April gave place to May, and the artillery fire continued on the heights; but, as it grew noisier it grew also less important, for now the eyes of both commanders were fastened on the river. Two fleets were racing for Quebec, and she would belong to the first to drop anchor within her now navigable river.

Then came a day when, as Murray sat brooding by the fire in his quarters in St. Louis Street, an officer ran in with the news of a ship of war in the Basin, beating up towards the city. "Whatever she is," said the General, "we will hoist our colours." Weather had frayed out the halliards on the flagstaff over Cape Diamond, but a sailor climbed the pole and lashed the British colours beneath the truck. By this time men and officers in a mob had gathered on the ramparts of the Chateau St. Louis, all straining their eyes at a frigate fetching up close-hauled against the wind.

Her colours ran aloft; but they were bent, sailor-fashion, in a tight bundle, ready to be broken out when they reached the top-gallant masthead.

An officer, looking through a glass, cried out nervously that the bundle was white. But this they knew without telling. Only—what would the flag carry on its white ground? The red cross? or the golden fleurs-de-lys?

The halliards shook; the folds flew broad to the wind; and, with a gasp, men leaped on the ramparts—flung their hats in the air and cheered—dropped, sobbing, on their knees.

It was the red cross of England.

They were cheering yet and shouting themselves hoarse when the Lowestoffe frigate dropped anchor and saluted with all her twenty-four guns. On the heights the French guns answered spitefully. Levis would not believe. He had brought his artillery at length into position, and began to knock the defences vigorously. He lingered until the battleship Vanguard and the frigate Diane came sailing up into harbour; until the Vanguard, pressing on with the Lowestoffe, took or burned the vessels which had brought his artillery down from Montreal. Then, in the night, he decamped, leaving his siege-train, baggage, and sick men behind him. News of his retreat reached Murray at nightfall, and soon the English guns were bowling round-shot after him in the dusk across the Plains of Abraham; but by daybreak, when Murray pushed out after him, to fall on his rear, he had hurried his columns out of reach.

Three months had passed since the flying of the signal from the Lowestoffe, and now in the early days of August three British armies were moving slowly upon Montreal, where Levis and Governor Vaudreuil had drawn the main French forces together for a last resistance.

Murray came up the river from Quebec with twenty-four hundred men, in thirty-two vessels and a fleet of boats in company; followed by Lord Rollo with thirteen hundred men drawn off from dismantled Louisbourg. As the ships tacked up the river, with their floating batteries ranged in line to protect the advance, bodies of French troops followed them along the shore—regiments of white-coated infantry and horsemen in blue jackets faced with scarlet. Bourlamaque watched from the southern shore, Dumas from the northern. But neither dared to attack; and day after day through the lovely weather, past fields and settlements and woodlands, between banks which narrowed until from deck one could listen to the song of birds on either hand and catch the wafted scent of wild flowers, the British wound their way to Isle Sainte-Therese below Montreal, encamped, and waited for their comrades.

From the south came Haviland. He brought thirty-four hundred regulars, provincials, and Indians from Crown Point on Lake Champlain, and moved down the Richelieu, driving Bougainville before him.

Last, descending from the west by the gate of the Great Lakes, came the Commander in Chief, the cautious Amherst, with eighteen hundred soldiers and Indians and over eight hundred bateaux and whale-boats. He had gathered them at Oswego in July, and now in the second week of August had crossed the lake to its outlet, threaded the channels of the Thousand Islands, and was bearing down on the broad river towards Fort Amitie.

And how did it stand with Fort Amitie?

Well, to begin with, the Commandant was thoroughly perplexed. The British must be near; by latest reports they had reached the Thousand Islands; even hours were becoming precious, and yet most unaccountably the reinforcements had not arrived!

What could M. de Vaudreuil be dreaming of? Already the great Indian leader, Saint-Luc de la Come, had reached Coteau du Lac with a strong force of militia. Dominique Guyon had been sent down with an urgent message of inquiry. But what had been La Corne's answer? "I know not what M. de Vaudreuil intends. My business is to stay here and watch the rapids."

"Now what can be the meaning of that?" the Commandant demanded of his brother.

M. Etienne shook his head pensively. "Rusticus expectat . . . I should have supposed the rapids to stand in no danger."

"Had the Governor sent word to abandon the Fort, I might have understood. It would have been the bitterest blow of my life—"

"Yes, yes, brother," M. Etienne murmured in sympathy.

"But to leave us here without a word! No; it is impossible. They must be on their way!"

In the strength of this confidence Dominique and Bateese had been dispatched down the river again to meet the reinforcements and hurry them forward.

Dominique and Bateese had been absent for a week now on this errand. Still no relief-boats hove in sight, and the British were coming down through the Thousand Islands.

Save in one respect the appearance of the Fort had not changed since the evening of John a Cleeve's dismissal. The garrison cows still graced along the river-bank, and in the clearing under the eastern wall the Indian corn was ripe for harvest (M. Etienne suggested reaping it; the labour, he urged, would soothe everyone's nerves). Only on Sans Quartier's cabbage-patch the lunette now stood complete. All the habitants of Boisveyrac had been brought up to labour in its erection, building it to the height of ten feet, with an abattis of trees in front and a raised platform within for the riflemen. Day after day the garrison manned it and burned powder in defence against imaginary assaults, and by this time the Commandant and Sergeant Bedard between them had discussed and provided against every possible mode of attack.

Diane stood in the dawn on the terre-plein of the river-wall. The latest news of the British had arrived but a few hours since, with a boatload of fugitives from the upstream mission-house of La Galette, off which an armed brig lay moored with ten cannon and one hundred men to check the advance of the flotilla. It could do no more.

The fugitives included Father Launoy, and he had landed and begged Diane to take his place in the crowded boat. For himself (he said) he would stay and help to serve out ammunition to Fort Amitie—that was, if the Commandant meant to resist.

"Do you suppose, then, that I would retire?" the Commandant asked with indignation.

"It may be possible to do neither," suggested Father Launoy.

But this the Commandant could by no means understand. It seemed to him that either he must be losing his wits or the whole of New France, from M. de Vaudreuil down, was banded in a league of folly. "Resist? Of course I shall resist! My men are few enough, Father; but I beg you to dismiss the notion that Fort Amitie is garrisoned by cowards."

"I will stay with you then," said the Jesuit. "I may be useful, in many ways. But mademoiselle will take my place in the boat and escape to Montreal."

"I also stay," answered Diane simply.

"Excuse me, but there is like to be serious work. They bring the Iroquois with them, besides Indians from the West." Father Launoy spoke as one reasoning with a child.

Diane drew a small pistol from her bodice. "I have thought of that, you see."

"But M. de Noel—" He swung round upon the Commandant, expostulating.

"In a few hours," said the Commandant, meeting his eyes with a smile, "New France will have ceased to be. I have no authority to force my child to endure what I cannot endure myself. She has claimed a promise of me, and I have given it."

The priest stepped back a pace, wondering. Swiftly before him passed a vision of the Intendant's palace at Quebec, with its women and riot and rottenness. His hand went up to his eyes, and under the shade of it he looked upon father and daughter—this pair of the old noblesse, clean, comely, ready for the sacrifice. What had New France done for these that they were cheerful to die for her? She had doled them out poverty, and now, in the end, betrayal; she had neglected her children for aliens, she had taken their revenues to feed extortioners and wantons, and now in the supreme act of treachery, herself falling with them, she turned too late to read in their eyes a divine and damning love. There all the while she had lived—the true New France, loyally trusted, innocently worshipped. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." . . . Father Launoy lowered his gaze to the floor. He had looked and learned why some nations fall and others worthily endure.

All that night the garrison had slept by their arms, until with the first streak of day the drums called them out to their alarm-post.

Diane stood on the terre-plein watching the sunrise. As yet the river lay indistinct, a broad wan-coloured band of light stretching away across the darkness. The outwork on the slope beneath her was a formless shadow astir with smaller shadows equally formless. She heard the tread of feet on the wooden platform, the clink of side-arms and accoutrements, the soft thud of ramrods, the voice of old Bedard, peevish and grumbling as usual.

Her face, turned to the revealing dawn, was like and yet curiously unlike the face into which John a Cleeve had looked and taken his dismissal; a woman's face now, serener than of old and thoughtfuller. These two years had lengthened it to a perfect oval, adding a touch of strength to the brow, a touch of decision to the chin; and, lest these should overweight it, had removed from the eyes their clouded trouble and left them clear to the depths. The elfin Diane, the small woodland-haunting Indian, no longer looked forth from those windows; no search might find her captive shadow behind them. She had died young, or had faded away perhaps and escaped back to her native forests.

But she is not all forgotten, this lost playmate. Some trick of gesture reappears as Diane lifts her face suddenly towards the flagstaff tower. The watchman there has spied something on the river, and is shouting the news from the summit.

