"Get up," said he, simply, and the woman obeyed him.

"The fire, Madam, if you please, and breakfast."

These had been the duties of the Indian woman, but Mary Connynge obeyed.

"Madam," said Law, calmly, after the morning meal was at last finished in silence, "I shall be very glad to have your company for a few moments, if you please."

Mary Connynge rose and followed him into the open air, her eyes still fixed upon the dark-crusted stain which had spread upon his tunic. They walked in silence to a point beyond the cabin.

"You would call her Catharine!" burst out Mary Connynge. "Oh! I heard you in your very sleep. You believe every lying word Sir Arthur tells you. You believe—"

John Law looked at her with the simple and direct gaze which the tamer of the wild beast employs when he goes among them, the look of a man not afraid of any living thing.

"Madam," said he, at length, calmly and evenly, as before, "what I have said, sleeping or waking, will not matter. You have tried to kill me. You did not succeed. You will never try again. Now, Madam, I give you the privilege of kneeling here on the ground before me, and asking of me, not my pardon, but the pardon of the woman you have foully stabbed, even as you have me."

The figure before him straightened up, the blazing yellow eyes sought his once, twice, thrice, behind them all the fury of a savage soul. It was of no avail. The cool blue eyes looked straight into her heart. The tall figure stood before her, unyielding. She sought to raise her eyes once more, failed, and so would have sunk down as he had said, actually on her knees before him.

John Law extended a hand and stopped her. "There," said he. "It will suffice. I can not demean you. There is the child."

"You called her Catharine!" broke out the woman once more in her ungovernable rage. "You would name my child—"

"Madam, get up!" said John Law, sharply and sternly. "Get up on your feet and look me in the face. The child shall be called for her who should have been its mother. Let those forgive who can. That you have ruined my life for me is but perhaps a fair exchange; yet you shall say no word against that woman whose life we have both of us despoiled."



CHAPTER X

BY THE HILT OF THE SWORD

Law passed on out at the gate of the stockade and down to the bivouac, where Pembroke and his men had spent the night.

"Now, Sir Arthur," said he to the latter, when he had found him, "come. I am ready to talk with you. Let us go apart."

Pembroke joined him, and the two walked slowly away toward the encircling wood which swept back of the stockade. Law turned upon him at length squarely.

"Sir Arthur," said he, "I think you would tell me something concerned with the Lady Catharine Knollys. Do you bring any message from her?"

The face of Pembroke flamed scarlet with sudden wrath. "Message!" said he. "Message from Lady Catharine Knollys to you? By God! sir, her only message could be her hope that she might never hear your name again."

"You have still your temper, Sir Arthur, and you speak harsh enough."

"Harsh or not," rejoined Pembroke, "I scarce can endure her name upon your lips. You, who scouted her, who left her, who took up with the lewdest woman in all Great Britain, as it now appears—you who would consort with this creature—"

"In this matter," said John Law, simply, "you are not my prisoner, and I beg you to speak frankly. It shall be man and man between us."

"How you could have stooped to such baseness is what mortal man can never understand," resumed Sir Arthur, bitterly. "Good God! to abandon a woman like that so heartlessly—"

"Sir Arthur," said John Law, his voice trembling, "I do myself the very great pleasure of telling you that you lie!"

For a moment the two stood silent, facing each other, the face of each stony, gone gray with the emotions back of it.

"There is light," said Pembroke, "and abundant space."

They turned and paced back farther toward the open forest glade. Yet now and again their steps faltered and half paused, and neither man cared to go forward or to return. Pembroke's face, stern as it had been, again took on the imprint of a growing hesitation.

"Mr. Law," said he, "there is something in your attitude which I admit puzzles me. I ask you in all honor, I ask you on the hilt of that sword which I know you will never disgrace, why did you thus flout the Lady Catharine Knollys? Why did you scorn her and take up with this woman yonder in her stead?"

"Sir Arthur," said John Law, with trembling lips, "I must be very low indeed in reputation, since you can ask me question such as this."

"But you must answer!" cried Sir Arthur, "and you must swear!"

"If you would have my answer and my oath, then I give you both. I did not do what you suggest, nor can I conceive how any man should think me guilty of it. I loved Lady Catharine Knollys with all my heart. 'Twas my chief bitterness, keener than even the thought of the gallows itself, that she forsook me in my trouble. Then, bitter as any man would be, I persuaded myself that I cared naught. Then came this other woman. Then I—well, I was a man and a fool—a fool, Sir Arthur, a most miserable fool! Every moment of my life since first I saw her, I have loved the Lady Catharine; and, God help me, I do now!"

Sir Arthur struck his hand upon the hilt of his sword. "You were more lucky than myself, as I know," said he, and from his lips broke half a groan.

"Good God!" broke out Law. "Let us not talk of it. I give you my word of honor, there has been no happiness to this. But come! We waste time. Let us cross swords!"

"Wait. Let me explain, since we are in the way of it. You must know that 'twas within the plans of Montague that Lady Catharine Knollys should be the agent of your freedom. I was pledged to the Lady Catharine to assist her, though, as you may perhaps see, sir," and Pembroke gulped in his throat as he spoke, "'twas difficult enough, this part that was assigned to me. It was I, Mr. Law, who drove the coach to the gate, the coach which brought the Lady Catharine. 'Twas she who opened the door of Newgate jail for you. My God! sir, how could you walk past that woman, coming there as she did, with such a purpose!"

At hearing these words, the tall figure of the man opposed to him drooped and sank, as though under some fearful blow. He staggered to a near-by support and sank weakly to a seat, his head falling between his hands, his whole face convulsed.

"Ah!" said he, "you did right to cross seas in search of me! God hath indeed found me out and given me my punishment. Yet I ask God to bear me witness that I knew not the truth. Come, Sir Arthur! Come, I beseech you! Let us fall to!"

"I shall be no man's executioner for his sentence on himself. I could not fight you now." His eye fell by chance upon the blotch in Law's bloodstained tunic. "And here," he said; "see! You are already wounded."

"'Twas but one woman's way of showing her regard," said Law. "'Twas Mary Connynge stabbed me."

"But why?"

"Nay, I am glad of it; since it proves the truth of all you say, even as it proves me to be the most unworthy man in all the world. Oh, what had it meant to me to know a real love! God! How could I have been so blind?"

"'Tis the ancient puzzle."

"Yes!" cried Law. "And let us make an end of puzzles! Your quarrel, sir, I admit is just. Let us go on."

"And again I tell you, Mr. Law," replied Sir Arthur, "that I will not fight you."

"Then, sir," said Law, dropping his own sword upon the grass and extending his hand with a broken smile, "'tis I who am your prisoner!"



CHAPTER XI

THE IROQUOIS

Even as Sir Arthur and John Law clasped hands, there came a sudden interruption. A half-score yards deeper in the wood there arose a sudden, half-choked cry, followed by a shrill whoop. There was a crashing as of one running, and immediately there pressed into the open space the figure of an Indian, an old man from the village of the Illini. Even as his staggering footsteps brought him within gaze, the two startled observers saw the shaft which had sunk deep within his breast. He had been shot through by an Indian arrow, and upon the instant it was all too plain whose hand had sped the shaft. Following close upon his heels there came a stalwart savage, whose face, hideously painted, appeared fairly demoniacal as he came bounding on with uplifted hatchet, seeking to strike down the victim already impaled by the silent arrow.

