she chosen to tell him this story? He turned to her in some wonder. But, for whatever reason she had told it, the truth of the story was written in her face. Hardly could he recognise the Mademoiselle Diane who had declaimed to him of Joan of Arc and the glory of fighting for New France. She was gone, and in her place a girl fronted him, a child almost, with a strange anguish in her voice, and in her eyes the look of a wild creature trapped. She was appealing to him. But again, why?

"I think you must be in some trouble, mademoiselle," said he, speaking the thought that came uppermost. Something prompted him to add, "Has it to do with Dominique Guyon?" The question seemed to stab her. She stood up trembling, with a scared face.

"Why should you think I am troubled? What made you suppose—" she stammered, and stopped again in confusion. "I only wanted you to understand. Is it not much better when folks speak to one another frankly? Something may be hidden which seems of no importance, and yet for lack of knowing it we may misjudge utterly, may we not?"

Heaven knew that of late John had been feeling sorely enough the torment of carrying about a secret. But to the girl's broken utterances he held no clue at all, nor could he hit on one.

"See now," she went on, almost fiercely; "you speak of Dominique Guyon. You suspected something—what, you could not tell; perhaps it had not even come to a suspicion. But, seeing me troubled—as you think—at once Dominique's name comes to your lips. Now listen to the truth, how simple it is. When Armand and I were children . . . you have heard of Armand?"

"A little; from Father Joly."

"Papa thinks he has behaved dishonourably, and will scarcely allow his name to be uttered until he shall return from the army, having redeemed his fault. Papa, though he seems easy, can be very stern on all questions of honour. Well, when Armand and I were children, we played with the two Guyon boys. Their father, Bonhomme Guyon, was only my father's farmer; but in a lonely place like Boisveyrac, and with no one to instruct us in difference of rank and birth—for my mother died when I was a baby—"

"I understand, mademoiselle."

"And so we played about the farm, as children will. But by and by, and a short while before I left Boisveyrac to go to school with the Ursulines, Dominique began to be—what shall I say? He was very tiresome."

She paused. "I understand," repeated John quietly. "At first I did not guess what he meant. And the others, of course, did not guess. But he was furiously jealous, even of his brother, poor Bateese. And when Bateese met with his accident—"

"One moment, mademoiselle. When Bateese fell between the logs, was it because Dominique had pushed him?"

She wrung her hands as in a sudden fright. "You guessed that? How did you guess? No one knows it but I, and Father Launoy, no doubt, and perhaps Father Joly. But Dominique knows that I know; and his misery seems to give him some hold over me."

"In what way can I help you, mademoiselle?"

"Did I ask you to help me?" She had resumed her seat on the gun-carriage and, drawing Sergeant Barboux's tunic off its gun, began with her embroidery scissors to snip at the shanks of its breast-buttons. His cheeks were burning now; she spoke with a trained accent of levity. "I called you, monsieur, to say that I cannot, of course, copy these buttons, and to ask if you consent to my using them on your new tunic, or if you prefer to put up with plain ones. But it appears that I have wandered to some distance from my question." She attempted a laugh; which, however, failed dolefully.

"Decidedly I prefer any buttons to those. But, excuse me," persisted John, drawing nearer, "though you asked for no help and need none, yet I will not believe you have honoured me so far with your confidence and all without purpose."

"Oh," she replied, still in the same tone of hard, almost contemptuous, levity. "I had a whim, monsieur, to be understood by you, that is all; and perhaps to rebuke you by contrast for telling us so little of yourself. It is as Felicite said—you messieurs of the army keep yourselves well padded over the heart. See here—" She began to dig with her scissor-point and lay bare the quilting within Barboux's tunic; but presently stopped, with a sharp cry.

"What is the matter, mademoiselle?"

For a second or two she snipped furiously, and then—"This is the matter!" she cried, plunging her fingers within the lining. "A dispatch! He carried one after all!" She dragged forth a paper and held it up in triumph.

"Give it to me, please. But I say that you must and shall, mademoiselle!" John's head swam, but he stepped and caught her by the wrists.

And with that the paper fell to the ground. He held her wrist; he felt only the magnetic touch, looked into her eyes, and understood. From wonder at his outburst they passed to fear, to appeal, to love. Yes, they shrank from him, sick with shame and self-comprehension, pitifully seeking to hide the wound. But it would not by any means be hid. A light flowed from it, blinding him.

"You hurt! Oh, you hurt!"

He dropped her hands and strode away, leaving the paper at her feet.



CHAPTER XVI.

THE DISMISSAL.

The Commandant tapped the dispatch on the table before him, with a ruse smile.

"I was right then, after all, M. a Clive, in maintaining that your comrade carried a message from the General. My daughter has told me how you came, between you, to discover it. That you should have preserved the tunic is no less than providential; indeed, I had all along supposed it to be your own."

John waited, with a glance at the document, which lay with the seal downward, seemingly intact.

"It is addressed," the Commandant pursued, "in our ordinary cypher to the Marquis de Vaudreuil at Montreal. In my own mind I have not the least doubt that it instructs him—the pressure to the south having been relieved by the victory at Fort Carillon—to send troops up to us and to M. de Noyan at Fort Frontenac. My good friend up there has been sending down appeals for reinforcements at the rate of two a week, and has only ceased of late in stark despair. It is evident that your comrade carried a message of some importance to Montreal; and I have sent for you, monsieur, to ask: Are you in a condition to travel?"

"You wish me to carry this dispatch, monsieur?"

"If you tell me that you are fit to travel. Indeed it is a privilege which you have a right to claim, and M. de Vaudreuil will doubtless find some reward for the bearer. Young men were ambitious in my day—eh, M. a Clive?"

John, averting his face, gazed out of window upon the empty courtyard, the slope of the terrace and the line of embrasures above it. Diane was not there beside her accustomed gun, and he wondered if he should see her again before departing. He wondered if he desired to see her. To be sure he must accept this mission, having gone so far in deceit. It would set him free from Fort Amitie; and, once free, he could devise with Menehwehna some plan of escaping southward. Within the fort he could devise nothing. He winced under the Commandant's kindness; yet blessed it for offering, now at last, a term to his humiliation.

"M. de Vaudreuil will not be slow, I feel sure, to recognise your services," pursued the Commandant genially. "But, that there may be no mistake about it, I have done myself the pleasure to write him a letter commending you. Would you care to hear a sentence or two? No?"—for John's hand went up in protest—"Well, youth is never the worse for a touch of modesty. Be so good, then, monsieur, as to pass me the seal yonder."

John picked up and handed the seal almost without glancing at it. His thoughts were elsewhere as the Commandant lit a taper, heated the wax, and let it drop upon the letter. But just as the seal was impressed, old Jeremie Tripier entered without knocking, and in a state of high perturbation. "Monseigneur! Monseigneur! A whole fleet of boats in sight—coming down the river!"

The Commandant pushed back his chair.

"Boats? Down the river? Nonsense, Jeremie, it is up the river you mean; you have the message wrong. They must be the relief from Montreal!"

"Nay, Monseigneur, it is down the river they are approaching. The news came in from Sans Quartier, who is on sentry-go upstream. He has seen them from Mont-aux-Ours, and reports them no more than three miles away."

"Please God no ill has befallen de Noyan!" muttered the Commandant. "Excuse me, M. a Clive; I must look into this. We will talk of our business later."

But John scarcely heard. His eyes had fallen on the seal of the Commandant's letter. It stared back at him—a facsimile of the one hidden in his pocket—a flying Mercury, with, cap, winged sandals, and caduceus.

He pulled his wits together to answer the Commandant politely, he scarcely knew how, and followed him out to the postern gate. Half a dozen of the garrison—all, in fact, who happened to be off duty—were hurrying along the ridge to verify Sans Quartier's news. John, still weak from his wound, could not maintain the pace. Halting on the slope for breath, while the Commandant with an apology left him and strode ahead, he turned, caught sight of Diane, and waited for her.

She came as one who cannot help herself, with panting bosom and eyes that supplicated him for mercy. But Love, not John a Cleeve, was the master to grant her remission—and who can supplicate Love?

They met without greeting, and for a while walked on in silence, he with a flame in his veins and a weight of lead in his breast.

"Is papa sending you to Montreal?" she asked, scarcely above a whisper.

"He was giving me orders when this news came."

There was a long pause now, and when next she spoke he could hardly catch her words. "You will come again?"