His arm points down the river. What has he seen? "Canoes!"—the relief is at hand then! No: there is only one canoe. It comes swiftly and yet the day overtakes and passes it, spreading a causeway of light along which it shoots to the landing-quay.

Two men paddle it—Dominique and Bateese Guyon. Their faces are haggard, their eyes glassy with want of sleep, their limbs so stiff that they have to be helped ashore.

The Commandant steps forward. "What news, my children?" he asks. His voice is studiously cheerful.

Dominique shakes his head.

"There is no relief, Monseigneur."

"You have met none, you mean?"

"None is coming, Monseigneur. We have heard it in Montreal."



CHAPTER XXII.

DOMINIQUE.

"Montreal?"

While they stood wondering, a dull wave of sound broke on their ears from the westward, and another, and yet another—the booming of cannon far up the river.

"That will be at La Galette," said the Commandant, answering the question in Dominique's eyes. "Come up to your quarters, my children, and get some sleep. We have work before us." He motioned the others to fall back out of hearing while he and Dominique mounted the slope together. "You had audience, then, of the Governor?" he asked.

"He declined to see us, Monseigneur, and I do not blame him, since he could not send us back telling you to fight. Doubtless it does not become one in M. de Vaudreuil's position to advise the other thing— aloud."

"I do not understand you. Why could not M. de Vaudreuil order me to fight?"

Dominique stared at his master. "Why, Monseigneur,—seeing that he sends no troops, it would be a queer message. He could not have the face."

"Yet he must be intending to strike at the English coming from Quebec?"

"They are already arrived and encamped at Isle Sainte-Therese below the city, and another army has come down the Richelieu from the south and joined them."

"It is clear as daylight. M. de Vaudreuil must be meaning to attack them instantly, and therefore he cannot spare a detachment—You follow me?"

"It may be so, Monseigneur," Dominique assented doubtfully.

"'May be so'! It must be so! But unhappily he does not know of this third army descending upon him; or, rather, he does not know how near it is. Yet, to win time for him, we must hold up this army at all costs."

"It is I, Monseigneur, who am puzzled. You cannot be intending—"

"Eh? Speak it out, man!"

"You cannot be intending to await these English!"

"Name of thunder! What else do you suppose? Pray, my dear Dominique, use your wits. We have to gain time, I tell you—time for our friends below at Montreal."

"With twenty odd men against as many hundreds? Oh, pardon me, Monseigneur, but I cannot bring my mind to understand you."

"But since it gains time—"

"They will not stay to snap up such a mouthful. They will sail past your guns, laughing; unless—great God, Monseigneur! If in truth you intend this folly, where is Mademoiselle Diane? I did not see her in any of the boats from La Galette. Whither have you sent her, and in whose charge?"

"She is yonder on the wall, looking down on us. She will stay; I have given her my promise."

Dominique came to a halt, white as a ghost. His tongue touched his dry lips. "Monseigneur!"—the cry broke from him, and he put out a hand and caught his seigneur by the coat sleeve.

"What is the matter with the man?" The Commandant plucked his arm away and stood back, outraged by this breach of decorum.

But Dominique, having found his voice, continued heedless. "She must go! She shall go! It is a wickedness you are doing—do you hear me, Monseigneur?—a wickedness, a wickedness! But you shall not keep her here; I will not allow it!"

"Are you stark mad, Dominique Guyon?"

"I will not allow it. I love her, I tell you—there, I have said it! Listen again, Monseigneur, if you do not understand: I love her, I love her—oh, get that into your head! I love her, and will not allow it!"

"Certainly your brain is turned. Go to your quarters, sir; it must be sleep you want. Yes, yes, my poor fellow, you are pale as a corpse! Go, get some sleep, and when you wake we will forget all this."

"Before God, Monseigneur, I am telling you the truth. I need no sleep but the sleep of death, and that is like to come soon enough. But since we were children I have loved your daughter, and in the strength of that love I forbid you to kill her."

The Commandant swung round on his heel.

"Follow me, if you please."

He led the way to his orderly-room, seated himself at the table, and so confronted the young man, who stood humbly enough, though with his pale face twitching.

"Dominique Guyon, once in my life I made a great mistake; and that was when, to save my poor son's honour, I borrowed money of one of my censitaires. I perceive now what hopes you have nursed, feeding them on my embarrassments. You saw me impoverished, brought low, bereaved by God's will of my only son; you guessed that I lay awake of nights, troubled by the thought of my daughter, who must inherit poverty; and on these foundations you laid your schemes. You dreamed of becoming a gentilhomme, of marrying my daughter, of sitting in my chair at Boisveyrac and dealing justice among the villagers. And a fine dream it seemed to you, eh?" He paused.

"Monseigneur," Dominique answered simply, "you say some things that are true; but you say them so that all seems false and vile. Yes, I have dreamed dreams—even dreams of becoming a gentilhomme, as you say; but my dreams were never wicked as you colour them, seeing that they all flowed from love of Mademoiselle Diane, and returned to her."

He glanced towards the window, through which the pair could see Diane pacing the terre-plein in the sunlight. The sight kindled the elder man to fresh anger.

"If," said he harshly, "I tried to explain to you exactly how you insult us, it would be wasting my time and yours; and, however much you deserve it, I have no wish to wound your feelings beyond need. Let us come to business." He unlocked a drawer and drew out three bundles of notes. "As my farmer you will know better than I the current discount on these. You come from Montreal. At what price was the Government redeeming its paper there?"

As he unfolded them, Dominique glanced at the notes, and then let his gaze wander out through the window.

"Is Monseigneur proposing to pay me the interest on his bonds?"

"To be sure I am."

"I do not ask for it."

"Devil care I if you ask or not! Count the notes, if you please."

Dominique took a packet in his hands for a moment, still with his eyes bent absently on the window, fingered the notes, and laid them back on the table.

"Monseigneur will do me the justice to own that in former times I have given him good advice in business. I beg him to keep these notes for a while. In a month or two their value will have trebled, whichever Government redeems them."

The Commandant struck the table. "In a few hours, sir, I shall be a dead man. My honour cannot wait so long; and since the question is now of honour, not of business, you will keep your advice to yourself. Be quick, please; for time presses, and I have some instructions to leave to my brother. At my death he will sell the Seigniory. The Government will take its quint of the purchase-money, and out of the remainder you shall be paid. My daughter will then go penniless, but at least I shall have saved her from a creditor with such claims as you are like to press. And so, sir, I hope you have your answer."

"No, Monseigneur, not my answer. That I will never take but from Mademoiselle Diane herself."

"By God, you shall have it here and now!" The Commandant stepped to the window and threw open the casement. "Diane!" he called.

She came. She stood in the doorway; and Dominique—a moment before so bold—lowered his eyes before hers. At sight of him her colour rose, but bravely. She was young, and had been making her account with death. She had never loved Dominique; she had feared him at times, and at times pitied him; but now fate had lifted her and set her feet on a height from which she looked down upon love and fear with a kind of wonder that they had ever seemed important, and even her pity for him lost itself in compassion for all men and women in trouble. In truth, Dominique looked but a miserable culprit before her.

The Commandant eyed him grimly for a moment before turning to her.

"Diane," he said with grave irony, "you will be interested to learn that Monsieur Dominique Guyon here has done you the honour to request your hand in marriage."

She did not answer, but stood reading their faces.

"Moreover, on my declining that honour, he tells me that he will take his answer from you alone."

Still for a few seconds she kept silence.

"Why should I not answer him, papa?" she said at length, and softly. "It is not for us to choose what he should ask." She paused. "All his life Dominique Guyon has been helping us; see how he has, even in these few days, worn himself in our service!"

Her father stared at her, puzzled, not following her thought. He had expected her to be shocked, affronted; he did not know that Dominique's passion was an old tale to her; and as little did he perceive that in her present mood she put herself aside and thought only of Dominique as in trouble and needing help.

But apparently something in her face reassured him, for he stepped toward the door.

"You prefer to give him his answer alone?"

She bent her head.

For a while after the door had closed upon the Commandant, Dominique stood with eyes abased. Then, looking up and meeting the divine compassion in hers, he fell on his knees and stretched out both hands to her.

"Is there no hope for me, ma'amzelle?"

She shook her head. Looking down on him through tears, she held out a hand; he took it between his palms and clung to it, sobbing like a child.

Terrible, convulsive sobs they were at first, but grew quieter by degrees, and as the outburst spent itself a deep silence fell upon the room.

A tear had fallen upon his clasped knuckles. He put his lips to it and, imprisoning her fingers, kissed them once, reverently.

He was a man again. He stood up, yet not releasing her hand, and looked her in the face.

"Ma'amzelle, you will leave the Fort? You will let Bateese carry you out of danger? For me, of course, I stay with the Seigneur."