"Quick!" cried Law, in a flash catching the meaning of this sudden spectacle. "Into the fort, Sir Arthur, and call the men together!"

Not stopping to relieve the struggles of the victim, who had now fallen forward gasping, Law sprang on with drawn blade to meet the advancing savage. The latter paused for an uncertain moment, and then with a shrill yell of defiance, hurled the keen steel hatchet full at Law's head. It shore away a piece of his hat brim, and sank with edge deep buried in the trunk of a tree beyond. The savage turned, but turned too late. The blade of the swordsman passed through from rib to rib under his arm, and he fell choking, even as he sought again to give vent to his war-cry.

And now there arose in the woods beyond, and in the fields below the hill, and from the villages of the neighboring Indians, a series of sharp, ululating yells. Shots came from within the fortress, where the loop-holes were already manned. There were borne from the nearest wigwams of the Illini the screams of wounded men, the shrieks of terrified women. In an instant the peaceful spot had become the scene of a horrible confusion. Once more the wolves of the woods, the Iroquois, had fallen on their prey!

Swift as had been Law's movements, Pembroke was but a pace behind him as he wrenched free his blade. The two turned back together and started at speed for the palisade. At the gate they met others hurrying in, Pembroke's men joining in the rush of the frightened villagers. Among these the Iroquois pressed with shrill yells, plying knife and bow and hatchet as they ran, and the horrified eyes of those within the palisade saw many a tragedy enacted.

"Watch the gate!" cried Pierre Noir, from his station in the corner tower. As he spoke there came a rush of screaming Iroquois, who sought to gain the entrance.

"Now!" cried Pierre Noir, discharging his piece into the crowded ranks below him; and shot after shot followed his own. The packed brown mass gave back and resolved itself into scattered units, who broke and ran for the nearest cover.

"They will not come on again until dark," said Pierre Noir, calmly leaning his piece against the wall. "Therefore I may attend to certain little matters."

He passed out into the entry-way, where lay the bodies of three Iroquois, abandoned, under the close and deadly fire, by their companions where they had fallen. When Pierre Noir returned and calmly propped up again the door of slabs which he had removed, he carried in his hand three tufts of long black hair, from which dripped heavy gouts of blood.

"Good God, man!" said Pembroke. "You must not be savage as these Indians!"

"Speak for yourself, Monsieur Anglais," replied Pierre, stoutly. "You need not save these head pieces if you do not care for them. For myself, 'tis part of the trade."

"Assuredly," broke in Jean Breboeuf. "We keep these trinkets, we voyageurs of the French. Make no doubt that Jean Breboeuf will take back with him full tale of the Indians he has killed. Presently I go out. Zip! goes my knife, and off comes the topknot of Monsieur Indian, him I killed but now as he ran. Then I shall dry the scalp here by the fire, and mount it on a bit of willow, and take it back for a present to my sweetheart, Susanne Duchene, on the seignieury at home."

"Bravo, Jean!" cried out the old Indian fighter, Pierre Noir, the old baresark rage of the fighting man now rising hot in his blood. "And look! Here come more chances for our little ornaments."

Pierre Noir for once had been mistaken and underestimated the courage of the warriors of the Onondagos. Lashing themselves to fury at the thought of their losses, they came on again, now banding and charging in the open close up to the walls of the palisade. Again the little party of whites maintained a steady fire, and again the Iroquois, baffled and enraged, fell back into the wood, whence they poured volley after volley rattling against the walls of the sturdy fortress.

"I am sorry, sir," said Sergeant Gray to Pembroke, "but 'tis all up with me." The poor fellow staggered against the wall, and in a few moments all was indeed over with him. A chance shot had pierced his chest.

"Peste! If this keeps up," said Pierre Noir, "there will not be many of us left by morning. I never saw them fight so well. 'Tis a good watch we'll need this night."

In fact, all through the night the Iroquois tried every stratagem of their savage warfare. With ear-splitting yells they came close up to the stockade, and in one such charge two or three of their young men even managed to climb to the tops of the pointed stakes, though but to meet their death at the muzzles of the muskets within. Then there arose curving lines of fire from without the walls, half circles which terminated at last in little jarring thuds, where blazing arrows fell and stood in log, or earth, or unprotected roof. These projectiles, wrapped with lighted birch bark, served as fire brands, and danger enough they carried. Yet, after some fashion, the little garrison kept down these incipient blazes, held together the terrified Illini, repulsed each repeated charge of the Iroquois, and so at last wore through the long and fearful night.

The sun was just rising across the tops of the distant groves when the Iroquois made their next advance. It came not in the form of a concerted attack, but of an appeal for peace. A party of the savages left their cover and approached the fortress, waving their hands above their heads. One of them presently advanced alone.

"What is it, Pierre?" asked Law. "What does the fellow want?"

"I care not what he wants," said Pierre Noir, carefully adjusting the lock of his piece and steadily regarding the savage as he approached; "but I'll wager you a year's pay he never gets alive past yonder stump."

"Stay!" cried Pembroke, catching at the barrel of the leveled gun. "I believe he would talk with us."

"What does he say, Pierre?" asked Law. "Speak to him, if you can."

"He wants to know," said Pierre, as the messenger at length stopped and began a harangue, "whether we are English or French. He says something about there being a big peace between Corlaer and Onontio; by which he means, gentlemen, the governor at New York and the governor at Quebec."

"Tell him," cried Pembroke, with a sudden thought, "that I am an officer of Corlaer, and that Corlaer bids the Iroquois to bring in all the prisoners they have taken. Tell him that the French are going to give up all their prisoners to us, and that the Iroquois must leave the war path, or my Lord Bellomont will take the war trail and wipe their villages off the earth."

Something in this speech as conveyed to the savage seemed to give him a certain concern. He retired, and presently his place was taken by a tall and stately figure, dressed in the full habiliments of an Iroquois chieftain. He came on calmly and proudly, his head erect, and in his extended hand the long-stemmed pipe of peace. Pierre Noir heaved a deep sigh of relief.

"Unless my eyes deceive me," said he, "'tis old Teganisoris himself, one of the head men of the Onondagos. If so, there is some hope, for Teganisoris is wise enough to know when peace is best."

It was, indeed, that noted chieftain of the Iroquois who now advanced close up to the wall. Law and Pembroke stepped out to meet him beyond the palisade, the old voyageur still serving as interpreter from the platform at their back.

"He says—listen, Messieurs!—he says he knows there is going to be a big peace; that the Iroquois are tired of fighting and that their hearts are sore. He says—a most manifest lie, I beg you to observe, Messieurs—that he loves the English, and that, although he ought to kill the Frenchmen of our garrison, he will, since some of us are English, and hence his friends, spare us all if we will cease to fight."

Pembroke turned to Law with question in his eye.

"There must be something done," said the latter in a low tone. "We were short enough of ammunition here even before Du Mesne left for the settlements, and your own men have none too much left."

"'Reflect! Bethink yourselves, Englishmen!' he says to us," continued Pierre Noir. "'We came to make war upon the Illini. Our work here is done. 'Tis time now that we went back to our villages. If there is to be a big peace, the Iroquois must be there; for unless the Iroquois demand it, there can be no peace at all.' And, gentlemen, I beg you to remember it is an Iroquois who is talking, and that the truth is not in the tongue of an Iroquois."