His heart answered, "My love! O my love!" But he could not speak it. He looked around upon sky, forest, sweeping river—all the landscape of his bliss, the prison of his intolerable shame. A fierce peremptory longing seized him to kill his bliss and his shame at one stroke. Four words would do it. He had but to stand up and cry aloud, "I am an Englishman!" and the whole beautiful hideous dream would crack, shiver, dissolve. Only four words! Almost he heard his voice shouting them and saw through the trembling heat her body droop under the stab, her love take the mortal hurt and die with a face of scorn. Only four words, and an end desirable as death! What kept him silent then? He checked himself on the edge of a horrible laugh. The thing was called Honour: and its service steeped him in dishonour to the soul.

"You will come again?" her eyes repeated.

He commanded himself to say, "It may be that there is now no need to go. If Fort Frontenac has fallen—"

"Why should you believe that Fort Frontenac has fallen?" she broke in; and then, clasping her hands, added in a sort of terror, "Do you know that—that now—I hardly seem able to think about Fort Frontenac, or to care whether it has fallen or not? What wickedness has come to me that I should be so cruelly selfish?"

He set his face. Even to comfort her he must not let his look or voice soften; one touch of weakness now would send him over the abyss.

"Let us go forward," said he. "At the next bend we shall know what has happened."

But around the bend came a procession which told plainly enough what had happened; a procession of boats filled with dark-coated provincial soldiers, a few white-coats, many women and children. No flags flew astern; the very lift of the oars told of disgrace and humiliation. Thus came Payan de Noyan with his garrison, prisoners on parole, sent down by the victorious British to report the fall of Frontenac and be exchanged for prisoners taken at Ticonderoga.

Already the Commandant and his men had surmised the truth, and were hurrying back along the ridge to meet the unhappy procession at the quay. John and Diane turned with them and walked homeward in silence.

The flotilla passed slowly beneath their eyes, but did not head in toward the quay. An old man in the leading boat waved an arm from mid-stream—or rather, lifted it in salutation and let it fall again dejectedly.

This was de Noyan himself, and apparently his parole forbade him to hold converse with his countrymen before reaching Montreal. On them next, for aught the garrison of Fort Amitie could learn, the enemy were even now descending.

Diane, halting on the slope, heard her father call across the water to de Noyan, who turned, but shook his head and waved a hand once more with a gesture of refusal.

"He was asking him to carry the dispatch to Montreal. Since he will not, or cannot, you must follow with it."

"For form's sake," John agreed. "It can have no other purpose now."

They were standing at the verge of the forest, and she half turned towards him with a little choking cry that asked, as plainly as words, "Is this all you have to say? Are you blind, that you cannot see how I suffer?"

He stepped back a pace into the shadow of the trees. She lifted her head and, as their eyes met, drooped it again, faint with love. He stretched out his arms.

"Diane!"

But as she ran to him he caught her by the shoulders and held her at arms' length. Her eyes, seeking his, saw that his gaze travelled past her and down the slope. And turning in his grasp she saw Menehwehna running towards them across the clearing from the postern gate, and crouching as he ran.

He must have seen them; for he came straight to where they stood, and gripping John by the arm pointed towards the quay, visible beyond the edge of the flagstaff tower.

"Who are these newcomers?" cried Diane, recovering herself. "Why, yes, it is Father Launoy and Dominique Guyon! Yes, yes—and Bateese!—whom you have never seen."

John turned to her quietly, without haste.

"Mademoiselle," said he in a voice low and firm, and not altogether unhappy, "I have met Bateese Guyon before now. And these men bring death to me. Run, Menehwehna! For me, I return to the Fort with mademoiselle."

She stared at him. "Death?" she echoed, wondering.

"Death," he repeated, "and I deserve it. On many accounts I have deserved it, but most of all for having stolen your trust. I am an Englishman."

For a moment she did not seem to hear. Then slowly, very slowly, she put out both hands and cowered from him.

"Return, Menehwehna!" commanded John firmly. "Yes, mademoiselle, I cannot expiate what I have done. But I go to expiate what I can."

He took a step forward; but she had straightened herself up and stood barring his path with her arm, fronting him with terrible scorn.

"Expiate! What can you expiate? You can only die; and are you so much afraid of death that you think it an atonement? You can only die, and—and—" she hid her face in her hands. "Oh, Menehwehna, help me! He can only die, and I cannot let him die!"

Menehwehna stepped forward with impassive face. "If my brother goes down the hill, I go with him," he announced calmly.

"You see?" Diane turned on John wildly. "You will only kill your friend—and to what purpose? The wrong you have done you cannot remedy; the remedy you seek would kill me surely. Ah, go! go! Do not force me to kneel and clasp your knees—you that have already brought me so low! Go, and let me learn to hate as well as scorn you. You wish to expiate? This only will I take for expiation."

"Come, brother!" urged Menehwehna, taking him by the arm.

Diane bent close to the Indian, whispered a word in his ear, and, turning about, looked John in the face.

"Are you sorry at all? If you are sorry, you will obey me now."

With one long searching look she left him and walked down the slope. Menehwehna dragged him back into the undergrowth as the postern door opened, and M. Etienne came through it, followed by Father Launoy, Dominique, and Bateese.

Peering over the bushes Menehwehna saw Diane descend to meet them—he could not see with what face.

Marvellous is woman. She met them with a gay and innocent smile.

Her whispered word to Menehwehna had been to keep by the waterside. And later that night, when the garrison had given over beating the woods for the fugitives, a canoe stole up the river, close under the north bank. One man sat in it; and after paddling for a couple of miles up-stream he began to sing as he went—softly at first, but raising his voice by little and little—

"Chante, rossignol, chante, Toi qui as le coeur gai; Tu as le coeur a rire, Moi je l'ai-t a pleurer."

No answer came from the dark forest. He took up his chant again, more boldly:

"Tu as le coeur a rire, Moi je l'ai-t a pleurer; J'ai perdu ma maitresse Sans pouvoir la trouver. —Lui y a longtemps que je t'aime, Jamais je ne t'oublierai."

He listened. A low call sounded from the trees on his right, and he brought the canoe under the bank.

"Is that you, Bateese?"

"Monsieur, forgive me! I said as little as I could, but the Reverend Father and Dominique were too clever for me. And how was I to have known? . . . . Take the canoe and travel fast, my friends; they will be searching again at dawn."

"Did mademoiselle send the canoe?"

"Yes; and she charged you to answer one question. It was her brother—M. Armand—whom the Iroquois slew in the Wilderness. Ah, that cry! Can one ever forget?"

"Her brother!" John's hand went to his breast in the darkness.

"Monsieur did not know, then? I was sure that monsieur could not have known! For myself I did not know until four days ago. The Iroquois had not seen us, and we escaped back to the Richelieu— to Sorel—to Montreal, where I left my wounded man. Ah, monsieur, but we suffered on the way! And from Montreal I made for Boisveyrac, and there my tongue ran loose—but in all innocence. And there I heard that M. Armand had been crossing the Wilderness . . . but monsieur did not know it was her brother?"

"That, at least, I never knew nor guessed, Bateese. Was this the question Mademoiselle Diane desired you to ask me?"

"It was, monsieur. And, according to your answer, I was to give you her word."

"What is her word, Bateese?"

"She commends you to God, monsieur, and will pray for you."

"Take back my word that I will pray to deserve her prayers, who can never deserve her pardon."



CHAPTER XVII.

FRONTENAC SHORE.

"And what will my brother do?"

For minutes before John heard and answered it the question had been singing in his ears to the beat of the paddles. He supposed that Menehwehna had asked it but a moment ago.

"I cannot tell. Let us press on; it may be we shall find my countrymen at Frontenac."

"As a child breaks down a lodge which another child has built, and runs away, so your countrymen will have departed."

Fort Amitie lay far behind. They were threading their way now among the Thousand Isles, and soon Lake Ontario opened before them, spreading its blue waters to the horizon. But John heeded neither green islands nor blue lake, nor their beauty, nor their peace, but only the shame in his heart. He saw only the dazzle on the water, heard only the swirl around his paddle, stroke by stroke, hour after hour; prayed only for fatigue to drug the ache and bring about oblivion with the night.

Coasting the shore they came at the close of day upon the charred skeletons of three ships lifting their ribs out of the shallows against the sunset, and beyond these, where the water deepened, to a deserted quay.

They landed; and while they climbed the slope towards the fort, out of one of its breaches its only inhabitant crawled to them—a young dog, gaunt and tame with hunger.

The dog fawned upon Menehwehna. But John turned his back on the smoke-blackened walls in a sick despair, seated himself on the slope, and let his gaze travel southward over the shoreless water. Beyond the rim of it would lie Oswego, ruined by the French as the English had ruined Frontenac.