"No, Dominique. All New France is dying around us, and I stay with my father to see the end. Perhaps at the last I shall need you to help me." She smiled bravely. "You have been trying to persuade my father, I know."

"I have been trying to persuade him, and yet—yet—Oh, I will tell to you a wickedness in my heart that I could not tell even to Father Launoy! There was a moment when I thought to myself that even to have you die here and to die beside you were better than to let you go. Can you forgive me such a thought as that?"

"I forgive."

"And will you grant one thing more?"

"What is it, Dominique?"

"A silly favour, ma'amzelle—but why not? The English will be here soon, maybe in a few hours. Let me call Bateese, and we three will be children again and go up to the edge of the forest and watch for our enemies. They will be real enemies, this time; but even that we may forget, perhaps."

She stood back a pace and laughed—yes, laughed—and gaily, albeit with dewy eyes. Her hands went up as if she would have clapped them. "Why, to be sure!" she cried. "Let us fetch Bateese at once!"

They passed out into the sunlight together, and she waited in the courtyard while Dominique ran upstairs to fetch Bateese. In five minutes' time the two brothers appeared together, Bateese with his pockets enormously bulging—whereat Diane laughed again.

"So you have brought the larder, as ever. Bateese was always prudent, and never relied on the game he killed in hunting. You remember, Dominique?"

"He was always a poor shot, ma'amzelle," answered Dominique gravely.

"But this is not the larder!" Bateese began to explain with a queer look at his brother.

"Eh?"

"Never mind explanations! Come along, all three!" cried Dominique, and led the way. They passed out by the postern unobserved—for the garrison was assembled in the lunette under the river wall—and hurried toward the shade of the forest.

How well Diane remembered the old childish make-believe! How many scores of times had they played it together, these three, in the woods around Boisveyrac!—when Dominique and Bateese were bold huntsmen, and she kept house for them, cooking their imaginary spoils of the chase.

"We must have a fire!" she exclaimed, and hurried off to gather sticks. But when she returned with the lap of her gown well filled, a fire was already lit and blazing.

"How have you managed it so quickly?" she asked, and with that her eyes fell on a scrap of ashes. "Where did you get this? You have been lighting with paper, Bateese—and that is not playing fair!"

Bateese, very red in the face, stooped in the smoke and crammed another handful upon the blaze.

"They were papers, ma'amzelle, upon which Dominique and I for a long time could not agree. But now "—he turned to Dominique—"there is no longer any quarrel between us. Eh, brother?"

"None, Bateese; none, if you forgive."

"What did I tell you?" cried Bateese triumphantly. "Did I not always tell you that your heart would be lighter, with this shadow gone? And there was never any shadow but this; none—none!"

"That is all very well," Diane remonstrated; "but you two have no business to hide a secret from me to-day, even though it make you happier."

"We have burnt it for a propitiation, ma'amzelle; it no longer exists." Bateese cast himself on his back at full length in the herbage and gazed up through the drifting smoke into the tree-tops and sky. "A-ah!" said he with a long sigh, "how good God has been to me! How beautiful He has made all my life!" He propped himself on one elbow and continued with shining eyes: "What things we were going to do, in those days! What wonders we looked forward to! And all the while we were doing the most wonderful thing in the world, for we loved one another." He stretched out a hand and pointed. "There, by the bend, the English boats will come in sight. Suppose, Dominique, that as they come you launched out against them, and fought and sank the fleet single-handed, like the men in the old tales—"

"He would save New France, and live in song," Diane put in. "Would that not content any man, Bateese?" She threw back her head with a gesture which Dominique noted; a trick of her childhood, when in moments of excitement her long hair fell across her eyes and had to be shaken back.

"Ma'amzelle," he pleaded, "there is yet one favour."

"Can I grant it easily?"

"I hope so; it is that you will let down your hair for us."

Diane blushed, but put up a hand and began to uncoil the tresses. "Bateese has not answered me," she insisted. "I tell him that a man who should do such a feat as he named would live in song for ever and ever."

"But I say to you humbly, ma'amzelle, that though he lived in song for ever and ever, the true sweetness of his life would be unknown to the singers; for he found it here under the branches, and, stepping forth to his great deed, he left the memory for a while, to meet him again and be his reward in Heaven."

"And I say to you 'no,' and 'no,' and again 'no'!" cried Diane, springing to her feet—the childish, impetuous Diane of old. "It is in the great deed that he lives—the deed, and the moment that makes him everlasting! If Dominique now, or I, as these English came round the bend—"

She paused, meeting Dominique's eyes. She had not said "or you," and could not say it. Why? Because Bateese was a cripple. "Bateese's is a cripple's talk," said their glances one to another, guiltily, avoiding him.

Dominique's gaze, flinching a little, passed down the splendid coils of her hair and rested on the grass at her feet. She lifted a tress on her forefinger and smoothed it against the sunlight.

"There was a war once," said she, "between the Greeks and the Persians; and the Persians overran the Greeks' country until they came to a pass in the mountains where a few men could stand against many. There three hundred of the Greeks had posted themselves, despising death, to oppose an army of tens and hundreds of thousands. The Persian king sent forward a horseman, and he came near and looked along the pass and saw but a few Greeks combing their hair and dressing it carefully, as I am dressing mine."

"What happened, ma'amzelle?"

"They died, and live in song for ever and ever!"

She faced them, her cheeks glowing, and lifted a hand as the note of a sweet-toned bell rose upon the morning air above the voices of the birds; of the chapel-bell ringing the garrison to Mass.

The two young men scrambled to their feet.

"Come!" said Diane, and they walked back to the Fort together.



CHAPTER XXIII.

THE FLAGSTAFF TOWER.

Time pressing, the Commandant had gone straight from the orderly-room in search of Father Joly. As a soldier and a good Catholic he desired to be shriven, and as a man of habit he preferred the old Cure to Father Launoy. To be sure the Cure was deaf as a post, but on the other hand the Commandant's worst sins would bear to be shouted.

"There is yet one thing upon my conscience," he wound up. "The fact is, I feel pretty sure of myself in this business, but I have some difficulty in trusting God."

It is small wonder that a confession so astonishing had to be repeated twice, and even when he heard it Father Joly failed to understand.

"But how is it possible to mistrust God?" he asked.

"Well, I don't know. I suppose that even in bringing New France so near to destruction He is acting in loving mercy; but all the same it will be a wrench to me if these English pass without paying us the honour of a siege. For if we cannot force them to a fight, Montreal is lost." The Commandant believed this absolutely.

Father Joly was Canadian born and bred; had received his education in the Seminary of Quebec; and knowing nothing of the world beyond New France, felt no doubt upon which side God was fighting. If it were really necessary to New France that the English should be delayed— and he would take the Commandant's word for it—why then delayed they would be. This he felt able to promise. "And I in my heart of hearts am sure of it," said the Commandant. "But in war one has to take account of every chance, and this may pass sometimes for want of faith."

So, like an honest gentleman, he took his absolution, and afterwards went to Mass and spent half an hour with his mind withdrawn from all worldly care, greatly to his soul's refreshment. But with the ringing of the sanctus bell a drum began to beat—as it seemed, on the very ridge of the chapel roof, but really from the leads of the flagstaff tower high above it. Father Launoy paused in the celebration, but was ordered by a quiet gesture to proceed. Even at the close the garrison stood and waited respectfully for their Commandant to walk out, and followed in decent order to the porch. Then they broke into a run pell-mell for the walls.

But an hour passed before the first whaleboat with its load of red uniforms pushed its way into sight through the forest screen. Then began a spectacle—slow, silent, by little and little overwhelming. It takes a trained imagination to realise great numbers, and the men of Fort Amitie were soon stupefied and ceased even to talk. It seemed to them that the forest would never cease disgorging boats.

"A brave host, my children! But we will teach them that they handle a wasps' nest."

His men eyed the Commandant in doubt; they could scarcely believe that he intended to resist, now that the enemy's strength was apparent. To their minds war meant winning or losing, capturing or being captured. To fight an impossible battle, for the mere sake of gaining time for troops they had never seen, did not enter into their calculations.

So they eyed him, while still the flotilla increased against the far background and came on—whaleboats, gunboats, bateaux, canoes; and still in the lessening interval along the waterway the birds sang. For the British moved, not as once upon Lake George startling the echoes with drums and military bands, but so quietly that at half a mile's distance only the faint murmur of splashing oars and creaking thole-pins reached the ears of the watchers.

The Commandant suddenly lowered his glass and closed it with a snap, giving thanks to God. For at that distance the leading boats began heading in for shore.

"Etienne, he intends at least to summon us!"

So it proved. General Amherst was by no means the man to pass and leave a hostile post in his rear. His detractors indeed accused him of spending all his time upon forts, either in building or in reducing them. But he had two very good reasons for pausing before Fort Amitie; he did not know the strength of its defenders, and he wanted pilots to guide his boats down the rapids below.