"'Tis a desperate chance, Mr. Law," said Pembroke. "Yet if we keep up the fight here, there can be but one end."

"'Tis true," said Law; "and there are others to be considered."

It was hurriedly thus concluded. Law finally advanced toward the tall figure of the Iroquois headman, and looked him straight in the face.

"Tell him," said he to Pierre Noir, "that we are all English, and that we are not afraid; and that if we are harmed, the armies of Corlaer will destroy the Iroquois, even as the Iroquois have the Illini. Tell him that we will go back with him to the settlements because we are willing to go that way upon a journey which we had already planned. We could fight forever if we chose, and he can see for himself by the bodies of his young men how well we are able to make war."

"It is well," replied Teganisoris. "You have the word of an Iroquois that this shall be done, as I have said."

"The word of an Iroquois!" cried Pierre Noir, slamming down the butt of his musket. "The word of a snake, say rather! Jean Breboeuf, harken you to what our leaders have agreed! We are to go as prisoners of the Iroquois! Mary, Mother of God, what folly! And there is madame, and la pauvre petite, that infant so young. By God! Were it left to me, Pierre Berthier would stand here, and fight to the end. I know these Iroquois!"



CHAPTER XII

PRISONERS OF THE IROQUOIS

The faith of the Iroquois was worse than Punic, nor was there lacking swift proof of its real nature. Law and Pembroke, the moment they had led their little garrison beyond the gate, found themselves surrounded by a ring of tomahawks and drawn bows. Their weapons were snatched away from them, and on the instant they found themselves beyond all possibility of that resistance whose giving over they now bitterly repented. Teganisoris regarded them with a sardonic smile.

"I see you are all English," said he, "though some of you wear blue coats. These we may perhaps adopt into our tribe, for our boys grow up but slowly, and some of the blue coats are good fighters. These dogs of Illini we shall of course burn. As for your war house, you will no longer need it, since you are now friends of the Iroquois, and are going to their villages. You may say to Corlaer that you well know the Iroquois have no prisoners."

The horrid significance of this threat was all too soon made plain. In an hour the little stockade was but a mass of embers and ashes. In another hour the little valley had become a Gehenna of anguish and lamentations, with whose riot of grief and woe there mingled the savage exultations of a foe whose treachery was but surpassed by his cruelty. Again the planting-ground of the Illini was utterly laid waste, to mark it naught remaining but trampled grain, and heaps of ashes, and remnants of blackened and incinerated bones. By nightfall the party of prisoners had begun a wild journey through the wilderness, whose horrors surpassed any they had supposed to be humanly endurable.

Day after day, week after week, for more than a month, and much of the time in winter weather, they toiled on, part of the way by boat, the remainder of the journey on foot, crossing snow-clogged forest, and tangled thicket and frozen morass, yet daring not to drop out for rest, since to lag might mean to die. It was as though after some frightful nightmare of suffering and despair that at length they reached the villages of the Five Nations, located far to the east, at the foot of the great waterway which Law and his family had ascended more than a year before.

Yet if that which had gone before seemed like some bitter dream, surely the day of awakening promised but little better hope. From village to village, footsore and ill, they were hurried without rest, at each new stopping place the central figures of a barbarous triumph; and nowhere did they meet the representatives of either the French or the English government, whose expected presence had constituted their one ground of hope.

"Where is your big peace?" asked Teganisoris of Pembroke. "Where are the head men of Corlaer? Who brings presents to the Iroquois, and who is to tell us that Onontio has carried the pipe of peace to Corlaer? Here are our villages as when we left them, and here again are we, save for the absent ones who have been killed by your young men. It is no wonder that my people are displeased."

Indeed those of the Iroquois who had remained at home clamored continually that some of the prisoners should be given over to them. Thus, in doubt, uncertainty and terror the party passed through the villages, moving always eastward, until at length they arrived at the fortified town where Teganisoris made his home, a spot toward the foot of Lake Ontario, and not widely removed from that stupendous cataract which, from the beginning of earth, had uplifted its thunderous diapason here in the savage wilderness—Ontoneagrea, object of superstitious awe among all the tribes.

Time hung heavy on the hands of the savages. It was winter, and the parties had all returned from the war trails. The mutterings arose yet more loudly among families who had lost most heavily in these Western expeditions. The shrewd mind of Teganisoris knew that some new thing must be planned. He announced his decision at his own village, after the triumphal progress among the tribes had at length been concluded.

"Since they have sent us no presents," said he, with that daring diplomacy which made him a leader in red statesmanship, "let those who stayed at home be given some prisoner in pay for those of their people who have been killed. Moreover, let us offer to the Great Spirit some sacrifice in propitiation; since surely the Great Spirit is offended." Such was the conclusion of this head man of the Onondagos, and fateful enough it was to the prisoners.

The great gorge through which poured the vast waters of the Northern seas was a spot not always visited by those passing up the Great Lakes for the Western stations, nor down the Lakes to the settlements of the St. Lawrence. Yet there was a trail which led around the great cataract, and the occasional coureurs de bois, or the passing friars, or the adventurous merchants of the lower settlements now and again left that trail, and came to look upon the tremendous scene of the great falling of the waters. Here where the tumult ascended up to heaven, and where the white-blown wreaths of mist might indeed, even in an imagination better than that of a savage, have been construed into actual forms of spirits, the Indians had, from time immemorial, made their offerings to the genius of the cataract—strips of rude cloth, the skin of the beaver and the otter, baskets woven of sweet grasses, and, after the advent of the white man, pieces of metal or strings of precious beads. Such valued things as these were in rude adoration placed upon rocks or uplifted scaffolds near to the brink of the abyss. This was the spot most commonly chosen by the medicine man in the pursuit of his incantations. It was the church, the wild and savage cathedral of the red men.

Following now the command of their chieftain, the Iroquois left their stationary lodges and moved in a body, pitching a temporary camp at a spot not far from the Falls. Here, in a great council lodge, the older men sat in deliberation for a full day and night. The dull drum sounded continually, the council pipe went round, and the warriors besought the spirits to give them knowledge. The savage hysteria, little by little, yet steadily, arose higher and higher, until at length it reached that point of frenzy where naught could suffice save some terrible, some tremendous thing.

Enforced spectators of these curious and ominous ceremonies, the prisoners looked on, wondering, imagining, hesitating and fearing. "Monsieur," said Pierre Noir, turning at last to Law, "it grieves me to speak, yet 'tis best for you to know the truth. It is to be you or Monsieur Pembroke. They will not have me. They say that it must be one of you two great chiefs, for that you were brave, your hearts were strong, and that hence you would find favor as the adopted child of the Great Spirit who has been offended."

Law looked at Pembroke, and they both regarded Mary Connynge and the babe. "At least," said Law, "they spare the woman and the child. So far very well. Sir Arthur, we are at the last hazard."

"I have asked them to take me," said Pierre Noir, "for I am an old man and have no family. But they will not listen to me."

Pembroke passed his hand wearily across his face. "I have behind me so long a memory of suffering," said he, "and before me so small an amount of promise, that for myself I am content to let it end. It comes to all sooner or later, according to our fate."