The dog came and stretched itself at his feet, staring up with eyes that seemed at once to entreat his favour and to marvel why he sat there motionless. Menehwehna had stepped down to the canoe to fetch food for it, and by and by returned with a handful of biscuit.

"He will be useful yet," said Menehwehna, seating himself beside the dog and feeding it carefully with very small pieces. "He cannot be more than a year old, and before the winter is ended we will make a hunter of him."

John did not answer.

"You will come with me now, brother?" Still Menehwehna kept his eyes on the dog. "There is no other way."

"There is one way only," answered John, with his eyes fastened on the south. "Teach me to build a canoe, and let me cross the water alone. If I drown, I drown."

"And if you reached? Your countrymen are all gathering back to the south; until the snow has come and passed, there will be no more fighting. You are better with me. Come, and when the corn begins to shoot again you shall tell me if you are minded to return."

"Menehwehna, you do not understand."

"I have studied you, my brother, when you have not guessed it; and I say to you that if you went back now to your people it would be nothing to their gain, nor to yours, for the desire of fighting has gone out of you. Now in my nation we do not wonder when a man loses that desire, for we put it away as men by eating put away the desire of food. All things come to us in their season. This month the corn ripens, and at home my wife and children are gathering it; but anon comes the Moon of Travel, and they will weary of the village and watch the lake for me to arrive and lead them away to the hunting-grounds. So the beasts have their seasons; the buck his month for belling, and the beaver his month for taking shelter in his house which he has stored. And with us, when the snow melts, it may happen that the war-talk begins—none knowing how—and spreads through the villages: first the young men take to dancing and painting their faces, and the elder men catch fire, and a day sees us taking leave of our womankind to follow the war-path. But in time we surfeit even of fighting, and remember our lodges again."

Menehwehna paused awhile, and patted the dog's head.

"Therefore, brother, were you of our race, I should not wonder that the spirit of war has gone out of you. I myself am weary of it for a season; I forget that Frenchman differs from Englishman, and think of the sound of thin ice above the beaver's wash, the blood of the red-deer's hocks on the snow, the smell of his steak over the fire. But of the pale-faces some are warriors, some are not; and the warriors fight, year in and year out, whenever they can. That is your calling, brother, is it not?"

"I am not grown a coward, I hope."

"No," said Menehwehna thoughtfully, "you are not a coward; else my heart had never gone out to you. But I think there is something dead within you that must come to life, and something alive within you that must die, before you grow into a warrior again. As for your going back to-day, listen—

"There was war once between our nation and the Pottawatamies, and in an open fight our braves killed many of their enemies and scattered the rest to their villages. Great was the victory, but mournful; for in the chase that followed it an arrow pierced the throat of the leader of the Ojibways. His name was Daimeka, and he a chief in my own island of Michilimackinac. Where he fell there he lay. His people lifted the body and propped it against a tree, seated, with its face towards the forest into which the Pottawatamies had fled. They wiped the dirt from his head-dress, set his bow against his shoulder, and so, having lamented him, turned their faces northward to their own country.

"But Daimeka, although he could neither speak nor stir, saw all that his friends did, and heard all that they said. He listened to their praises of him and their talk of their victory, and was glad; he felt the touch of their hands as they set out his limbs against the tree, but his own hands he could not lift. His tears, indeed, ran as they turned to abandon him; but this sign they did not see, and he could give no other.

"The story says that little by little his hot tears melted the frost that bound him; and by and by, as he remembered the cry of home-coming—'Kumad-ji-wug! We have conquered!'—his spirit put forth an effort as a babe in its mother's travail, and he found his feet and ran after the braves. Then was he mad with rage to find that they had no eyes for him, and he no voice to call their attention. When they walked forward he walked forward, when they halted he halted, when they slept he slept, when they awoke he awoke; nay, when they were weary he felt weariness. But for all the profit it brought him he might still have been sitting under the tree; for their eyes would not see him, and his talk to them was as wind.

"And this afflicted him so that at length he began to tear open his wounds, saying, 'This, at least, will move them to shame, who owe their victory to me!' But they heeded nothing; and when he upbraided them they never turned their heads.

"At length they came to the shore where they had left the canoes, and put across for the island. As they neared it the men in Daimeka's canoe raised the war-shout, 'Kumad-ji-wug! We have conquered!' and old men, wives and children came running from the village, his own father and wife and children among them. 'Daimeka is dead!' was shouted many times in the uproar; and the warriors spoke his praises while his father wept, and his wife, and his two small ones.

"'But I am alive!' Daimeka shouted; for by this time he was in a furious passion. Then he ran after his wife, who was fleeing towards his own lodge, tearing her hair as she went. 'Listen to me, woman!' he entreated, and would have held her, but could not. He followed her into the lodge and stood over her as she sat on the bed, with her hands in her lap, despairing. 'But I am alive!' he shouted again. 'See how my wounds bleed; bind them, and give me food. To bleed like this is no joke, and I am hungry.' 'I have no long time to live,' said the woman to one of the children, 'even now I hear my man calling me, far away.' Daimeka, beside himself, beat her across the head with all his force. She put up a hand. 'Children, even now I felt his hand caressing me. Surely I have not long to live.'

"'I was better off under the tree,' said Daimeka to himself, and strode forth from the lodge. By the shore he launched one of the canoes; and now he felt no wish in his heart but to return to the battlefield and sit there dead, if only he could find his body again which he had left—as he now felt sure—sitting beneath the tree.

"On the fourth day he reached the battlefield. Night was falling, and as he sought the tree he came on a blazing fire. Across it he could see the tree plainly, and at the foot of it his body with the light on its face.

"He stepped aside to walk round the fire; but it moved as he moved, and again stood in his path. A score of times he tried to slip by it, but always it barred his way, and always beyond it stood the tree, with his own face fronting him across the blaze.

"'Fire, I am a fool,' said he at the last; 'but, fire, thou art a worse fool to think that Daimeka would turn his back!' And so saying he strode straight through its flame. At once he found himself seated with his back to the tree in his dress of war, with his bow resting against his shoulder. 'Now I am dead,' said he, contentedly; nevertheless he began to finger his bow. 'On what do the dead feed themselves?' he wondered; and, for a trial, fixed and shot an arrow at a passing bird: for above the tree there was clear sky, though darkness lay around its foot and in the darkness the fire still burned. The bird fell; he plucked it, cooked it at the fire, and ate.

"'In life I never ate better partridge,' said Daimeka, 'but now that I am a real ghost I will return once more to Michilimackinac and frighten my wife out of her senses, for she deserves it.'

"So when the fire died down he arose, warm in all his limbs, and started northward again. On the fourth day he found his canoe where he had left it, and pushed off for the island. But, as he neared the shore, a man who had been standing there ran back to the village, and soon all his folk came running down to the beach, his wife in their midst.

"'Daimeka!' they cried. 'It is indeed Daimeka returned to us!'

"'That may be,' said Daimeka, as his wife flung her arms around him; 'and again, it may not be. But, dead or alive, I find it good enough.'

"Such, my brother, is the tale of Daimeka. Is it better, now, to return to your people as a ghost or as a man who has found himself?"

John lifted a face of misery.

"Come," said Menehwehna, looking him straight in the eyes, and letting his hand rest from patting the dog, which turned and licked it feebly.

"I will come," said John.



CHAPTER XVIII.

NETAWIS.

The encampment stood under the lee of a tall sandhill, a few paces back from the brink of a frozen river. Here the forest ended in a ragged fringe of pines; and, below, the river spread into a lagoon, with a sandy bar between it and the lake, and a narrow outlet which shifted with every storm. The summer winds drove up the sand between the pine-stems and piled it in hummocks, gaining a few yards annually upon the forest as the old trees fell. The winter winds brought down the snow and whirled it among the hummocks until these too were covered.

For three weeks the encampment had been pitched here; and for two weeks snow had fallen almost incessantly, banking up the lodges and freezing as it fell. At length wind and snow had ceased and given place to a hard black frost, still and aching, and a sky of steel, and a red, rayless sun.

A man came down the river-bank, moving clumsily in his snow-shoes over the hummocks; a man dressed as an Indian, in blanket-cloak and scarlet mitases. His head was shaven to the crown around a top-knot skewered with heron's feathers; his face painted with black, vermilion, and a single streak of white between the eyebrows. He carried a gun under his left arm, and over his shoulder a pole to which he had slung the bodies of five beavers. Two dogs ran ahead of him straight for the encampment, which he had not discerned until they began to salute it with glad barking.

Five lodges formed the encampment—four of them grouped in a rough semicircle among the main lodge, which stood back close under the sand-bank where an eddy of wind had scooped it comparatively clear of snow.