Therefore he landed and sent an officer forward to summon the garrison.

The officer presented himself at the river-gate, and having politely suffered Sergeant Bedard to blindfold him, was led to the Commandant's quarters. A good hour passed before he reappeared, the Commandant himself conducting him; and meantime the garrison amused itself with wagering on the terms of capitulation.

At the gate the Englishman's bandage was removed. He saluted, and was saluted, with extreme ceremony. The Commandant watched him out of earshot, and then, rubbing his hands, turned with a happy smile.

"To your guns, my children!"

They obeyed him, while they wondered. He seemed to take for granted that they must feel the compliment paid them by a siege in form.

The day was now well advanced, and it seemed at first that the British meant to let it pass without a demonstration. Toward nightfall, however, four gunboats descended the river, anchored and dropped down the current, paying out their hawsers and feeling their way into range. But the Fort was ready for them, and opened fire before they could train their guns; a lucky shot cut the moorings of one clean and close by the stem; and, the current carrying her inshore, she was hulled twice as she drifted down-stream. The other three essayed a few shots without effect in the dusk, warped back out of range, and waited for daylight to improve their marksmanship.

And with daylight began one of the strangest of sieges, between an assailant who knew only that he had to deal with stout walls, and a defender who dared not attempt even a show of a sortie for fear of exposing the weakness of his garrison. The French had ammunition enough to last for a month, and cannon enough to keep two hundred men busy; and ran from one gun to another, keeping up pretences but doing little damage in their hurry. Their lucky opening shots had impressed Amherst, and he was one to cling to a notion of his enemy's strength. He solemnly effected a new landing at six hundred yards' distance, opened his lines across the north-western corner of the fort, kept his men entrenching for two days and two nights, brought up thirty guns, and, advancing them within two hundred yards, began at his leisure to knock holes in the walls. Meantime, twenty guns, anchored out in the river, played on the broad face of the fort and swept the Commandant's lunette out of existence. And with all this prodigious waste of powder but five of the garrison had fallen, and three of these by the bursting of a single shell. The defenders understood now that they were fighting for time, and told each other that when their comedy was played out and the inevitable moment came, the British General would not show himself fierce in revenge— "provided," they would add, "the Seigneur does not try his patience too far." It was Father Launoy who set this whisper going from lip to lip, and so artfully that none suspected him for its author; Father Launoy, who had been wont to excite the patriotism of the faithful by painting the English as devils in human shape. He was a brave man; but he held this resistance to be senseless and did not believe for an instant that Montreal would use the delay or, using it, would strike with any success.

At first the tremendous uproar of the enemy's artillery and its shattering effect on the masonry of their fortress, had numbed the militiamen's nerves; they felt the place tumbling about their ears. But as the hours passed they discovered that round-shot could be dodged and that even bursting shells, though effective against stones and mortar, did surprisingly small damage to life and limb; and with this discovery they began almost to taste the humour of the situation. They fed and rested in bomb-proof chambers which the Commandant and M. Etienne had devised in the slope of earth under the terre-plein; and from these they watched and discussed in safety the wreckage done upon the empty buildings across the courtyard.

One of these caves had at the beginning of the siege been assigned to Diane; and from the mouth of it, seated with Felicite beside her, she too watched the demolition; but with far different thoughts. She knew better than these militiamen her father's obstinacy, and that his high resolve reached beyond the mere gaining of time. It seemed to her that God was drawing out the agony; and with the end before her mind she prayed Him to shorten this cruel interval.

Early on the third morning the British guns had laid open a breach six feet wide at the north-western angle, close by the foot of the flagstaff tower; and Amherst, who had sent off a detachment of the Forty-sixth with a dozen Indian guides to fetch a circuit through the woods and open a feint attack in the rear of the fort, prepared for a general assault. But first he resolved to summon the garrison again.

To carry his message he chose the same officer as before, a Captain Muspratt of the Forty-fourth Regiment.

Now as yet the cannonade had not slackened, and it chanced that as the General gave Muspratt his instructions, an artillery sergeant in command of a battery of mortars on the left, which had been advanced within two hundred yards of the walls, elevated one of his pieces and lobbed a bomb clean over the summit of the flagstaff tower.

It was a fancy shot, fired—as the army learnt afterwards—for a wager; but its effect staggered all who watched it. The fuse was quick, and the bomb, mounting on its high curve, exploded in a direct line between the battery and the flagstaff. One or two men from the neighbouring guns shouted bravos. The sergeant slapped his thigh and was turning for congratulations, but suddenly paused, stock-still and staring upward.

The flagstaff stood, apparently untouched. But what had become of the flag?

A moment before it had been floating proudly enough, shaking its folds loose to the light breeze. Now it was gone. Had the explosion blown it to atoms? Not a shred of it floated away on the wind.

A man on the sergeant's right called out positively that a couple of seconds after the explosion, and while the smoke was clearing, he had caught a glimpse of something white—something which looked like a flag—close by the foot of the staff; and that an arm had reached up and drawn it down hurriedly. He would swear to the arm; he had seen it distinctly above the edge of the battlements. In his opinion the fort was surrendering, and someone aloft there had been pulling down the flag as the bomb burst.

The General, occupied for the moment in giving Captain Muspratt his instructions, had not witnessed the shot. But he turned at the shout which followed, caught sight of the bare flagstaff, and ordering his bugler to sound the "Cease firing," sent forward the captain at once to parley.

With Muspratt went a sergeant of the Forty-sixth and a bugler. The sergeant carried a white flag. Ascending the slope briskly, they were met at the gate by M. Etienne.

The sudden disappearance of the flag above the tower had mystified the garrison no less thoroughly than the British. They knew the Commandant to be aloft there with Sergeant Bedard, and the most of the men could only guess, as their enemies had guessed, that he was giving the signal of surrender.

But this M. Etienne could by no means believe; it belied his brother's nature as well as his declared resolve. And so, while the English captain with great politeness stated his terms—which were unconditional surrender and nothing less—the poor gentleman kept glancing over his shoulder and answering at random, "Yes, yes," or "Precisely—if you will allow me," or "Excuse me a moment, until my brother—" In short, he rambled so that Captain Muspratt could only suppose his wits unhinged. It was scarce credible that a sane man could receive such a message inattentively, and yet this old gentleman did not seem to be listening!

Diane meanwhile stood at the mouth of her shelter with her eyes lifted, intent upon the tower's summit. She, too had seen the flag run down with the bursting of the bomb, and she alone had hit in her mind on the true explanation—that a flying shard had cut clean through the up-halliard close to the staff, and the flag—heavy with golden lilies of her own working—had at once dropped of its own weight. She had caught sight, too, of her father's arm reaching up to grasp it, and she knew why. The flagstaff had a double set of halliards.

She waited—waited confidently, since her father was alive up there. She marvelled that he had escaped, for the explosion had seemed to wrap the battlements in one sheet of fire. Nevertheless he was safe—she had seen him—and she waited for the flag to rise again.

Minutes passed. She took a step forward from her shelter. The firing had ceased and the courtyard was curiously still and empty. Then four of the five militiamen posted to watch the back of the building came hurrying across towards the gateway. She understood—her senses being strung for the moment so tensely that they seemed to relieve her of all trouble of thinking—she understood that a parley was going forward at the gate and that these men were hurrying from their posts to hear it. In her ears the bugles still sounded the "Cease firing "; and still she gazed up at the tower.

Yes—she had made no mistake! The spare halliards were shaking; in a second or two—but why did they drag so interminably?—the flag would rise again.

And it rose. Before her eyes, before the eyes of the parleyers in the gateway and of the British watching from their batteries, it rose above the edge of the battlements and climbed half-way up the mast, or a little short of half-way. There it stopped—climbed a few feet higher—and stopped again—climbed yet another foot—and slowly, very slowly, fluttered downward.

With a dreadful surmise Diane started to run across the courtyard toward the door at the foot of the tower; and even as she started a yell went up from the rear of the fort, followed by a random volley of musketry and a second yell—a true Iroquois war-whoop.

In the gateway Captain Muspratt called promptly to his bugler. The first yell had told him what was happening; that the men of the Forty-sixth, sent round for the feint attack, had found the rear wall defenceless and were escalading, in ignorance of the parley at the gate.

Quick as thought the bugler sounded the British recall, and its notes were taken up by bugle after bugle down the slope. The Major commanding the feint attack heard, comprehended after a fashion, and checked his men; and the Forty-sixth, as a well-disciplined regiment, dropped off its scaling ladders and came to heel.

But he could not check his Indian guides. Once already on their progress down the river they had been baulked of their lust to kill; and this restraint had liked them so little that already three-fourths of Sir William Johnson's Iroquois were marching back to their homes in dudgeon. These dozen braves would not be cheated a second time if they could help it. Disregarding the shouts and the bugle-calls they swarmed up the ladders, dropped within the fort, and swept through the Commandant's quarters into the courtyard.