"You speak," said Law, "as though it were determined. Yet Pierre says it will not be both of us, but one."

Pembroke smiled sadly. "Why, sir," said he, "do you think me so sorry a fellow as that? Look!" and he pointed to Mary Connynge and the child. "There is your duty."

Law followed his gaze, and his look was returned dumbly by the woman who had played so strange a part in the late passages of his life. Never a word with her had Law spoken regarding his plans or concerning what he had learned from Pembroke. As to this, Mary Connynge had been afraid to ask, nor dare ask even now.

"Besides," went on Pembroke later, as he called Law aside, "there is something to be done—not here, but over there, in England, or in France. Your duty is involved not only with this woman. You must find sometime the other woman. You must see the Lady Catharine Knollys."

Law sunk his head between his hands and groaned bitterly.

"Go you rather," said he, "and spend your life for her. I choose that it should end at once, and here."

"I have not been wont to call Mr. Law a coward," said Pembroke, simply.

"I should be a coward if I should stand aside and allow you to sacrifice yourself; nor shall I do so," replied the other.

"They say," broke in Pierre Noir, who had been listening to the excited harangues of first one warrior and then another, "that both warriors are great chiefs, and that both should go together. Teganisoris insists that only one shall be offered. This last has been almost agreed; but which one of you 'tis to be has not yet been determined."

Dawn came through the narrow door and open roof holes of the lodge. The rising of the sun seemed to bring conviction to the Iroquois. All at once the savage council broke up and scattered into groups, which hurried to different parts of the village. Presently these reappeared at the central lodge. There sounded a concerted savage chant. A ragged column appeared, whose head was faced toward the cataract. There were those who bore strings of beads and strips of fur, even the prized treasures of the tufted scalp locks, whose tresses, combed smooth, were adorned with colored cloth and feathers.

Pierre Noir was silent; yet, as the captives looked, they needed no advice that the sacrificial procession was now forming.

"They said," began Pierre Noir, at length, with trembling voice, turning his eyes aside as he spoke, "that it could not be myself, that it must be one of you, and but one. They are going to cast lots for it. It is Teganisoris who has proposed that the lots shall be thrown by—" Pierre Noir faltered, unwilling to go on.

"And by whom?" asked Law, quietly.

"By—by the woman—by madame!"



CHAPTER XIII

THE SACRIFICE

There was sometimes practised among the Iroquois a game which bore a certain resemblance to the casting of dice, as the latter is known among civilized peoples. The method of the play was simple. Two oblong polished bones, of the bigness of a man's finger, were used as the dice. The ends of these were ground thin and were rudely polished. One of the dice was stained red, the other left white. The players in the game marked out a line on the hard ground, and then each in turn cast up the two dice into the air, throwing them from some receptacle. The game was determined by the falling of the red bone, he who cast this colored bone closer to the line upon the ground being declared the winner. The game was simple, and depended much upon chance. If the red die fell flat upon its face at a point near to the line, it was apt to lie close to the spot where it dropped. On the other hand, did it alight upon either end, it might bound back and fall at some little distance upon one side of the line.

It was this game which, in horrible fashion, Teganisoris now proposed to play. He offered to the clamoring medicine man and his ferocious disciples one of these captives, whose death should appease not only the offended Great Spirit, but also the unsated vengeance of the tribe. He offered, at the same time, the spectacle of a play in which a human life should be the stake. He used as practical executioner the woman who was possessed by one of them, and who, in the crude notions of the savages, was no doubt coveted by both. It must be the hand of this woman that should cast the dice, a white one and a red one for each man, and he whose red die fell closer to the line was winner in the grim game of life and death.

Jean Breboeuf and Pierre Noir stood apart, and tears poured from the eyes of both. They were hardened men, well acquainted with Indian warfare; they had seen the writhings of tortured victims, and more than once had faced such possibilities themselves; yet never had they seen sight like this.

Near the two men stood Mary Connynge, the bright blood burning in her cheeks, her eyes dry and wide open, looking from one to the other. God, who gives to this earth the few Mary Connynges, alone knows the nature of those elements which made her, and the character of the conflict which now went on within her soul. Tell such a woman as Mary Connynge that she has a rival, and she will either love the more madly the man whom she demands as her own, or with equal madness and with greater intensity will hate her lover with a hatred untying and unappeasable.

Mary Connynge stood, her eyes glancing from one to the other of the men before her. She had seen them both proved brave men, strong of arm, undaunted of heart, both gallant gentlemen. God, who makes the Mary Connynges of this earth, only can tell whether or not there arose in the heart of this savage woman, this woman at bay, scorned, rebuked, mastered, this one question: Which? If Mary Connynge hated John Law, or if she loved him—ah! how must have pulsed her heart in agony, or in bitterness, as she took into her hand those lots which were the arbiters of life and death!

Teganisoris looked about him and spoke a few rapid words. He caught Mary Connynge roughly by the shoulder and pulled her forward. The two men stood with faces set and gray in the pitiless light of morn. Their arms were fast bound behind their backs. Eagerly the crowding savages pressed up to them, gesticulating wildly, and peering again and again into their faces to discover any sign of weakness. They failed. The pride of birth, the strength of character, the sheer animal vigor of each man stood him in stead at this ultimate trial. Each had made up his mind to die. Each proposed, not doubting that he would be the one to draw the fatal lot, to die as a man and a gentleman.

Teganisoris would play this game with all possible mystery and importance. It should be told generations hence about the council fires, how he, Teganisoris, devised this game, how he played it, how he drew it out link by link to the last atom of its agony. There was no receptacle at hand in which the dice could be placed. Teganisoris stooped, and without ceremony wrenched from Mary Connynge's foot the moccasin which covered it—the little shoe—beaded, beautiful, and now again fateful. Sir Arthur smiled as though in actual joy.

"My friend," said he, "I have won! This might be the very slipper for which we played at the Green Lion long ago."

Law turned upon him a face pale and solemn. "Sir," said he, "I pray God that the issue may not be as when we last played. I pray God that the dice may elect me and not yourself."

"You were ever lucky in the games of chance," replied Pembroke.

"Too lucky," said Law. "But the winner here is the loser, if it be myself."

Teganisoris roughly took from Mary Connynge's hand the little bits of bone. He cast them into the hollow of the moccasin and shook them dramatically together, holding them high above his head. Then he lowered them and took out from the receptacle two of the dice. He placed his hand on Law's shoulder, signifying that his was to be the first cast. Then he handed back the moccasin to the woman.

Mary Connynge took the shoe in her hand and stepped forward to the line which had been drawn upon the ground. The red spots still burned upon her cheeks; her eyes, amber, feline, still flamed hard and dry. She still glanced rapidly from one to the other, her eye as lightly quick and as brilliant as that of the crouched cat about to spring.

Which? Which would it be? Could she control this game? Could she elect which man should live and which should die—this woman, scorned, abased, mastered? Neither of these sought to read the riddle of her set face and blazing eyes. Each as he might offered his soul to his Creator.

The hand of Mary Connynge was raised above her head. Her face was turned once more to John Law, her master, her commander, her repudiator. Slowly she turned the moccasin over in her hand. The white bone fell first, the red for a moment hanging in the soft folds of the buckskin. She shook it out. It fell with its face nearly parallel to the ground and alighted not more than a foot from the line, rebounding scarce more than an inch or so. Low exclamations arose from all around the thickened circle.