The hunter followed his dogs to the door of the main lodge and lifted its frozen tent-flap.

"Is it well done, Menehwehna?" he asked, and casting his pole with its load upon the floor he clapped his mittened hands together for warmth. "Ough!" He began to pull the mittens off cautiously.

Menehwehna, seated with his back against the roof-pole (he had lain sick and fasting there all day), looked triumphantly towards his wife, who crouched with her two daughters by the lodge fire.

"Said I not that he would bring us luck? And, being bitten, did they bite, my brother?" he asked mischievously.

"A little. It did not hurt at the time."

One of the two girls rose from beside the fire.

"Show me your hands, Netawis," she said.

Netawis—that is to say, John a Cleeve—stretched out his lacerated hands to the firelight. As he did so his blanket-cloak fell back, showing a necklace of wampum about his throat and another looser string dangling against the stained skin of his breast. On his outstretched wrists two silver bangles twinkled, and two broad bands of silver on the upper arms.

The girl fetched a bladder of beaver-fat and anointed his hands, her own trembling a little. Azoka was husband-high, and had been conscious for some weeks of a bird in her breast, which stirred and began to flutter whenever she and Netawis drew close. At first, when he had been fit for little but to make kites for the children, she had despised him and wondered at her father's liking. But Netawis did not seem to care whether folks despised him or not; and this piqued her. Whatever had to be learnt he learned humbly, and now the young men had ceased to speak of him as a good-for-nothing, Azoka began to think that his differing from them was not wholly against him; and all the women acknowledged him to be slim and handsome.

"Many thanks, cousin," said Netawis as she bound up the wounds. Then he began to talk cheerfully over his shoulder to Menehwehna. "Five washes I tried, and all were empty; but by the sixth the water bubbled. Then I wished that I had you with me, for I knew that my hands would suffer." He smiled; this was one of his un-Indian tricks.

"It was well done, brother," said Menehwehna, and his eyes sought those of his wife Meshu-kwa who, still crouching by the fire, gazed across it at the youth and the girl.

"But that is not all. While I was at work the dogs left me. At first I did not miss them; and then, finding them gone, I made sure they had run home in scorn of my hunting. But no; their tracks led me to a tree, not far up the stream, and there I found them. They were not barking, but sometimes they would nose around the trunk and sometimes fall back to a little distance and sit whining and trembling while they stared up at it."

"And the tracks around the tree?"

"I could find none but what the dogs themselves had made. I tapped the tree, and it was hollow. Then I saw on the north side, a little above my head, many deep scratches with moss hanging in strips from them. The trunk ran up straight, and was so stout that my two arms would not span more than a tenth of it; but the scratches went up to the first fork, and there must be the opening, as I guess."

"Said I not that Netawis would become a hunter and bring us luck?" asked Menehwehna again. "He has found bear."

"Bear! Bear! Our Netawis has found bear!" cried two small urchins who had been rolling and tumbling with the dogs and almost burning their toes at the edges of the fire. They were the children of Azoka's elder sister Seeu-kwa, Muskingon's widow. Scrambling past Menehwehna, who never spoke harshly to them, and paying no heed to their mother's scolding, they ran out into the snow to carry the news to the other lodges.

"Our Netawis has found bear!"

"What news is this?" asked some of the young men who lived in a lodge apart—the bachelors' lodge—gathering round the doorway. "Seeu-kwa, look to it that your children do not grow up to be little liars."

Now John, surprised to find his news so important, had turned to Azoka with a puzzled smile. The firelight which danced on his face danced also on the long bead necklace heaving like a snake with the rise and fall of her bosom. He stared down at it, and Azoka—poor girl—felt his wrist trembling under her touch; but it was with the thought of another woman. She caught her hand away; and John, looking up, saw a young Indian, Ononwe by name, watching him gloomily from the doorway.

"Ask Netawis to tell the story," said Menehwehna. So John told it again, and added that it had been difficult to call the dogs away from the tree.

"But about the bear I say nothing; that is Menehwehna's talk. I only tell you what I saw."

"The wind has fallen," said one, "and soon the moon will be up. Let us go and prove this tale of Netawis."

Meshu-kwa opposed this, calling it folly. "We have no axes heavy enough for tree-cutting," she said; not giving her real reason, which was that she came of a family which claimed descent from a bear. When they mocked at her she said, "Also—why should I hide it?—there came to me an evil dream last night."

"This is the first that I have heard of your evil dream," answered Menehwehna, and gave order that after supper Netawis should lead the party to the tree, promising that he himself would follow as soon as the sickness left him.

At moonrise, therefore, they set out—men and women together, and even the small children. But Menehwehna called Azoka back from the door of the lodge.

"My daughter," he asked, they two being left alone, "has Ononwe a cause of quarrel against Netawis?"

"They are good friends," Azoka answered innocently. "Ononwe never speaks of Netawis but to praise. Surely my father has heard him?"

"That is returning a ball I never flung," her father said, fixing grave eyes on her, under which she flinched. "I am thinking that the face of Netawis troubles the clear water that once was between you and Ononwe. Yet you tell me that Ononwe praises him. Sit down, therefore, and hear this tale."

Azoka looked rebellious; but no one in his own household disobeyed Menehwehna—or out of it, except at peril.

"There was a man of our nation once, a young man, and good-looking as Ononwe; so handsome that all the village called him the Beau-man. This Beau-man fell deeply in love with a maiden called Mamondago-kwa, who also was passably handsome; but she had no right to scorn him as she did, both in private and openly, so that all the village talked of his ill-success. This talk so preyed on his mind that he fell ill, and when his friends broke up their camp after a winter's hunting to return to the village, he lay on his bed and would not stir, but declared he would remain and die in the snow rather than look again on the face of her who scorned him. So at length they took down the lodge about him and went their ways, leaving him to die.

"But when the last of them was out of sight this Beau-man arose and, wandering over the ground where the camp had been, he gathered up all kinds of waste that his comrades had left behind—scraps of cloth, beads, feathers, bones and offal of meat, with odds and ends of chalk, soot, grease, everything that he could pick out of the trodden snow. Then, having heaped them together, he called on his guardian manitou, and together they set to work to make a man. They stitched the rags into coat, mitoses and mocassins, and garnished them with beads and fringes; of the feathers they made a head-dress, with a frontlet; and then, taking mud, they plastered the offal and bones together and stuffed them tightly into the garments. The manitou breathed once, and to the eye all their patchwork became fresh and fine clothing. The manitou breathed twice, and life came into the figure, which the Beau-man had been kneading into the shape of a handsome youth. 'Your name,' said he, 'is Moowis, or the Muck-man, and by you I shall take my revenge.'

"So he commanded the Muck-man to follow, and together they went after the tracks of the tribe and came to the village. All wondered at the Beau-man's friend and his fine new clothes; and, indeed, this Moowis had a frank appearance that won all hearts. The chief invited him to his lodge, and begged the Beau-man to come too; he deserved no less for bringing so distinguished a guest. The Beau-man accepted, but by and by began to repent of his deception when he saw the Muck-man fed with deer tongue and the moose's hump while he himself had to be content with inferior portions, and when he observed further that Mamondago-kwa had no eyes for anyone but the Muck-man, who began to prove himself a clever rogue. The chief would have promoted Moowis to the first place by the fire; but this (for it would have melted him) he modestly refused. He kept shifting his place while he talked, and the girl thought him no less vivacious than modest, and no more modest than brave, since he seemed even to prefer the cold to the cheerful warmth of the hearth. The Beau-man attempted to talk; but the Muck-man had always a retort at which the whole company laughed, until the poor fellow ran out of the lodge in a fury of shame and rage. As he rose he saw the Muck-man rise, with the assent of all, and cross over to the bridegroom's seat beside Mamondago-kwa, who welcomed him as a modest maiden should when her heart has been fairly won.

"So it happened—attend to me well, my daughter—that Mamondago-kwa married a thing of rags and bones, put together with mud. But when the dawn broke her husband rose up and took a bow and spear, saying, 'I must go on a journey.' 'Then I will go with you,' said his bride. 'My journey is too long for you,' said the Muck-man. 'Not so,' answered she; 'there is no journey that I could not take beside you, no toil that I could not share for love of you.' He strode forth, and she followed him at a distance; and the Beau-man, who had kept watch all night outside their lodge, followed also at a distance, unseen. All the way along the rough road Mamondago-kwa called to her husband; but he went forward rapidly, not turning his head, and she could not overtake him. Soon, as the sun rose, he began to melt. Mamondago-kwa did not see the gloss go out of his clothes, nor his handsome features change back again into mud and snow and filth. But still as she followed she came on rags and feathers and scraps of clothing, fluttering on bushes or caught in the crevices of the rocks. She passed his mittens, his mocassins, his mitases, his coat, his plume of feathers. At length, as he melted, his footprints grew fainter, until she lost even his track on the snow. 'Moowis! Moowis!' she cried; but now there was none to answer her, for the Muck-man had returned to that out of which he was made."