In the doorway at the foot of the flagstaff tower a woman's skirt fluttered for an instant and was gone. They raced after it like a pack of mad dogs, and with them ran one, an Ojibway, whom neither hate nor lust, but a terrible fear, made fleeter than any.

Six of them reached the narrow doorway together, snarling and jostling in their rage. The Ojibway broke through first and led the way up the winding stairway, taking it three steps at a time, with death behind him now—though of this he recked nothing—since he had clubbed an Oneida senseless in the doorway, and these Indians, Oneidas all, had from the start resented his joining the party of guides.

Never a yard separated him from the musket-butt of the Indian who panted next after him; but above, at the last turning of the stair under a trap-door through which the sunlight poured, he caught again the flutter of a woman's skirt. A ladder led through the hatchway, and—almost grasping her frock—he sprang up after Diane, flung himself on the leads, reached out, and clutching the hatch, slammed it down on the foremost Oneida's head.

As he slipped the bolt—thank God it had a bolt!—he heard the man drop from the ladder with a muffled thud. Then, safe for a moment, he ran to the battlements and shouted down at the pitch of his voice.

"Forty-sixth! This way, Forty-sixth!"

His voice sounded passing strange to him. Nor for two years had it been lifted to pronounce an English word.

Having sent down his call he ran back swiftly to the closed hatchway; and as he knelt, pressing upon it with both hands, his eyes met Diane's.

She stood by the flagstaff with a pistol in her hand. But her hand hung stiffly by her hip as it had dropped at the sound of his shout, and her eyes stared on him. At her feet lay the Commandant, his hand still rigid upon the halliards, his breast covered by the folds of the fallen flag, and behind her, as the bursting shell had killed and huddled it, the body of old Sergeant Bedard.

Why she stood there, pistol in hand, he could partly guess. How these two corpses came here he could not guess at all. The Commandant, mortally wounded, had grasped at the falling flag, and with a dying effort had bent it upon the spare halliards and tried to hoist. It lay now, covering a wound which had torn his chest open, coat and flesh, and laid his ribs bare.

But John a Cleeve, kneeling upon the hatchway, understood nothing of this. What beat on his brain was the vision of a face below—the face of the officer commanding—turned upwards in blank astonishment at his shout of "Forty-sixth! This way, Forty-sixth!"

The Indians were battering the hatch with their musket-butts. The bolt shook. He pressed his weight down on the edge, keeping his head well back to be out of the way of bullets. Luckily the timbers of the hatch were stout, and moreover it had a leaden casing, but this would avail nothing when the Indians began to fire at the hinges—as they surely would.

He found himself saying aloud in French, "Run, mademoiselle!—I won't answer for the hinges. Call again to the red-coats! They will help."

But still, while blow after blow shook the hatch, Diane crouched motionless, staring at him with wild eyes.

"They will help," he repeated with the air of one striving to speak lucidly; then with a change of tone, "Give me your pistol, please."

She held it out obediently, at arm's length; but as he took it she seemed to remember, and crept close.

"Non—non!" she whispered. "C'est a moi-que tu le dois, enfin!"

From the staircase—not close beneath the hatch, but, as it seemed, far below their feet—came the muffled sound of shots, and between the shots hoarse cries of rage.

"Courage!" whispered John. He could hear that men were grappling and fighting down there, and supposed the Forty-sixth to be at hand. He could not know that the parleyers at the gate, appalled for an instant by the vision of Diane with a dozen savages in chase, had rallied at a yell from Dominique Guyon, pelted after him to the rescue, and were now at grips with the rearmost Oneidas—a locked and heaving mass choking the narrow spirals of the stairway.

"Courage!" he whispered again, and pressing a knee on the edge of the hatch reached out a hand to steady her. What mattered it if they died now—together—he and she? "Tu dois"—she loved him; her lips had betrayed her. "Tu dois"—the words sang through him, thrilling, bathing him in bliss.

"O my love! O my love!"

The blows beat upward against the hatch and ceased. He sprang erect, slid an arm around her and dragged her back—not a second too soon. A gun exploded against the hinges at their feet, blowing one loose. John saw the crevice gaping and the muzzle of a gun pushed through to prise it open. He leaped upon the hatch, pistol in hand.

"Forty-sixth! Forty-sixth!"

What was that? Through the open crevice a British cheer answered him. The man levering against his weight lost hold of the gun, leaving it jammed. John heard the slide and thud of his fall.

"Hallo!" hailed a cheerful voice from the foot of the ladder. "You there!—open the trap-way and show us some light!"

John knelt, slipped back the bolt, and turned to Diane. She had fallen on her knees—but what had happened to her? She was cowering before the joy in his face, shrinking away from him and yet beseeching.

"Le pistolet—donne-moi le pistolet!"—her voice hissed on the word, her eyes petitioned him desperately. "Ah, de grace! tu n'a pas le droit—"

He understood. With a passing bitter laugh he turned from her entreaties and hurled the pistol across the battlements into air. A hand flung open the hatch. A British officer—Etherington, Major of the Forty-sixth—pushed his head and shoulders through he opening and stared across the leads, panting, with triumphant jolly face.



CHAPTER XXIV.

THE FORT SURRENDERS.

The red-coats, who had forced their way up the tower by weight of numbers and at the point of the bayonet, were now ordered to face about and clear the stairway; which they did, driving the mixed rabble of Canadians and Indians down before them, and collecting the dead and wounded as they went. Five of the Oneidas had been bayoneted or trampled to death in the struggle; two of the garrison would never fight again, and scarcely a man had escaped cuts or bruises.

But Diane, as she followed her father's body down the stairs, knew nothing of this. The dead and wounded had been removed. The narrow lancet windows let in a faint light, enough to reveal some ugly stains and splashes on the walls; but she walked with fixed unseeing eyes. Once only on the way down her foot slid on the edge of a slippery step, and she shivered.

In the sunlight outside the doorway a group of men, mauled and sullen, some wearing bandages, others with blood yet trickling down their faces, stood listening to an altercation between M. Etienne and a couple of spick-and-span British officers. As their Commandant's body came through the doorway they drew together with a growl. Love was in that sound, and sorrow, and helpless rage. One or two broke into sobs.

The British officers—one of them was the General himself, the other his messenger, Captain Muspratt—bared their heads. M. Etienne, checked in the midst of an harangue, stepped to Diane and took her hand tenderly.

She gazed slowly around on the group of battered men. There was no reproach in her look—Had she not failed as miserably as they?—and yet it held a word of injustice. She could not know that for her sake they carried these wounds. And Dominique Guyon, the one man who could have answered her thoughts, stared savagely at the ground, offering no defence.

"Dominique Guyon," commanded M. Etienne, "four of you will relieve these messieurs of their burden. Carry your master to the chapel, where you will find Father Launoy and Father Joly."

"But pardon me, monsieur," interposed Amherst politely, "my soldiers will be proud to bear so gallant a foe."

"I thank you "—M. Etienne's bow was stiff and obstinate—"but I assert again that I still command this fortress, and the bearers shall be of my choosing."

Diane laid a hand on her uncle's arm. "He is dead," said she. "What matters it?" She did not understand this dispute. "Perhaps if I promise M. le General that these men shall return to him when they have laid my father in the chapel—"

The General—a tall, lean, horse-faced man with a shrewd and not unkindly eye—yielded the point at once. "Willingly, mademoiselle, and with all the respect an enemy may pay to your sorrow."

He ordered the men to give place to the new bearers.

In the chapel Diane sank on her knees, but not to pray—rather to escape the consolations of the two priests and be alone with her thoughts. And her thoughts were not of her father. The stroke had fallen; but not yet could she feel the pain. He was happy; he alone of them all had kept his quiet vow, and died disdaining defeat; whereas she—ah, there lay the terrible thought!—she had not merely failed, had not been overpowered. In the crisis, beside her father's corpse, she had played the traitress to her resolve.

The two priests moved about the body, arranging it, fetching trestles, draperies, and candles for the lit de parade, always with stealthy glances at the bowed figure in the shadow just within the door. But she knelt on, nor lifted her face.

In the sunlit courtyard without the two commanders were still disputing. M. Etienne flatly refused to yield up his sword, maintaining that he had never surrendered, had agreed to no terms of capitulation; that the redcoats had swarmed over his walls in the temporary absence of their defenders, gathered at the gateway to parley under a flag of truce, and should be drawn off at once.

The mischief was, he could not be gainsaid. Major Etherington explained—at first in English, to his General, and again, at his General's request, in the best French he could command, for the benefit of all, that he had indeed heard the recall blown, and had with difficulty drawn off his men from the scaling-ladders, persuading them (as he himself was persuaded) that the fort had surrendered. He knew nothing of the white flag at the gateway, but had formed his conclusions from the bugle-calls and the bare flagstaff above the tower.