"As I said, my friend," cried Sir Arthur, "I have won! The throw is passing close for you."

Teganisoris again caught Mary Connynge by the shoulder, and dragged her a step or so farther along the line, the two dice being left on the ground as they had fallen. Once more, her hand arose, once more it turned, once more the dice were cast.

The goddess of fortune still stood faithful to this bold young man who had so often confidently assumed her friendship. His life, later to be so intimately concerned with this same new savage country, was to be preserved for an ultimate opportunity.

The white and the red bone fell together from the moccasin. Had it been the white that counted, Sir Arthur had been saved, for the white bone lay actually upon the line. The red fell almost as close, but alighted on its end. As though impelled by some spirit of evil, it dropped upon some little pebble or hard bit of earth, bounded into the air, fell, and rolled quite away from the mark!

Even on that crowd of cruel savages there came a silence. Of the whites, one scarce dared look at the other. Slowly the faces of Pembroke and Law turned one toward the other.

"Would God I could shake you by the hand," said Pembroke. "Good by."

"As for you, dogs and worse than dogs," he cried, turning toward the red faces about him, "mark you! where I stand the feet of the white man shall stand forever, and crush your faces into the dirt!"

Whether or not the Iroquois understood his defiance could not be determined. With a wild shout they pressed upon him. Borne struggling and stumbling by the impulse of a dozen hands, Pembroke half walked and half was carried over the distance between the village and the brink of the chasm of Niagara.

Until then it had not been apparent what was to be the nature of his fate, but when he looked upon the sliding floor of waters below him, and heard beyond the thunderous voices of the cataract, Pembroke knew what was to be his final portion.

There was, at some distance above the great falls, a spot where descent was possible to the edge of the water. Pembroke's feet were loosened and he was compelled to descend the narrow path. A canoe was tethered at the shore, and the face of the young Englishman went pale as he realized what was to be the use assigned it. Bound again hand and foot, helpless, he was cast into this canoe. A strong arm sent the tiny craft out toward midstream.

The hands of the great waters grasped the frail cockleshell, twisted it about, tossed it, played with it, and claimed it irrevocably for their own. For a few moments it was visible as it passed on down, with the resistless current of the mighty stream. Almost at the verge of the plunge, the eyes watching from the shore saw at a distance the struggle made by the victim. He half raised himself in the boat and threw himself against its side. It was overset. For one instant the cold sun shone glistening on the wet bark of the upturned craft. It was but a moment, and then there was no dot upon the solemn flood.



CHAPTER XIV

THE EMBASSY

"Monsieur! Madame! Pierre Noir! Listen to me! I have saved you! I, Jean Breboeuf, I have rescued you!"

So spoke Jean Breboeuf, thrusting his head within the door of the lodge in which were the remaining prisoners of the Iroquois.

It was indeed Jean Breboeuf who, strolling beyond the outer edge of the village, had been among the first to espy an approaching party of visitors. Of any travelers possible, none could have been more important to the prisoners. Too late, yet welcome even now, the embassy from New France among the Iroquois had arrived. In an instant the village was in an uproar.

The leader of this embassy from Quebec was one Captain Joncaire, at that time of the French settlements, but in former years a prisoner among the Onondagos, where he was adopted into the tribe and much respected. Joncaire was accompanied by a priest of the Jesuit brotherhood, by a young officer late of the regiment Carignan, and by two or three petty Canadian officials, as well as a struggling retinue of savages picked up on the way between Lake George and the Indian villages. He advanced now at the head of his little party, bearing in his hand a wampum belt. He pushed aside the young men, and demanded that he be brought to the chief of the village. Teganisoris himself presently advanced to meet him, and of him Joncaire demanded that there should at once be called a full council of the tribe; with which request the chief of the Onondagos hastened to comply.

Fully accustomed to such ceremonies, Joncaire sat in the council calmly listening to the speeches of its orators, and at length arose for his own reply. "Brothers," said he, "I have here"—and he drew from his tunic a copy of the decree of Louis XIV declaring peace between the French and the English colonies—"a talking paper. This is the will of Onontio, whom you love and fear, and it is the will of the great father across the water, whom Onontio loves and fears. This talking paper says that our young men of the French colonies are no longer to go to war against Corlaer. The hatchet has been buried by the two great fathers. Brothers, I have come to tell you that it is time for the Iroquois also to bury the hatchet, and to place upon it heavy stones, so that it never again can be dug up.

"Brothers, as you know, the great canoes from across the sea are bringing more and more white men. Look about you, and tell me where are your fathers and your brothers and your sons? Half your fighting men are gone; and if you turn to the West to seek out strong young men from the other tribes, which of them will come to sit by your fires and be your brothers? The war trails of the Nations have gone to the West as far as the Great River. All the country has been at war. The friends of Onontio beyond Michilimackinac have been so busy fighting that they have forgotten to take the beaver, or if they have taken it, they have been afraid to bring it down the water trail to us, lest the Iroquois or the English should rob them.

"Brothers, a great peace is now declared. Onontio, the father of all the red men, has taken the promises of his children, the Hurons, the Algonquins, the Miamis, the Illini, the Outagamies, the Ojibways, all those peoples who live to the west, that they will follow the war trail no more. Next summer there will be a great council. Onontio and Corlaer have agreed to call the tribes to meet at the Mountain in the St. Lawrence. Onontio says to you that he will give you back your prisoners, and now he demands that you in return give back those whom you may have with you. This is his will; and if you fail him, you know how heavy is his hand.

"Brothers, I see that you have prisoners here, white prisoners. These must be given up to us. I will take them with me when I return. For your Indian captives, it is the will of Onontio that you bring them all to the Great Peace in the summer, and that you then, all of you, help to dig the great hill under which the hatchet is going to be buried. Then once more our rivers will not be red, and will look more like water. The sun will not shine red, but will look as the sun should look. The sky will again be blue. Our women and our children will no longer be afraid, and you Iroquois can go to sleep in your houses and not dread the arms of the French. Brothers, I have spoken. Peace is good."

Teganisoris replied in the same strain as that chosen by Joncaire, assuring him that he was his brother; that his heart went out to him; that the Iroquois loved the French; and that if they had gone to war with them, it was but because the young men of Corlaer had closed their eyes so that they could not see the truth. "As to these prisoners," said he, "take them with you. We do not want them with us, for we fear they may bring us harm. Our medicine man counseled us to offer up one of these prisoners as a sacrifice to the Great Spirit. We did so. Now our medicine man has a bad dream. He says that the white men are going to come and tear down our houses and trample our fields. When the time comes for the peace, the Iroquois will be at the Mountain. Brother, we will bury the hatchet, and bury it so deep that henceforth none may ever again dig it up."

"It is well," said Joncaire, abruptly. "My brothers are wise. Now let the council end, for my path is long and I must travel back to Onontio at once."

Joncaire knew well enough the fickle nature of these savages, who might upon the morrow demand another council and perhaps arrive at different conclusions. Hearing there were no white prisoners in the villages farther to the west, he resolved to set forth at once upon the return with those now at hand. Hurrying, therefore, as soon as might be, to their leader, he urged him to make ready forthwith for the journey back to the St. Lawrence.