Menehwehna ceased and looked at his daughter steadily.

"And did the Beau-man find her and fetch her back?" asked Azoka.

"The story does not say, to my knowledge; but it may be that Ononwe could tell you."

Azoka stepped to the moonlit doorway and gazed out over the snow.

"And yet you love Netawis?" she asked, turning her head.

"So much that I keep him in trust for his good, against a day when he will go and never return. But that is not a maiden's way of loving, unless maidens have changed since I went a-courting them."

Netawis having led them to the tree, the young men fell to work upon it at once. It measured well over ten fathoms in girth; and by daybreak, their axes being light, they had hewed it less than half-way through. After a short rest they attacked it again, but the sun was close upon setting when the tree fell—with a rending scream which swelled into a roar so human-like that the children ran with one accord and caught hold of their elders' hands.

John, with Seeu-kwa's small boys clinging to him, stood about thirty paces from the fallen trunk. Two or three minutes passed, and he wondered why the men did not begin to jeer at him for having found them a mare's nest. For all was quiet. He wondered also why none of them approached the tree to examine it.

"I shall be the mock of the camp from this moment," he thought, and said aloud, "Let go of my hands, little ones; there is no more danger."

But they clung to him more tightly than ever; for a great cry went up. From the opening by the fork of the trunk a dark body rolled lazily out upon the snow—an enormous she-bear. She uncurled and gathered herself up on all fours, blinking and shaking her head as though the fall had left her ears buzzing, and so began to waddle off. Either she had not seen the crowd of men and women, or perhaps she despised it.

"Ononwe! Ononwe!" shouted the Indians; for Ononwe, gun in hand, had been posted close to the opening.

He half-raised his gun, but lowered it again.

"Netawis found her," he said quietly. "Let Netawis shoot her."

He stepped back towards John who, almost before he knew, found the gun thrust into his hands; for the children had let go their clasp.

Amid silence he lifted it and took aim, wondering all the while why Ononwe had done this. The light was fading. To be sure he could not miss the bear's haunches, now turned obliquely to him; but to hit her without killing would be scarcely less dishonouring than to miss outright, and might be far more dangerous. His hand and forearm trembled too—with the exertion of hewing, or perhaps from the strain of holding the children. Why had he been fool enough to take the gun? He foretasted his disgrace even as he pulled the trigger.

It seemed to him that as the smoke cleared the bear still walked forward slowly. But a moment later she turned her head with one loud snap of the jaws and lurched over on her side. Her great fore-pads smote twice on the powdery snow, then were still.

He had killed her, then; and, as he learned from the applause, by an expert's shot, through the spine at the base of the skull. John had aimed at this merely at a guess, knowing nothing of bears or their vulnerable points, and in this ignorance neglecting a far easier mark behind the pin of the shoulder.

But more remained to wonder at; for the beast being certified for dead, Meshu-kwa ran forward and kneeling in the snow beside it began to fondle and smooth the head, calling it by many endearing names. She seated herself presently, drew the great jaws on to her lap and spoke into its ear, beseeching its forgiveness. "O bear!" she cried for all to hear, "O respected grandmother! You yourself saw that this was a stranger's doing. Believe not that Meshu-kwa is guilty of your death, or any of her tribe! It was a stranger that disturbed your sleep, a stranger who fired upon you with this unhappy result!"

The men stood around patiently until this propitiation was ended; and then fell to work to skin the bear, while Meshu-kwa went off with her daughters to the lodges, to prepare the cooking pots. In passing John she gave him a glance of no good will.

That night, as Azoka stood by a cauldron in which the bear's fat bubbled, and the young men idled around the blaze, she saw Netawis draw Ononwe aside into the darkness. Being a quick-witted girl she promptly let slip her ladle into the fat, as if by mischance, and ran to her father's lodge for another, followed by Meshu-kwa's scolding voice. The lodge had a back-exit towards the wall of the sandhill, where the wind's eddy had swept a lane almost clear of snow; and Azoka pushed her pretty head through the flap-way here in time to spy the dark shadows of the pair before they disappeared behind the bachelor's lodge. Quietly as a pantheress she stole after them, smoothing out her footprints behind her until she reached the trampled snow; and so, coming to the angle of the bachelors' lodge, cowered listening.

"But suppose that I had missed my shot?" said the voice of Netawis. "I tell you that my heart was as wax; and when the lock fell, I saw nothing. Why, what is the matter with you, Ononwe?"

"I thought you had led me here to quarrel with me," Ononwe answered slowly, and Azoka held her breath.

"Quarrel, brother? Why should I quarrel with you? It was a risk, as I am telling you; but you trusted me, and I brought you here to thank you that in your good heart you gave the shot up to me."

"But it was not my good heart." Ononwe's voice had grown hoarse. "It was an evil thought in my head, and you will have to quarrel with me, Netawis."

"That Ononwe is a good man," said Azoka to herself.

"I do not understand. Did you expect me, then, to miss? Do not say, brother, that you gave me the gun wishing me to miss and be the mock of the camp!"

"Yes, and no. I thought, if you took the gun, it would not matter whether you hit or missed."

"Why?"

"Are you so simple, Netawis? Or is it in revenge that you force me to tell? . . . Yes, I have played you an evil trick, and by an evil tempting. I saw you with Azoka. . . . I gave you the gun, thinking, 'If he misses, the whole camp will mock him, and a maid turns from a man whom others mock. But if he should kill the bear, he will have to reckon with Meshu-kwa. Meshu-kwa fears ill-luck, and she will think more than twice before receiving a son-in-law who has killed her grandmother the bear.'"

"I will marry Netawis," said Azoka to herself, shutting her teeth hard. And yet she could not feel angry with Ononwe as she ought. But it seemed that neither was Netawis angry; for he answered with one of those strange laughs of his. She had never been able to understand them, but she had never heard one that sounded so unhappy as did this.

"My brother," said Netawis—and his voice was gentle and bitterly sorrowful—"if you did this in guile, I have shot better indeed than you to-day. As for Meshu-kwa, I must try to be on good terms with her again; and as for Azoka, she is a good girl, and thinks as little of me as I of her. Last night when you saw us . . . I remember that I looked down on her and something reminded me . . . of one . . ." He leaned a hand against a pole of the lodge and gripped it as the anguish came on him and shook him in the darkness. "Damn!" cried John a Cleeve, with a sob.

"Was that her name?" asked Ononwe gravely, hardly concealing the relief in his voice.

But Azoka did not hear Netawis' answer as she crept back, smoothing the snow over her traces.



CHAPTER XIX.

THE LODGES IN THE SNOW.

The fat lay six inches deep on the bear's ribs; and, being boiled down, filled six porcupine skins.

"Said I not that Netawis would bring us good luck?" demanded Menehwehna.

But Meshu-kwa claimed the head of her ancestress, and set it up on a scaffold within the lodge, spreading a new blanket beneath it and strewing tobacco-leaf in front of its nose. As though poor Azoka had not enough misery, her mother took away her trinkets to decorate the bear, and forced her to smear her pretty, ochred face with cinders. Then for a whole day the whole family sat and fasted; and Azoka hated fasting. But next morning she and Seeu-kwa swept out the lodge, making all tidy. Pipes were lit, and Menehwehna, after blowing tobacco-smoke into the bear's nostrils, began a long harangue on the sad necessity which lay upon men to destroy their best friends. His wife's eye being upon him, he made an excellent speech, though he did not believe a word of it; but as a chief who had married the daughter of a chief, he laid great stress upon her pedigree, belittling his own descent from the canicu, or war eagle, with the easier politeness because he knew it to be above reproach. When he had ended, the family, Meshu-kwa included, seated themselves and ate of the bear's flesh very heartily.

A few days later, they struck their camp and moved inland, for the beaver were growing scarcer, and the heavy fall of snow hid their houses and made it difficult to search the banks for washes. But raccoon were plentiful at their new station, and easy to hunt. Before the coming of the Cold Moon—which is January—John was set to number the peltries, which amounted to three hundred odd; and the scaffold, on which the dried venison hung out of reach of the wolves, was a sight to gladden the heart. Only the women grumbled when Menehwehna gave order to strike camp, for theirs were the heaviest loads.