"Nevertheless, we had not capitulated," persisted M. Etienne.

The Major continued that, albeit he had tried his best, the Indians were not to be restrained. They had poured into the fort, and, although he had obeyed the bugles and kept his men back, it had cost him grave misgivings. But when the Ojibway called down so urgently from the summit of the tower, he had risked disobedience, hoping to prevent the massacre which he knew to be afoot. He appealed to his General to approve, or at least condone, this breach of orders. For undoubtedly massacre had been prevented. Witness the crowd he had found jammed in the stairway, and fighting ferociously. Witness the scene that had met him at the head of the stairs. Here he swung round upon John and beckoned him to stand out from the listening group of red-coats.

"It can be proved, sir," he went on, addressing M. Etienne, "that the lady—your niece, is she not?—owes her life, and more than her life perhaps, to this savage. I claim only that, answering his call, I led my men with all possible speed to the rescue. Up there on the leads I found your brother lying dead, with a sergeant dead beside him; and their wounds again will prove to you that they had perished by the bursting of a shell. But this man alone stood on the hatchway and held it against a dozen Iroquois, as your niece will testify. What you suppose yourself to owe him, I won't pretend to say; but I tell you—and I tell you, General—that cleaner pluck I never saw in my life."

John, the soldiers pushing him forward, stood out with bent head. He prayed that there might be no Ojibway interpreter at hand; he knew of none in the fort but Father Launoy, now busy in the chapel laying out the Commandant's body. Of all the spectators there was but one— the General himself—who had not known him either as Ensign John a Cleeve or as the wounded sergeant from Ticonderoga. He had met Captain Muspratt at Albany, and remembered him well on the march up the Hudson to Lake George. With Major Etherington he had marched, messed, played at cards, and lived in close comradeship for months together—only two years ago! It was not before their eyes that he hung his head, but before the thought of two eyes that in the chapel yonder were covered by the hands of a kneeling girl.

M. Etienne stepped forward and took his hand.

"I thank you, my friend—if you can understand my thanks."

Dominique Guyon, returning from the chapel, saw only an Indian stepping back upon the ranks of the red-coats, who clapped him on the shoulder for a good fellow; and Dominique paid him no more attention, being occupied with M. Etienne's next words.

"Nevertheless," said M. Etienne, turning upon Amherst, "my duty to his Majesty obliges me to insist that I have not capitulated; and your troops, sir, though they have done me this service, must be at once withdrawn."

And clearly, by all the rules of war, M. Etienne had the right on his side. Amherst shrugged his shoulders, frowning and yet forced to smile—the fix was so entirely absurd. As discipline went in these North American campaigns, he commanded a well-disciplined army; but numbers of provincials and bateau-men had filtered in through the breaches almost unobserved during the parley, and were now strolling about the fortifications like a crowd of inquisitive tourists. He ordered Major Etherington to clear them out, and essayed once more to reason with the enemy.

"You do not seriously urge me, monsieur, to withdraw my men and renew the bombardment?"

"That is precisely what I require of you."

"But—good heavens, my dear sir!—look at the state of your walls!" He waved a hand towards the defences.

"I see them; but you, sir, as a gentleman, should have no eyes for their condition—on this side."

The General arched his eyebrows and glanced from M. Etienne to the Canadians; he did not for a moment mean to appeal to them, but his glance said involuntarily, "A pretty madman you have for commander!"

And in fact they were already murmuring. What nonsense was this of M. Etienne's? The fort had fallen, as any man with eyes could see. Their Commandant was dead. They had fought to gain time? Well, they had succeeded, and won compliments even from their enemy.

Corporal Sans Quartier spoke up. "With all respect, M. le Capitaine, if we fight again some of us would like to know what we are fighting for."

M. Etienne swung round upon him.

"Tais-toi, poltron!"

A murmur answered him; and looking along the line of faces he read sympathy, respect, even a little shame, but nowhere the response he sought.

Nor did he reproach them. Bitter reproaches indeed shook his lips, but trembled there and died unuttered. For five—maybe ten—long seconds he gazed, and so turned towards the General.

"Achevez, monsieur! . . . Je vous demande pardon si vous me trouvez un peu pointilleux." His voice shook; he unbuckled his sword, held it for a moment between his hands as if hesitating, then offered it to Amherst with the ghost of a bitter smile. "Cela ne vaut pas—sauf a moi—la peine de le casser . . ."

He bowed, and would have passed on towards the chapel. Amherst gently detained him.

"I spare you my compliments, sir, and my condolence; they would be idly offered to a brave man at such a moment. Forgive me, though, that I cannot spare to consult you on my own affairs. Time presses with us. You have, as I am told, good pilots here who know the rapids between this and Montreal, and I must beg to have them pointed out to me."

M. Etienne paused. "The best pilots, sir, are Dominique Guyon there, and his brother Bateese. But you will find that most of these men know the river tolerably well."

"And the rest of your garrison? Your pardon, again, but I must hold you responsible, to deliver up all your men within the Fort."

"I do not understand . . . This, sir, is all the garrison of Fort Amitie."

Amherst stared at the nineteen or twenty hurt and dishevelled men ranged against the tower wall, then back into a face impossible to associate with untruth.

"M. le Capitaine," said he very slowly, "if with these men you have made a laughing-stock of me for two days and a half, why then I owe you a grudge. But something else I owe, and must repay at once. Be so good as to receive back a sword, sir, of which I am all unworthy to deprive you."

But as he proffered it, M. Etienne put up both hands to thrust the gift away, then covered his face with them.

"Not now, monsieur—not now! To-morrow perhaps . . . but not now, or I may break it indeed!"

Still with his face covered, he tottered off towards the chapel.



CHAPTER XXV.

THE RAPIDS.

They had run the Galops rapids, Point Iroquois, Point Cardinal, the Rapide Plat, without disaster though not without heavy toil. The fury of the falls far exceeded Amherst's expectations, but he believed that he had seen the worst, and he blessed the pilotage of Dominique and Bateese Guyon.

Here and there the heavier bateaux carrying the guns would be warped or pushed and steadied along shore in the shallow water under the bank, by gangs, to avoid some peril over which the whaleboats rode easily; and this not only delayed the flotilla but accounted for the loss of a few men caught at unawares by the edge of the current, swept off their legs, and drowned.

On the first day of September they ran the Long Saut and floated across the still basin of Lake St. Francis. At the foot of the lake the General landed a company or two of riflemen to dislodge La Corne's militia; but La Corne was already falling back upon the lower rapids, and, as it turned out, this redoubtable partisan gave no trouble at all.

They reached and passed Coteau du Lac on the 3rd.

Dominique and Bateese steered the two leading whaleboats, setting the course for the rest as they had set it all the way down from Fort Amitie. By M. Etienne's request, he and his niece and the few disabled prisoners from the fort travelled in these two boats under a small guard. It appeared that the poor gentleman's wits were shaken; he took an innocent pride now in the skill of the two brothers, his family's censitaires, and throughout the long days he discoursed on it wearisomely. The siege—his brother's death—Fort Amitie itself and his two years and more of residence there—seemed to have faded from his mind. He spoke of Boisveyrac as though he had left it but a few hours since.

"And the General," said he to Diane, "will be interested in seeing the Seigniory."

"A sad sight, monsieur!" put in Bateese, overhearing him. (Just before embarking, M. Etienne, Diane and Felicite had been assigned to Bateese's boat, while Father Launoy, Father Joly and two wounded prisoners travelled in Dominique's.) "A sight to break the heart! We passed it, Dominique and I, on our way to and from Montreal. Figure to yourself that the corn was standing already over-ripe, and it will be standing yet, though we are in September!"

"The General will make allowances," answered M. Etienne with grave simplicity. "He will understand that we have had no time for harvesting of late. Another year—"

Diane shivered. And yet—was it not better to dote thus, needing no pity, happy as a child, than to live sane and feel the torture? Better perhaps, but best and blessedest to escape the choice as her father had escaped it! As the river bore her nearer to Boisveyrac she saw his tall figure pacing the familiar shores, pausing to con the acres that were his and had been his father's and his father's father's. She saw and understood that smile of his which had so often puzzled her as a child when she had peered up into his face under its broad-brimmed hat and noted his eyes as they rested on the fields, the clearings, the forest; noted his cheeks reddened with open-air living; his firm lips touched with pride—the pride of a king treading his undisputed ground. In those days she and Armand had been something of an enigma to their father, and he to them; their vision tinged and clouded, perhaps, by a drop or two of dusky Indian blood. But now he had suddenly become intelligible to her, an heroic figure, wonderfully simple. She let her memory call up picture after picture of him—as he sat in the great parlour hearing "cases," dispensing fatherly justice; as he stood up at a marriage feast to drink the bride's and bridegroom's health and commend their example to all the young habitants; as he patted the heads of the children trooping to their first communion; as he welcomed his censitaires on St. Martin's day, when they poured in with their rents—wheat, eggs and poultry—the poultry all alive, heels tied, heads down, throats distended and squalling—until the barnyard became Babel, and still he went about pinching the fowls' breasts, running the corn through his hands, dispensing a word of praise here, a prescription there, and kindness everywhere. Now bad harvests would vex him no more, nor the fate of his familiar fields. In the wreck of all he had lived for, his life had stood up clear for a moment, complete in itself and vindicated. And the moment which had revealed had also ended it; he lay now beneath the chapel pavement at Fort Amitie, indifferently awaiting judgment, his sword by his side.