"Unless I much mistake, Monsieur," said he to Law, "you are that same gentleman who so set all Quebec by the ears last winter. My faith! The regiment Carignan had cause to rejoice when you left for up river, even though you took with you half the ready coin of the settlement. Yet come you once more to meet the gentlemen of France, and I doubt not they will be glad as ever to stake you high, as may be in this poverty-stricken region. You have been far to the westward, I doubt not. You were, perhaps, made prisoner somewhere below the Straits."

"Far below; among the tribe of the Illini, in the valley of the Messasebe."

"You tell me so! I had thought no white man left in that valley for this season. And madame—this child—surely 'twas the first white infant born in the great valley."

"And the most unfortunate."

"Nay, how can you say that, since you have come more than half a thousand miles and are all safe and sound to-day? Glad enough we shall be to have you and madame with us for the winter, if, indeed, it be not for longer dwelling. I can not take you now to the English settlements, since I must back to the governor with the news. Yet dull enough you would find these Dutch of the Hudson, and worse yet the blue-nosed psalmodists of New England. Much better for you and your good lady are the gayer capitals of New France, or la belle France itself, that older France. Monsieur, how infinitely more fit for a gentleman of spirit is France than your dull England and its Dutch king! Either New France or Old France, let me advise you; and as to that new West, let me counsel that you wait until after the Big Peace. And, in speaking, your friend, Du Mesne, your lieutenant, the coureur—his fate, I suppose, one need not ask. He was killed—where?"

Law recounted the division of his party just previous to the Iroquois attack, and added his concern lest Du Mesne should return to the former station during the spring and find but its ruins, with no news of the fate of his friends.

"Oh, as to that—'twould be but the old story of the voyageurs," said Joncaire. "They are used enough to journeying a thousand miles or so, to find the trail end in a heap of ashes, and to the tune of a scalp dance. Fear not for your lieutenant, for, believe me, he has fended for himself if there has been need. Yet I would warrant you, now that this word for the peace has gone out, we shall see your friend Du Mesne as big as life at the Mountain next summer, knowing as much of your history as you yourself do, and quite counting upon meeting you with us on the St. Lawrence, and madame as well. As to that, methinks madame will be better with us on the St. Lawrence than on the savage Messasebe. We have none too many dames among us, and I need not state, what monsieur's eyes have told him every morning—that a fairer never set foot from ship from over seas. Witness my lieutenant yonder, Raoul de Ligny! He is thus soon all devotion! Mother of God! but we are well met here, in this wilderness, among the savages. Voila, Monsieur! We take you again captive, and 'tis madame enslaves us all!"

There had indeed ensued conversation between the young French officer above named and Mary Connynge; yet prompt as might have been the former with gallant attentions to so fair a captive, it could not have been said that he was allowed the first advances. Mary Connynge, even after a month of starving foot travel and another month of anxiety at the Iroquois villages, had lost neither her rounded body, her brilliance of eye and color, nor her subtle magnetism of personality. It had taken stronger head than that of Raoul de Ligny to withstand even her slight request. How, then, as to Mary Connynge supplicating, entreating, craving of him protection?

"Ah, you brave Frenchmen," said she to De Ligny, advancing to him as he stood apart, twisting his mustaches and not unmindful of this very possibility of a conversation with the captive. "You brave Frenchmen, how can we thank you for our salvation? It was all so horrible!"

"It is our duty to save all, Madame," rejoined De Ligny; "our happiness unspeakable to save such as Madame. I swear by my sword, I had as soon expected to find an angel with the Iroquois as to meet there Madame! Quebec—all Quebec has told me who Madame was and is. And I am your slave."

"Oh, sir, could you but mean that!" and there was turned upon him the full power of a gaze which few men had ever been able to withstand. The blood of De Ligny tingled as he bowed and replied.

"If Madame could but demand one proof."

Mary Connynge stepped closer to him. "Hush!" she said. "Speak low! Do not let it seem that we are interested. Keep your own counsel. Can you do this?"

The eyes of the young officer gleamed. He was bold enough to respond. This his temptress noted.

He nodded.

"You see that man—the tall one, John Law? Listen! It is from him I ask you to save me. Oh, sir, there is my captivity!"

"What! Your husband?"

"He is not my husband."

"Mais—a thousand pardons. The child—your pardon."

"Pish! 'Tis the child of an Indian woman."

"Oh!" The blood again came to the young gallant's forehead.

"Listen, I tell you! I have been scarce better than a prisoner in this man's hands. He has abused me, threatened me, would have beaten me—"

"Madame—Mademoiselle!"

"'Tis true. We have been far in the West, and I could not escape. Good Providence has now brought my rescue—and you, Monsieur! Oh! tell me that it has brought me safety, and also a friend—that it has brought me you!"

With every pulse a-tingle, every vein afire, what could the young gallant do? What but yield, but promise, but swear, but rage?

"Hush!" said Mary Connynge, her own eyes gleaming. "Wait! The time will come. So soon as we reach the settlements, I leave him, and forever! Then—" Their hands met swiftly. "He has abandoned me," murmured Mary Connynge. "He has not spoken to me for weeks, other than words of 'Yes,' or 'No,' 'Do this,' or 'Do that!' Wait! Wait! How soon shall we be at Montreal?"

"Less than a month. 'Twill seem an age, I swear!"

"Madam," interrupted Law, "pardon, but Monsieur Joncaire bids us be ready. Come, help me arrange the packs for our journey. Perhaps Lieutenant de Ligny—for so I think they name you, sir—will pardon us, and will consent to resume his conversation later."

"Assuredly," said De Ligny. "I shall wait, Monsieur."

"So, Madam," said Law to Mary Connynge, as they at last found themselves alone in the lodge, arranging their few belongings for transport, "we are at last to regain the settlements, and for a time, at least, must forego our home in the farther West. In time—"

"Oh, in time! What mean you?"

"Why, we may return."

"Never! I have had my fill of savaging. That we are left alive is mighty merciful. To go thither again—never!"

"And if I go?"

"As you like."

"Meaning, Madam—?"

"What you like."

Law seated himself on the corded pack, bringing the tips of his fingers together.

"Then my late sweetheart has somewhat changed her fancy?"

"I have no fancy left. What I was once to you I shall not recall more than I can avoid in my own mind. As to what you heard from that lying man, Sir Arthur—"

"Listen! Stop! Neither must you insult the dead nor the absent. I have never told you what I learned from Sir Arthur, though it was enough to set me well distraught."

"I doubt not that he told you 'twas I who befooled Lady Catharine; that 'twas I who took the letter which you sent—"

"Stay! No. He told me not so much as that. But he and you together have told me enough to show me that I was the basest wretch on earth, the most gullible, the most unspeakably false and cruel. How could I have doubted the faith of Lady Catharine—how, but for you? Oh, Mary Connynge, Mary Connynge! Would God a man were so fashioned he might better withstand the argument of soft flesh and shining eyes! I admit, I believed the disloyal one, and doubted her who was loyalty itself."

"And you would go back into the wilderness with one who was as false as you say."