Azoka did not grumble. She could count now on Ononwe to help her with her burden, since, like a sensible girl, she had long since made up her quarrel with him and they were to be married in the spring on their return to the village. She had quite forgiven Netawis. Hers was that delicious stage of love when the heart, itself so happy, wants all the world to be happy too. Once or twice John caught her looking at him with eyes a little wistful in their gladness; he never guessed that she had overheard his secret and pitied him, but dared not betray herself. Ononwe, possessed with his new felicity, delighted to talk of it whenever he and John hunted together.

Did it hurt? Not often; and at the moment not much. But at night, when sleep would not come, when John lay staring at the chink in the doorway beyond which the northern lights flickered, then the wound would revive and ache with the aching silence. Once, only once, he had started out of sleep to feel his whole body flooded with happiness; in his dream the curtains of the lodge had parted and through them Diane had come to him. Standing over his head she had shaken the snow from her cloak and from her hair, and the scattered flakes had changed into raindrops, and the raindrops into singing birds, and the lodge into a roof of sunlit boughs, breaking into leaf with a scent of English hawthorn, as she stretched out her hands and knelt and he drew her to his heart. Her cheek was cold from her long journey; but a warm breeze played beneath the boughs, and under her falling hair against his shoulder her small hand stole up and touched his silver armlets. Nay, surely that touch was too real for any dream. . . .

He had sprung up and pulled aside the curtain; but she was gone. His eyes searched across a waste where only the snow-wraiths danced, and far to the north the Aurora flickered with ribbons of ghostly violet.

Would she come again? Yes, surely, under the stars and across the folds and hollows of the snow, that vision would return, disturbing no huddled wild creature, waking no sleeper in the lodge; would lift the curtain and stretch out both hands and be gathered to him. Though it came but once in a year he could watch for it by night, live for it by day.

But by day he knew his folly. He was lost, and in forgetting lay his only peace. He never once accused his fortune nor railed against a God he could not believe in. He had come to disaster through his own doubts; himself had been the only real enemy, and that sorry self must be hidden and buried out of sight.

On the whole he was burying it successfully. He liked these Ojibways, and had unlearnt his first disgust of their uncleanly habits, though as yet he could not imitate them. He had quite unlearnt his old loathing of Menehwehna for the sergeant's murder. Menehwehna was a fine fellow, a chief too, respected among all the nations west of Fort Niagara. John's surprise had begun at Fort Rouille, where, on Menehwehna's word of credit only, the Tobacco Indians had fetched out paint and clothes to disguise him, and had smuggled him, asking no questions, past the fort and up through the Lake aux Claies to Lake Huron. At Michilimackinac a single speech from Menehwehna had won his welcome from the tribe; and they were hunting now on the borders of the Ottawas through the favour of Menehwehna's friendship with the Ottawa chief at l'Arbre Croche. John saw that the other Indians considered him fortunate in Menehwehna's favour, and if he never understood the full extent of the condescension, at least his respect grew for one who was at once so kingly and so simple, who shared his people's hardships, and was their master less by rank than by wisdom in council, skill of hand, and native power to impress and rule.

Of the deer especially Menehwehna was a mighty hunter; and in February the wealth of the camp increased at a surprising rate. For at this season the snow becomes hard enough to bear the hunter and his dogs, but the sharp feet of the deer break through its crust and his legs are cut to the bone. Often a hunting party would kill a dozen stags in two or three hours, and soon the camp reckoned up five thousand pounds of dried venison, all of which had to be carried back seventy miles to the shore of the lake near l'Arbre Croche, where the canoes had been left.

Early in March the women began to prepare the bundles, and in the second week the return began, all starting at daybreak with as much as they could carry, and marching until noon, when they built a scaffold, piled their loads upon it, and returned to the camp for more. When all had been carried forward one stage, the lodge itself was removed, and so, stage by stage, they brought their wealth down to the coast. As they neared it they fell in with other lodges of Ojibways, mostly from Michilimackinac, gathering for the return voyage up the lake.

Having recovered and launched their canoes, which had lain hidden among the sandhills, they loaded up and coasted cheerfully homewards by way of La Grande Traverse and l'Arbre Croche, and on the last day of April landed under the French fort of Mackinac, which looked across the strait to Cap Saint-Ignace. A dozen traders were here awaiting them; and with these Menehwehna first settled out of the common fund for guns, powder, and stores supplied on credit for the winter's hunting. He then shared the residue among the camp, each hunter receiving the portion fixed by custom; and John found himself the owner of one hundred and twenty beaver skins, fifty raccoon, and twelve otter, besides fifty dubious francs in cash. The bear skin, which also fell to his share, he kept for his wedding gift to Ononwe. Twenty pounds of beaver bought a couple of new shirts; another twenty a blanket; and a handsome pair of scarlet mitases, fashionably laced with ribbon, cost him fifteen. Out of what remained he offered to pay Menehwehna for his first outfit, but received answer that he had amply discharged this debt by bringing good luck to the camp. Under Menehwehna's advice, therefore, he spent his gains in powder and ball, fishing-lines, tobacco, and a new lock for his gun.

"And I am glad," said Menehwehna, "that you consulted me to-day, for to-night I shall drink too much rum."

So indeed he did. That night his people—women and men—lay around the fort in shameless intoxication. It pleased John to observe that Azoka drank nothing; but on the other hand she made no attempt to restrain her lover, who, having stupefied himself with rum, dropped asleep with his head on her lap.

John, seated and smoking his pipe by the camp fire, watched her across its blaze. She leaned back against a pole of the lodge, her hands resting on Ononwe's head, her eyes gazing out into the purple night beyond the doorway. They were solemn, with the awe of a deep happiness. "And why not?" John asked himself. Her father, mother, and kinsfolk lay drunk around her; even the children had taken their share of the liquor. A disgusting sight, no doubt! yet somehow it did not move him to reprobation. He had lived for six months with this people, and they had taught him some lessons outside the craft of hunting: for example, that it takes all sorts to make a world, and that only a fool condemns his fellows for being unlike himself. At home in Devonshire he had never understood why the best farm-labourers and workmen broke out at times into reckless drinking, and lay sodden for days together; or how their wives could accept these outbursts as a matter of course. He understood now, having served apprentice to hardship, how the natural man must revolt now and again from the penalty of Adam, the grinding toil, day in and day out, to wrest food from the earth for himself, his womenkind, and children. He understood, too, how noble is the discipline, though pardonable the revolt. He had discovered how little a man truly needs. He had seen in this strange life much cruelty, much crazy superstition, much dirt and senseless discomfort; but he had made acquaintance with love and self-denial. He had learnt, above all, the great lesson—to think twice before judging, and thrice before condemning.

The camp fire was dying down untended. He arose and cast an armful of logs upon it; and at the sound Azoka withdrew her eyes from the doorway and fastened them upon him.

"Netawis," said she, "when will you be leaving us?"

"I have no thought of leaving."

"You are not telling me the truth, now."

"Indeed, I believe I am," John assured her.

"But what, then, of the girl yonder, whom you wanted to marry? Has she married another man, or is she dead? Yes, I know something about it," Azoka went on, as he stood staring amazedly. "For a long time I have wanted to tell you. That night, after you had killed the bear and Ononwe took you aside—I was afraid that you two would be quarrelling, and so I crept after you—" She waited for him to understand.

"I see," said John gravely.

"Tell me what has become of her."

"I suppose that she is living still with her own people; and there is nothing more to tell, Azoka, except that she cannot be mine, and would not if she could."

"Whose fault was it, Netawis? Yours or hers?"

"There was much fault indeed, and all of it mine; but against my marrying her it did not count, for that was impossible from the beginning. Suppose, now, your nation were at war with the Ottawas, and a young Ottawa brave fell in love with you. What would you do?"

"That is idle talk, for of course I should do nothing," said Azoka composedly. "But if I were a man and fell in love with an Ottawa maiden, it would be simple. I should carry her off."

John, being unable to find an answer to this, lit his pipe and sat staring into the fire.

"Was she an Englishwoman then?" Azoka asked after a while.

"An Englishwoman?" He looked up in surprise; then, with a glance around at the sleepers, he leaned forward until his eyes met the girl's at close range across the flame. "Since you have learnt one secret, Azoka, I will tell you another. She was a Frenchwoman, and it is I who am English."

But Azoka kept her composure. "My father is always wise," she said quietly. "If he had told the truth, you would have been in great danger; for many had lost sons and brothers in the fighting, and those who came back were full of revenge. You heard their talk."