They ran the Cedars and, taking breath on the smooth waters below, steered for the shore where the towers and tall chimneys of Boisveyrac crept into view, and the long facade of the Seigniory, slowly unfolding itself from the forest.

Here the leading boats were brought to land while the flotilla collected itself for the next descent. A boat had capsized and drowned its crew in the Long Saut, and Amherst had learnt the lesson of that accident and thenceforward allowed no straggling. Constant to his rule, too, of leaving no post in his rear until satisfied that it was harmless, he proposed to inspect the Seigniory, and sent a message desiring M. Etienne's company—and Mademoiselle's, if to grant this favour would not distress her.

Diane prayed to be excused; but M. Etienne accepted with alacrity. He had saluted the first glimpse of the homestead with a glad cry, eager as a schoolboy returning for his holidays. He met the General on the slope with a gush of apologies. 'He must overlook the unkempt condition of the fields. . . . Boisveyrac was not wont to make so poor a show . . . the estate, in fact, though not rich, had always been well kept up . . . the stonework was noted throughout New France, and every inch of timber (would M. le General observe?) thoroughly well seasoned. . . . Yes, those were the arms above the entrance—Noel quartering Tilly—two of the oldest families in the province . . . If M. le General took an interest in heraldry, these other quarterings were worth perusal . . . de Repentigny, de Contrecoeur, Traversy, St. Ours, de Valrennes, de la Mothe, d'Ailleboust . . . and the windmill would repay an ascent . . . the view from its summit was magnificent. . . .'

Diane, seated in the boat and watching, saw him halt and point out the escutcheons; saw him halt again in the gateway and spread out his arms to indicate the solidity of the walls; could almost, reading his gestures, hear the words they explained; and her cheeks burned with shame.

"A fine estate!" said a voice in the next boat.

"Yes, indeed," answered Bateese at her elbow; "there is no Seigniory to compare with Boisveyrac. And we will live to welcome you back to it, mademoiselle. The English are no despoilers, they tell me."

She glanced at Dominique. He had filled a pipe, and, as he smoked, his eyes followed her uncle's gestures placidly. Scorn of him, scorn of herself, intolerable shame, rose in a flood together.

"If my uncle behaves like a roturier, it is because his mind is gone. Shall we spy on him and laugh?—ghosts of those who are afraid to die!"

Father Launoy looked up from his breviary.

"Mademoiselle is unjust," said he quietly. "To my knowledge, those servants of hers, whom she reproaches, have risked death and taken wounds, in part for her sake."

Diane sat silent, gazing upon the river. Yes, she had been unjust, and she knew it. Felicite had told her how the garrison had rushed after Dominique to rescue her, and of the struggle in the stairway of the tower. Dominique bore an ugly cut, half-healed yet, reaching from his right eyebrow across the cheekbone—the gash of an Indian knife. Bateese could steer with his left hand only; his right he carried in a sling. And the two men lying at this moment by Father Launoy's feet had taken their wounds for her sake. Unjust she had been; bitterly unjust. How could she explain the secret of her bitterness—that she despised herself?

Boats were crowding thick around them now, many of them half filled with water. The crews, while they baled, had each a separate tale to tell of their latest adventure; each, it seemed, had escaped destruction by a hair's-breadth. The Cedars had been worse even than the Long Saut. They laughed and boasted, wringing their clothes. The nearest flung questions at Dominique, at Bateese. The Cascades, they understood, were the worst in the whole chain of rapids, always excepting the La Chine. But the La Chine were not to be attempted; the army would land above them, at Isle Perrot perhaps, or at the village near the falls, and cover the last nine or ten miles on foot. But what of the Buisson? and of the Roches Fendues?

More than an hour passed in this clamour, and still the boats continued to crowd around. The first-comers, having baled, were looking to their accoutrements, testing the powder in their flasks, repolishing the locks and barrels of their muskets. "To be sure La Corne and his militiamen had disappeared, but there was still room for a skirmish between this and Lake St. Louis; if he had posted himself on the bank below, he might prove annoying. The rapids were bad enough without the addition of being fired upon during the descent, when a man had work enough to hold tight by the gunwale and say his prayers. Was the General sending a force down to clear La Corne out?"

"Diane!"

A crowd of soldiers had gathered on the bank, shutting out all view of the Seigniory. Diane, turning at the sound of her uncle's voice, saw the men make way, and caught her breath. He was not alone. He came through the press triumphantly, dragging by the hand an Indian—an Indian who hung back from the river's brink with eyes averted, fastened on the ground—the man whom, of all men, she most feared to meet.

"Diane, the General has been telling me—this honest fellow—we have been most remiss—"

M. Etienne panted as he picked his steps down the bank. His face was glowing.

"—He understands a little French, it seems. I have the General's permission to give him a seat in our boat. He tells me he is averse to being thanked, but that is nonsense. I insisted on his coming."

"You have thanked me once already, monsieur," urged John a Cleeve in a voice as low as he could pitch it.

"But not sufficiently. You hear, Diane?—he speaks French! I was confused at the time; I did not gather—"

She felt Dominique's eyes upon her. Was her face so white then? He must not guess. . . . She held out her hand, commanding her voice to speak easily, wondering the while at the sound of it.

"Welcome, my friend. My uncle is right; we have been remiss—"

Her voice trailed off, as her eyes fell on Father Launoy. He was staring, not at her, but at the Indian; curiously at first, then with dawning suspicion.

Involuntarily she glanced again towards Dominique. He, too, slowly moved his gaze from her face and fastened it on the Indian.

He knew. . . . Father Launoy knew. . . . Oh, when would the boats push off?

They pushed off and fell into their stations at length, amid almost interminable shouting of orders and cross-shouting, pulling and backing of oars. She had stolen one look at Bateese. . . . He did not suspect . . . but, in the other boat, they knew.

Her uncle's voice ran on like a brook. She could not look up, for fear of meeting her lover's eyes—yes, her lover's! She was reckless now. They knew. She would deceive herself no longer. She was base—base. He stood close, and in his presence she was glad— fiercely, deliciously, desperately. She, betrayed in all her vows, was glad. The current ran smoothly. If only, beyond the next ledge, might lie annihilation!

The current ran with an oily smoothness. They were nearing the Roches Fendues. Dominique's boat led.

A clear voice began to sing, high and loud, in a ringing tenor:

"Malbrouck s'en va-t'en guerre: Mironton, mironton, mirontaine . . ."

At the first note John a Cleeve, glancing swiftly at Bateese, saw his body stiffen suddenly with his hand on the tiller; saw his eyes travel forward, seeking his brother's; saw his face whiten. Dominique stood erect, gazing back, challenging. Beyond him John caught a glimpse of Father Launoy looking up from his breviary; and the priest's face, too, was white and fixed.

Voices in the boats behind began to curse loudly; for "Malbrouck" was no popular air with the English. But Bateese took up the chant:

"Malbrouck s'en va-t'en guerre— Ne sais quand reviendra!"

They were swinging past Bout de l'lsle. Already the keel under foot was gathering way. From Bateese, who stood with eyes stiffened now and inscrutable, John looked down upon Diane. She lifted her face with a wan smile, but she, too, was listening to the challenge flung back from the leading boat.

"Il reviendra-z a Paques . . ."

He flung one glance over his shoulder, and saw the channel dividing ahead. Dominique was leaning over, pressing down the helm to starboard. Over Dominique's arm Father Launoy stared rigidly. Father Joly, as if aware of something amiss, had cast out both hands and was grasping the gunwale. The boat, sucked into the roar of the rapids, shot down the left channel—the channel of death.

"Il reviendra-z a Paques, Ou—a la Trinite!"

The voice was lost in the roar of the falls, now drumming loud in John's ears. He knew nothing of these rapids; but two channels lay ahead and the choice between them. He leapt across M. Etienne, and hurling Bateese aside, seized the tiller and thrust it hard over, heading for the right.

Peering back through the spray as he bent he saw the helmsmen astern staring—hesitating. They had but a second or two in which to choose. He shouted and shouted again—in English. But the tumbling waters roared high above his shouts.