"Never!" replied John Law, swiftly. "'Tis as you yourself say. 'Tis all over. Hell itself hath followed me. Now let it all go, one with the other, little with big. I did not forget, nor should I though I tried again. Back to Europe, back to the gaming tables, to the wheels and cards I go again, and plunge into it madder than ever did man before. Let us see if chance can bring John Law anything worse than what he has already known. But, Madam, doubt not. So long as you claim my protection, here or anywhere on earth—in the West, in France, in England—it is yours; for I pay for my folly like a man, be assured of that. The child is ours, and it must be considered. But once let me find you in unfaithfulness—once let me know that you resign me—then John Law is free! I shall sometime see Catharine Knollys again. I shall give her my heart's anguish, and I shall have her heart's scorn in return. And then, Mary Connynge, the cards, dice, perhaps drink—perhaps gold, and the end. Madam, remember! And now come!"



CHAPTER XV

THE GREAT PEACE

Of the long and bitter journey from the Iroquois towns to Lake St. George, down the Richelieu and thence through the deep snows of the Canadian winter, it boots little to make mention; neither to tell of that devotion of Raoul de Ligny to the newly-rescued lady, already reputed in camp rumor to be of noble English family.

"That sous-lieutenant; he is tete montee regarding madame," said Pierre Noir one evening to Jean Breboeuf. "As to that—well, you know Monsieur L'as. Pouf! So much for yon monkey, par comparaison."

"He is a great capitaine, Monsieur L'as," said Jean Breboeuf. "Never a better went beyond the Straits."

"But very sad of late."

"Oh, oui, since the death of his friend, Monsieur le Capitaine Pembroke—may Mary aid his spirit!"

"Monsieur L'as goes not on the trail again," said Pierre Noir. "At least not while this look is in his eye."

"The more the loss, Pierre Noir; but some day the woods will call to him again. I know not how long it may be, yet some day Mother Messasebe will raise her finger and beckon to Monsieur L'as, and say: 'Come, my son!' 'Tis thus, as you know, Pierre Noir."

Yet at length the straggling settlements at Montreal were reached, and here, after the fashion of the frontier, some sort of menage was inaugurated for Law and his party. Here they lived through the rest of the winter and through the long, slow spring.

And then set on again the heats of summer, and there came apace the time agreed upon, in the month of August, for the widely heralded assembling of the tribes for the Great Peace; one of the most picturesque, as it was one of the most remarkable and significant meetings of widely diverse human beings, that ever took place within the ken of history.

They came, these savages, now first owning the strength of the invading white men, from all the far and unknown corners of the Western wilderness. They came afoot, and with little trains of dogs, in single canoes, in little groups and growing flotillas and vast fleets of canoes, pushing on and on, down stream, following the tide of the furs down this pathway of more than a thousand miles. The Iroquois, for once mindful of a promise, came in a compact fleet, a hundred canoes strong, and they stalked about the island for days, naked, stark, gigantic, contemptuous of white and red men, of friend and foe alike. The scattered Algonquins, whose villages had been razed by these same savage warriors, came down by scores out of the Northern woods, along little, unknown streams, and over paths with which none but themselves were acquainted. From the North, group joined group, and village added itself to village, until a vast body of people had assembled, whose numbers would have been hard to estimate, and who proved difficult enough to accommodate. Yet from the farther West, adding their numbers to those already gathered, came the fleets of the driven Hurons, and the Ojibways, and the Miamis, and the Outagamies, and the Ottawas, the Menominies and the Mascoutins—even the Illini, late objects of the wrath of the Five Nations. The whole Western wilderness poured forth its savage population, till all the shores of the St. Lawrence seemed one vast aboriginal encampment. These massed at the rendezvous about the puny settlement of Montreal in such numbers that, in comparison, the white population seemed insignificant. Then, had there been a Pontiac or a Tecumseh, had there been one leader of the tribes able to teach the strength of unity, the white settlements of upper America had indeed been utterly destroyed. Naught but ancient tribal jealousies held the savages apart.

With these tribesmen were many prisoners, captives taken in raids all along the thin and straggling frontier; farmers and artisans, peasants and soldiers, women raped from the farms of the Richelieu censitaires, and wood-rangers now grown savage as their captors and loth to leave the wild life into which they had so naturally grown. It was the first reflex of the wave, and even now the bits of flotsam and jetsam of wild life were fain to cling to the Western shore whither they had been carried by the advancing flood. This was the meeting of the ebb with the sea that sent it forward, the meeting of civilized and savage; and strange enough was the nature of those confluent tides. Whether the red men were yielding to civilization, or the whites all turning savage—this question might well have arisen to an observer of this tremendous spectacle. The wigwams of the different tribes and clans and families were grouped apart, scattered along all the narrow shore back of the great hill, and over the Convent gardens; and among these stalked the native French, clad in coarse cloth of blue, with gaudy belt and buckskins, and cap of fur and moccasins of hide, mingling fraternally with their tufted and bepainted visitors, as well as with those rangers, both envied and hated, the savage coureurs de bois of the far Northern fur trade; men bearded, silent, stern, clad in breech-clout and leggings like any savage, as silent, as stoical, as hardy on the trail as on the narrow thwart of the canoe.

Savage feastings, riotings and drunkenness, and long debaucheries came with the Great Peace, when once the word had gone out that the fur trade was to be resumed. Henceforth there was to be peace. The French were no longer to raid the little cabins along the Kennebec and the Penobscot. The river Richelieu was to be no longer a red war trail. The English were no longer to offer arms and blankets for the beaver, belonging by right of prior discovery to those who offered French brandy and French beads. The Iroquois were no longer to pursue a timid foe across the great prairies of the valley of the Messasebe. The Ojibways were not to ambush the scattered parties of the Iroquois. The unambitious colonists of New England and New York were to be left to till their stony farms in quiet. Meantime, the fur trade, wasteful, licentious, unprofitable, was to extend onward and outward in all the marches of the West. From one end of the Great River of the West to the other the insignia of France and of France's king were to be erected, and France's posts were to hold all the ancient trails. Even at the mouth of the Great River, forestalling these sullen English and these sluggish English colonists, far to the south in the somber forests and miasmatic marshes, there was to be established one more ruling point for the arms of Louis the Grand. It was a great game this, for which the continent of America was in preparation. It was a mighty thing, this gathering of the Great Peace, this time when colonists and their king were seeing the first breaking of the wave on the shore of an empire alluring, wonderful, unparalleled.

Into this wild rabble of savages and citizens, of priest and soldier and coureur, Law's friends, Pierre Noir and Jean Breboeuf, swiftly disappeared, naturally, fitly and unavoidably. "The West is calling to us, Monsieur," said Pierre Noir one morning, as he stood looking out across the river. "I hear once more the spirits of the Messasebe. Monsieur, will you come?"

Law shook his head. Yet two days later, as he stood at that very point, there came to him the silent feet of two coureurs instead of one. Once more he heard in his ear the question: "Monsieur L'as, will you come?"

At this voice he started. In an instant his arms were about the neck of Du Mesne, and tears were falling from the eyes of both in the welcome of that brotherhood which is admitted only by those who have known together arms and danger and hardship, the touch of the hard ground and the sight of the wide blue sky.

"Du Mesne, my friend!"

"Monsieur L'as!"

"It is as though you came from the depths of the sea, Du Mesne!" said Law.

"And as though you yourself arose from the grave, Monsieur!"