"Then you have only to tell them, Azoka, and they may take their revenge. I shall not greatly care."

"I am no babbler, Netawis; and, moreover, the men have put their revenge away. When the summer comes very few will want to go fighting. For my part I pay little heed to their talk of killing and scalping; to me it is all boys' play, and I do not want to understand it. But from what I hear they think that the Englishmen will be victorious, and it is foolishness to fight on the losing side. If so—" Azoka broke off and pressed her palms together in sudden delight.

"If so?" echoed John.

"If the English win, why then you may carry off your Frenchwoman, Netawis! I do very much want you to be happy."

"And I thank you a thousand times, Azoka, for your good wishes; but I fear it will not happen in that way."

She smoothed the head of Ononwe in her lap. "Oh yes, it will," she assured him. "My father told me that you would be leaving us, some day; and now I know what he meant. He has seen her, has he not?"

"He has seen her."

"My father is never mistaken. You will go back when the time comes, and take her captive. But bring her back that I may see her, Netawis."

"But if she should resist?"

Azoka shook her pretty head. "You men never understand us. She will not resist when once you have married her; and I do very much want you to be happy."

For three days the Ojibways sprawled in drunkenness around Fort Mackinac, but on the fourth arose and departed for their island; very sullenly at first, as they launched their canoes, but with rising spirits as they neared home. And two days after their arrival Ononwe and Azoka were married.

In the midst of the marriage feast, which lasted a week, the great thaw began; and thereafter for a month Menehwehna watched John closely. But the springtime could not thaw the resolve which had been hardening John's heart all the winter—to live out his life in the wilderness and, when his time came, to die there a forgotten man. He wondered now that he had ever besought Menehwehna for help to return. Although it could never be proved against him, he must acknowledge to himself that he, a British officer, was now in truth a willing deserter. But to be a deserter he found more tolerable than to return at the price of private shame.

Menehwehna, cheated of his fears, watched him with a new and growing hope. The snows melted; May came with its flowers, June with its heat, July with the roaring of bucks in the forest; and still the men hung about the village, fishing and shooting, or making short excursions to Sault Sainte-Marie or the bay of Boutchitouay, or the mouth of the Mississaki river on the north side of the lake (where the wildfowl were plentiful), but showing no disposition to go out again upon the war-path as they had gone the year before. The frenzy which then had carried them hundreds of miles from their homes seemed now to be entirely spent, and the war itself to have faded far away. Once or twice a French officer from Fort Mackinac was paddled across and landed and harangued the Indians; and the Indians listened attentively, but never stirred. Of the French soldiers drilling at the fort they spoke now with contempt.

John saw no reason for this change, and set it down to that flightiness of purpose which—as he had read in books—is common to all savages. He had yet to learn that in solitary lands the very sky becomes as it were a vast sounding-board, and rumour travels, no man knows how.

It was on his return from the isles aux Castors, where with two score young men of his tribe he had spent three weeks in fishing for sturgeon, that he heard of the capture of Fort Niagara by the English. Azoka announced it to him.

"Said I not how it would happen?" she reminded him. "But if you leave us now, you must come back with her and see my boy. When he comes to be born he shall be called Netawis. Ononwe and I are agreed on it."

"I have no thought of leaving," John answered. "Fort Niagara is far from here."

"They say also," Menehwehna announced later, "that Stadacona has fallen."

"Stadacona?"

"The great fortress—Quebec."

John mused for a while. "I had a dear friend once," he said, "and he laid me a wager that he would enter Quebec before me. It appears that he has won."

"A friend, did my brother say?"

"And a kinsman," John answered, recognising the old note of jealousy in Menehwehna's voice. "But there's no likeness between us; for he is one that always goes straight to his mark."

"There was a name brought me with the news. Your chief was the Wolf, they said; but whether it be his own name or that of his manitou, I know not."



CHAPTER XX.

THE REVEILLE.

A band of five-and-twenty Ojibways came filing down through the woods to the shore of Lake Ontario, at the point where the City of Toronto now stands. Back beyond the Lake aux Claies they had passed many lodges inhabited by women and children only, and had heard everywhere the same story: the men were all gone southward to Fort Niagara to take counsel with the English. This, too, was the goal of the Ojibways' journey, and Menehwehna hurried them forward.

Fort Rouille by the waterside stood deserted and half ruined. They had hoped to find canoes here to carry them across the lake to Niagara; but here, too, all the male population had stampeded a week ago for the south, and those who wanted canoes must make them. This meant two days' delay but it could not be helped. They fell to work at once, cutting down elm-trees by the shore and stripping off their bark, while the children gathered from the lodges and stood at a little distance, watching.

It was by no desire of his own that John made one of the embassage. As rumour after rumour of British successes came westward to Michilimackinac, and the Indians held long and anxious councils, he had grown aware that Menehwehna was watching him furtively, as if for a sign which could not be demanded in words.

"Menehwehna," said he at length, "what is all this talk of English vengeance? It is not the way of my countrymen to remember wrongs after they have won the battle."

"But who will assure my people of that?" asked Menehwehna. "They have heard that certain things were done in the south, and that toll will be taken."

"What matters that to your people, though it be true? They were not at Fort William Henry."

"But again, how shall they tell this to the English and hope to be believed?"

"You cannot hide your heart from me, Menehwehna. You wish two things of me, and the first is my leave to tell your people that I am English."

"Without your leave I will never tell them, my brother."

"Did I ever suppose that you would? Well, as soon as you have told them, they will clamour for me to go to Fort Niagara, and at need to entreat for them. Now I say that there will be no need; but they will compel me to go, and you too will wish it. Have I not guessed?"

Menehwehna was silent a while. "For my people I wish it," he said at length; "but for my own part I fear more than I wish."

"You fear it because I go into great danger. By my countrymen I shall be rightly held a deserter; and, among them, for an officer to desert is above all things shameful."

"But," answered Menehwehna with a cheerful readiness which proved that he had thought the matter out, "if, as you say, the Governor receive us kindly, we will hide that you are English; to that every man shall give his oath beforehand. If things go ill, we will hand you back as our prisoner and prove that we have kept you against your will."

John shook his head, but did not utter the firm resolve of his heart—that even from ignominy no such lies should save him while he had a gun to turn against himself. "Why do you fear then, Menehwehna," he demanded, "if not for me?"

"Do not ask, my brother!" Menehwehna's voice was troubled, constrained, and his eyes avoided John's.

"Ah, well," said John lightly, after regarding him for a moment, "to you at least I will pay some of my debt. Go and tell your people that I am English; and add—for it will save talk—that I am ready to go with them to Fort Niagara."

By dawn on the third day at Fort Rouille three canoes lay finished and ready, each capable of carrying eight or nine men. Pushing off from the Toronto shore, the embassage paddled southward across the lake.

They came late that evening to a point of land four miles from Niagara, on the north side of the river mouth. Approaching it, they discerned many clusters of Indian encampments, each sending up its thin column of smoke against the sunset-darkened woods: but night had fallen long before they beached their canoes, and for the last three miles they paddled wide of the shore to skirt a fleet of fishing-boats twinkling with flambeaux, from the rays of which voices challenged them. The Ojibways answered with their own call and were made welcome. A common fear, it seemed, lay over all the nations— Wyandots and Attiwandaronks from the west and north of Lake Erie, Nettaways and Tobacco Indians from around Nottawasaga Bay, Ottawas and Pottawatamies from the far west—who had not yet made their peace with the English. But Menehwehna, whose fear of arriving too late had kept him anxious throughout the voyage, grew cheerful again.

They landed and pitched their camp on a spit of land close beside their old friend the Ottawa chief from L'Arbre Croche, to whose lodge Menehwehna at once betook himself to learn the news. But John, weary with the day's toil, threw himself down and slept.

A touch on his shoulder awakened him at dawn, and he opened his eyes to see Menehwehna standing above him, gun in hand and dressed for an expedition.

"Come," commanded Menehwehna, adding, as John's gaze travelled around upon the sleepers, "We two, alone."

John caught up his gun, and the pair stepped out into the dawn together. An Indian path led through the forest to the southward, and Menehwehna took it, walking ahead and rapidly. Twice he turned about and looked John in the face with a searching gaze, but held on his way again without speaking. They walked in a dawn which as yet resembled night rather than day; a night grown diaphanous and ghostlike, a summer night surprised in its sleep and vanishing before their footfall. The flicker of fire-flies hurrying into deeper shades seemed, by a trick of eyesight, to pass into the glint of dew. The birds had not yet broken into singing, the shadows stirred with whispers, as though their broods of winged and creeping things held breath together in alarm. A thin mist drifted through the undergrowth, muffling the roar of distant waters; and at intervals the path led across a clearing where, between the pine-trunks to the left, the lake itself came into view, with clouds of vapour heaving on its bosom.