He reached out and gripping Bateese by the collar, forced the tiller into his hand. Useless now to look back to try to discover how many boats were following!

Bateese, with a sob, crept back to the tiller and steered.

Not until the foot of the falls was reached did John know that the herd had followed him. But forty-six boats had followed Dominique's fatal lead: and of their crews ninety red-coated corpses tossed with Dominique's and the two priests' and spun in the eddies beneath the Grand Bouilli.

At dawn next morning the sentries in Montreal caught sight of them drifting down past the walls, and carried the news. So New France learnt that its hour was near.



CHAPTER XXVI.

DICK'S JUDGMENT.

Two days later Amherst landed his troops at La Chine, marched them unopposed to Montreal, and encamped before the city on its western side. Within the walls M. de Vaudreuil called a council of war.

Resistance was madness. From east, south, west, the French commanders—Bourlamaque, Bougainville, Roquemaure, Dumas, La Corne— had all fallen back, deserted by their militias. The provincial army had melted down to two hundred men; the troops of the line numbered scarce above two thousand. The city, crowded with non-combatant refugees, held a bare fortnight's provisions. Its walls, built for defence against Indians, could not stand against the guns which Amherst was already dragging up from the river; its streets of wooden houses awaited only the first shell to set them ablaze.

On the eastern side Murray was moving closer, to encamp for the siege. To the south the tents of Haviland's army dotted the river shore. Seventeen thousand British and British-Colonials ringed about all that remained of New France, ready to end her by stroke of sword if Vaudreuil would not by stroke of pen.

Next morning Bougainville sought Amherst's tent and presented a bulky paper containing fifty-five articles of capitulation. Amherst read them through, and came to the demand that the troops should march out with arms, cannon, flags, and all the honours of war. "Inform the Governor," he answered, "that the whole garrison of Montreal, and all other French troops in Canada, must lay down their arms, and undertake not to serve again in this war." Bougainville bore his message, and returned in a little while to remonstrate; but in vain. Then Levis tried his hand, sending his quartermaster-general to plead against terms so humiliating—"terms," he wrote, "to which it will not be possible for us to subscribe." Amherst replied curtly that the terms were harsh, and he had made them so intentionally; they marked his sense of the conduct of the French throughout the war in exciting their Indian allies to atrocity and murder.

So Fort William Henry was avenged at length, in the humiliation of gallant men; and human vengeance proved itself, perhaps, neither more nor less clumsy than usual.

Vaudreuil tried to exact that the English should, on their side, pack off their Indians. He represented that the townsfolk of Montreal stood in terror of being massacred. Again Amherst refused. "No Frenchman," said he, "surrendering under treaty has ever suffered outrage from the Indians of our army." This was on the 7th of September.

Early on the 8th Vaudreuil yielded and signed the capitulation. Levis, in the name of the army, protested bitterly. "If the Marquis de Vaudreuil, through political motives, believes himself obliged to surrender the colony at once, we beg his leave to withdraw with the troops of the line to Isle Sainte-Helene, to maintain there, on our own behalf, the honour of the King's arms." To this, of course, the Governor could not listen. Before the hour of surrender the French regiments burnt their flags.

On the southern shore of the St. Lawrence, in the deepest recess of a small curving bay, the afternoon sun fell through a screen of bulrushes upon a birch canoe and a naked man seated in the shallows beside it. In one hand he held out, level with his head, a lock of hair, dark and long and matted, while the other sheared at it with a razor. The razor flashed as he turned it this way and that against the sun. On his shoulders and raised upper arm a few water-drops glistened, for he had been swimming.

The severed locks fell into the stream that rippled beside him through the bulrush stems. Some found a channel at once and were swept out of sight, others were caught against the stems and trailed out upon the current like queer water-flags. He laid the razor back in the canoe and, rising cautiously, looked about for a patch of clear, untroubled water to serve him for a mirror; but small eddies and cross-currents dimpled the surface everywhere, and his search was not a success. Next he fetched forth from the canoe an earthenware pan with lye and charcoal, mixed a paste, and began to lather his head briskly.

Twice he paused in his lathering. Before his shelter rolled the great river, almost two miles broad; and clear across that distance, from Montreal, came the sound of drums beating, bells ringing, men shouting and cheering. In the Place d'Armes, over yonder, Amherst was parading his troops to receive the formal surrender of the Marquis de Vaudreuil. Murray and Haviland were there, leading their brigades, with Gage and Fraser and Burton; Carleton and Haldfmand and Howe—Howe of the Heights of Abraham, brother of him who fell in the woods under Ticonderoga; the great Johnson of the Mohawk Valley, whom the Iroquois obeyed; Rogers of the backwoods and his brothers, bravest of the brave; Schuyler and Lyman: and over against them, drinking the bitterest cup of their lives, Levis and Bourlamaque and Bougainville, Dumas, Pouchot, and de la Corne—victors and vanquished, all the surviving heroes of the five years' struggle face to face in the city square.

Hi motus animorum atque haec certamina tanta—the half of North America was changing hands at this moment, and how a bare two miles' distance diminished it all! What child's play it made of the rattling drums! From his shelter John a Cleeve could see almost the whole of the city's river front—all of it, indeed, but a furlong or two at its western end; and the clean atmosphere showed up even the loopholes pierced in the outer walls of the great Seminary. Above the old-fashioned square bastions of the citadel a white flag floated; and that this flag bore a red cross instead of the golden lilies it had borne yesterday was the one and only sign, not easily discerned, of a reversal in the fates of two nations. The steeples and turrets of Montreal, the old windmill, the belfry and high-pitched roof of Notre Dame de Bonsecours, the massed buildings of the Seminary and the Hotel Dieu, the spire of the Jesuits, rose against the green shaggy slopes of the mountain, and over the mountain the sky paled tranquilly toward evening. Sky, mountain, forests, mirrored belfry and broad rolling river—a permanent peace seemed to rest on them all.

Half a mile down-stream, where Haviland's camp began, the men of the nearest picket were playing chuck-farthing. Duty deprived them of the spectacle in the Place d'Armes, and thus, as soldiers, they solaced themselves. Through the bulrush stems John heard their voices and laughter.

A canoe came drifting down the river, across the opening of the little creek. A man sat in it with his paddle laid across his knees; and as the stream bore him past, his eyes scanned the water inshore. John recognised Bateese at once; but Bateese, after a glance, went by unheeding. It was no living man he sought.

John finished his lathering at leisure, waded out beyond the rushes and cast himself forward into deep water. He swam a few strokes, ducked his head, dived, and swam on again; turned on his back and floated, staring up into the sky; breasted the strong current and swam against it, fighting it in sheer lightness of heart. Boyhood came back to him with his cleansing, and a boyish memory—of an hour between sunset and moonrise; of a Devonshire lane, where the harvest wagons had left wisps of hay dangling from the honeysuckles; of a triangular patch of turf at the end of the lane, and a whitewashed Meeting-House with windows open, and through the windows a hymn pouring forth upon the Sabbath twilight—

"Time, like an ever-rolling stream, Bears all his sons away . . ."

An ever-rolling stream! It would bear him down, and the generals yonder, victors and vanquished, drums and trumpets, hopes and triumphs and despair—overwhelming, making equal the greater with the less. But meanwhile, how good to be alive and a man, to swim and breast it! So this river, if he fought it, would out-tire him, sweep him away and roll on unheeding, majestic, careless of life and of time. But for this moment he commanded it. Let his new life bring what it might, this hour the river should be his servant, should prepare and wash him clean, body and soul. He lifted his head, shaking the water from his eyes, and the very volume of the lustral flood contented him. He felt the strong current pressing against his arms, and longed to embrace it all. And again, tickled by the absurdity of his fancies, he lay on his back and laughed up at the sky.

He swam to shore, flung himself down, and panted. Across the river, by the landing-stage beneath the citadel, a band was playing down Haviland's brigade to its boats; and one of the boats was bringing a man whom John had great need to meet. When the sun had dried and warmed him, he dressed at leisure, putting on a suit complete, with striped shirt, socks, and cowhide boots purchased from a waterside trader across the river and paid for with the last of his moneys earned in the wilderness. The boots, though a world too wide, cramped him painfully; and he walked up and down the bank for a minute or two, to get accustomed to them, before strolling down to meet the challenge of the pickets.

They were men of the 17th, and John inquired for their adjutant. They pointed to the returning boats. The corporal in charge of the picket, taking note of his clothes, asked if he belonged to Loring's bateau-men, and John answered that he had come down with them through the falls.

"A nice mess you made of it up yonder," was the corporal's comment. "Two days we were on fatigue duty picking up the bodies you sent down to us, and burying them. Only just now a fellow came along in a canoe—a half-witted kind of Canadian. Said he was searching for his brother."