These clearings grew more frequent until at length Menehwehna halted on the edge of one which sloped straight from his feet to a broad and rushing river. There, stepping aside, he watched John's eyes as they fell on Fort Niagara.

It stood over the angle where the river swept into the lake; its timbered walls terraced high upon earthworks rising from the waterside, its roofs already bathed in sunlight, its foundations standing in cool shadow. Eyes no doubt were watching the dawn from its ramparts; but no sign of life appeared there. It seemed to sleep with the forests around it, its river gate shut close-lidded against the day, its empty flagstaff a needle of gold trembling upon the morning sky.

Menehwehna had seated himself, his gun across his knees, upon a fallen trunk; and John, turning, met his eyes.

"Do we cross over?"

"To-day, or perhaps to-morrow. I wished you to see it first."

"But why?"

"Does my brother ask why? Well, then, I was afraid."

"Were you afraid that I might wish to go back? Answer me, Menehwehna—By whose wish am I here at all?"

"When I was a young man," answered Menehwehna, "in the days when I went wooing after Meshu-kwa, I would often be jealous, and this jealousy would seize me when we were alone together. 'She is loving enough now,' I said; 'but how will it be when other young men are around her?' This thought tormented me so that many times it drove me to prove her, pretending to be cold and purposely throwing her in the company of others who were glad enough—for she had many suitors. Then I would watch with pain in my heart, but secretly, that my shame and rage might be hidden."

John eyed him for a moment in wonder. "For what did you bring me this long way from Michilimackinac?" he asked. "Was it not to speak at need for you and your nation?"

"For that, but not for that only. Brother, have you never loved a friend so that you felt his friendship worthless to you unless you owned it all? Have you never felt the need on you to test him, though the test lay a hundred leagues away? So far have I brought you, O Netawis, to show you your countrymen. In a while the fort yonder will wake, and you shall see them on the parapet in their red coats, and if the longing come upon you to return to them, we will cross over together and I will tell my tale. They will believe it. Look! Will you be an Englishman again?"

"Let us turn back," answered John wearily. "That life is gone from me for ever."

"Say to me that you have no wish to go."

"I had a wish once," said John, letting the words fall slowly as his eyes travelled over the walls of the fort. "It seemed to me then that no wish on earth could be dearer. Many things have helped to kill it, I think." He passed a hand over his eyes and let it drop by his side. "I have no wish to leave you, Menehwehna."

The Indian stood up with a short cry of joy and laid a hand on his shoulder.

"No, my friend," John continued in the same dull voice; "I will say to you only what is honest. If I return with you, it is not for your sake."

"So that you return, Netawis, I will have patience. There was a time when you set your face against me; and this I overcame. Again there was a time when you pleaded with me that I should let you escape; and still I waited, though with so small a hope that when my child Azoka began to listen for your step I scolded her out of her folly."

"In that you did wisely, Menehwehna. It is not everything that I have learned to forget."

"I told her," said Menehwehna simply, "that, as the snow melts and slides from the face of a rock, so one day all thought of us would slip from your heart and you would go from us, not once looking back. Even so I believed. But the spring came, and the summer, and I began to doubt; and, as I questioned you, a hope grew in my heart, and I played with it as a bitch plays with her pups, trying its powers little by little, yet still in play, until a day came when I discovered it to be strong and the master of me. Then indeed, my brother, I could not rest until I had put it to this proof." He lit his pipe solemnly, drew a puff or two and handed it to John. "Let us smoke together before we turn back. He that has a friend as well as wife and children needs not fear to grow old."

John stretched out a hand and touched the earthen pipe bowl. His fingers closed on it—but only to let it slip. It fell, struck against the edge of the tree stump and was shivered in pieces.

Across the valley in Fort Niagara the British drums were sounding the reveille.

He did not hear Menehwehna's voice lamenting the broken pipe. He stood staring across at the fort. He saw the river-gate open, the red-coats moving there, relieving guard. He saw the flagstaff halliards shake out the red cross of England in the morning sunlight. And still, like a river, rolled the music of British drums.

"Netawis!"

Menehwehna touched his arm. At first John did not seem to hear, then his hand went up and began to unfasten the silver armlets there.

"Netawis! O my brother!"

But the ice had slipped from the rock and lay around its base in ruin, and the music which had loosened it still sang across the valley. He took a step down the slope towards it.

"You shall not go!" cried Menehwehna, and lifting his gun pointed it full at John's back. And John knew that Menehwehna's finger was on the trigger. He walked on unregarding.

But Menehwehna did not fire. He cast down his gun with a cry and ran to clasp his friend's feet. What was he saying? Something about "two years."

"Two years?" Had they passed so quickly? God! how long the minutes were now! He must win across before the drums ceased . . .

He halted and began to talk to Menehwehna very patiently, this being the easiest way to get rid of him. "Yes, yes," he heard himself saying, "I go to them as an Indian and they will not know me. I shall be safe. Return now back to my brothers and tell them that, if need be, they will find me there and I will speak for them."

And his words must have prevailed, for he stood by the river's edge alone, and Menehwehna was striding back towards the wood. A boat lay chained by the farther shore and two soldiers came down from the fort and pushed across to him.

They wore the uniform of the Forty-sixth, and one had been a private in his company; but they did not recognise him. And he spoke to them in the Ojibway speech, which they could not understand.

From the edge of the woods Menehwehna watched the three as they landed. They climbed the slope and passed into the fort.



CHAPTER XXI.

FORT AMITIE LEARNS ITS FATE.

That Spring, three British generals sat at the three gates of Canada, waiting for the signal to enter and end the last agony of New France. But the snows melted, the days lengthened, and still the signal did not come; for the general by the sea gate was himself besieged.

Through the winter he and his small army sat patiently in the city they had ruined. Conquerors in lands more southerly may bury their dead with speed, rebuild captured walls, set up a pillar and statue of Victory, and in a month or two, the green grass helping them, forget all but the glory of the battle. But here in the north the same hand arrests them and for six months petrifies the memorials of their rage. Until the Spring dissolves it, the image of war lives face to face with them, white, with frozen eyes, sparing them only the colour of its wounds.

General Murray, like many a soldier in his army, had dreams of emulating Wolfe's glory. But Wolfe had snatched victory out of the shadow of coming winter; and, almost before Murray's army could cut wood for fuel, the cold was upon them. For two months Quebec had been pounded with shot and shell. Her churches and hospitals stood roofless; hundreds of houses had been fired, vaults and storehouses pillaged, doors and windows riddled everywhere. There was no digging entrenchments in the frozen earth. Walls six feet thick had been breached by artillery; and the loose stones, so cold they were, could hardly be handled.

Among these ruins, on the frozen cliff over the frozen river, Murray and his seven thousand men settled down to wear the winter through. They were short of food, short of fuel. Frost-bite maimed them at first; then scurvy, dysentery, fever, began to kill. They laid their dead out on the snow, to be buried when spring should return and thaw the earth; and by the end of April their dead numbered six hundred and fifty. Yet they kept up their spirits. Early in November there had been rumours that the French under Levis meant to march on the city and retake it. In December deserters brought word that he was on his way—that he would storm the city on the twenty-second, and dine within the citadel on Christmas Day. In January news arrived that he was preparing scaling-ladders and training his men in the use of them. Still the days dragged by. The ice on the river began to break up and swirl past the ramparts on the tides. The end of April came, and with it a furious midnight storm, and out of the storm a feeble cry—the voice of a half-dead Frenchman clinging to a floe of ice far out on the river. He was rescued, placed in a hammock, and carried up Mountain Street to the General's quarters; and Murray, roused from sleep at three o'clock in the morning, listened to his story. He was an artillery-sergeant of Levis's army; and that army, twelve thousand strong, was close to the gates of Quebec.

The storm had fallen to a cold drizzle of rain when at dawn Murray's troops issued from the St. Louis gate and dragged their guns out through the slush of the St. Foy road. On the ground where Wolfe had given battle, or hard by, they unlimbered in face of the enemy and opened fire. Two hours later, outflanked by numbers, having lost a third of their three thousand in the short fight, they fell back on the battered walls they had mistrusted. For a few hours the fate of Quebec hung on a hair. But the garrison could build now; and, while Levis dragged up his guns from the river, the English worked like demons. They had guns, at any rate, in plenty; and, while the French dug and entrenched themselves on the ground they had won, daily the breaches closed and the English fire grew hotter.