"How did you know—?"

"Why, easily. You do not yet understand the ways of the wilderness, where news travels as fast as in the cities. You were hardly below the foot of Michiganon before runners from the Illini had spread the news along the Chicaqua, where I was then in camp. For the rest, the runners brought also news of the Big Peace. I reasoned that the Iroquois would not dare to destroy their captives, that in time the agents of the Government would receive the captives of the Iroquois—that these captives would naturally come to the settlements on the St. Lawrence, since it was the French against whom the Iroquois had been at war; that having come to Montreal, you would naturally remain here for a time. The rest was easy. I fared on to the Straits this spring, and then on down the Lakes. I have sold our furs, and am now ready to account to you with a sum quite as much as we should have expected.

"Now, Monsieur," and Du Mesne stretched out his arm again, pointing to the down-coming flood of the St. Lawrence, "Monsieur, will you come? I see not the St. Lawrence, but the Messasebe. I can hear the voices calling!"

Law dashed his hand across his eyes and turned his head away. "Not yet, Du Mesne," said he. "I do not know. Not yet. I must first go across the waters. Perhaps sometime—I can not tell. But this, my comrades, my brothers, I do know; that never, until the last sod lies on my grave, will I forget the Messasebe, or forget you. Go back, if you will, my brothers; but at night, when you sit by your fireside, think of me, as I shall think of you, there in the great valley. My friends, it is the heart of the world!"

"But, Monsieur—"

"There, Du Mesne—I would not talk to-day. At another time. Brothers, adieu!"

"Adieu, my brother," said the coureur, his own emotion showing in his eyes; and their hands met again.

"Monsieur is cast down," said Du Mesne to Pierre Noir later, as they reached the beach. "Now, what think you?

"Usually, as you know, Pierre, it is a question of some woman. It reminds me, Wabana was remiss enough when I left her among the Illini with you. Now, God bless my heart, I find her—how think you? With her crucifix lost, cooking for a dirty Ojibway!"

"Mary Mother!" said Pierre Noir, "if it be a matter of a woman—well, God help us all! At least 'tis something that will take Monsieur L'as over seas again."

"'Tis mostly a woman," mused Du Mesne; "but this passeth my wit."

"True, they pass the wit of all. Now, did I ever tell thee about the mission girl at Michilimackinac—but stay! That for another time. They tell me that our comrade, Greysolon du L'hut, is expected in to-morrow with a party from the far end of Superior. Come, let us have the news."

"Tous les printemps, Tant des nouvelles,"

hummed Du Mesne, as he flung his arm above the shoulder of the other; and the two so disappeared adown the beach.

Dully, apathetically, Law lived on his life here at Montreal for yet a time, at the edge of that wilderness which had proved all else but Eden. Near to him, though in these guarded times guest by necessity of the good sisters of the Convent, dwelt Mary Connynge. And as for these two, it might be said that each but bided the time. To her Law might as well have been one of the corded Sulpician priests; and she to him, for all he liked, one of the nuns of the Convent garden. What did it all mean; where was it all to end? he asked himself a thousand times; and a thousand times his mind failed him of any answer. He waited, watching the great encampment disappear, first slowly, then swiftly and suddenly, so that in a night the last of the lodges had gone and the last canoe had left the shore. There remained only the hurrying flood of the St. Lawrence, coming from the West.

The autumn came on. Early in November the ships would leave for France. Yet before the beginning of November there came swiftly and sharply the settlement of the questions which racked Law's mind. One morning Mary Connynge was missing from the Convent, nor could any of the sisters, nor the mother superior, explain how or when she had departed!

Yet, had there been close observers, there might have been seen a boat dropping down the river on the early morning of that day. And at Quebec there was later reported in the books of the intendant the shipping, upon the good bark Dauphine, of Lieutenant Raoul de Ligny, sometime officer of the regiment Carignan, formerly stationed in New France; with him a lady recently from Montreal, known very well to Lieutenant de Ligny and his family; and to be in his care en voyage to France; the name of said lady illegible upon the records, the spelling apparently not having suited the clerk who wrote it, and then forgot it in the press of other things.

Certain of the governor's household, as well as two or three habitants from the lower town, witnessed the arrival of this lady, who came down from Montreal. They saw her take boat for the bark Dauphine, one of the last ships to go down the river that fall. Yes, it was easily to be established. Dark, with singular, brown eyes, petite, yet not over small, of good figure—assuredly so much could be said; for obviously the king, kindly as he might feel toward the colony of New France, could not send out, among the young women supplied to the colonists as wives, very many such demoiselles as this; otherwise assuredly all France would have followed the king's ships to the St. Lawrence.

John Law, a grave and saddened man, yet one now no longer lacking in decision, stood alone one day at the parapet of the great rock of Quebec, gazing down the broad expanse of the stream below. He was alone except for a little child, a child too young to know her mother, had death or disaster at that time removed the mother. Law took the little one up in his arms and gazed hard upon the upturned face.

"Catharine!" he said to himself. "Catharine! Catharine!"

"Pardon, Monsieur," said a voice at his elbow. "Surely I have seen you before this?"

Law turned. Joncaire, the ambassador of peace, stood by, smiling and extending his hand.

"Naturally, I could never forget you," said Law.

"Monsieur looks at the shipping," said Joncaire, smiling. "Surely he would not be leaving New France, after so luckily escaping the worst of her dangers?"

"Life might be the same for me over there as here," replied Law. "As for my luck, I must declare myself the most unfortunate man on earth."

"Your wife, perhaps, is ill?"

"Pardon, I have none."

"Pardon, in turn, Monsieur—but, you see—the child?"

"It is the child of a savage woman," said Law.

Joncaire pulled aside the infant's hood. He gave no sign, and a nice indifference sat in his query: "Une belle sauvage?"

"Belle sauvage!"



BOOK III

FRANCE

CHAPTER I

THE GRAND MONARQUE

On a great bed of state, satin draped, flanked with ancient tapestries, piled sickeningly soft with heaps of pillows, there lay a thin, withered little man—old, old and very feeble. His face was shrunken and drawn with pain; his eyes, once bright, were dulled; his brow, formerly imperious, had lost its arrogance. Under the coverings which, in the unrest of illness, he now pulled high about his face, now tossed restlessly aside, his figure lay, an elongated, shapeless blot, scarce showing beneath the silks. One limb, twitched and drawn up convulsively, told of a definite seat of pain. The hands, thin and wasted, lay out upon the coverlets; and the thumbs were creeping, creeping ever more insistently, under the cover of the fingers, telling that the battle for life was lost, that the surrender had been made.

It was a death-bed, this great bed of state; a death-bed situated in the heart of the greatest temple of desire ever built in all the world. He who had been master there, who had set in order those miles of stately columns, those seas of glittering gilt and crystal, he who had been magician, builder, creator, perverter, debaser—he, Louis of France, the Grand Monarque, now lay suffering like any ordinary human being, like any common man.

Last night the four and twenty violins, under the king's command, had shrilled their chorus, as had been their wont for years while the master dined. This morning the cordon of drums and hautboys had pealed their high and martial music. Useless. The one or the other music fell upon ears too dull to hear. The formal tribute to the central soul for a time continued of its own inertia; for a time royalty had still its worship; yet the custom was but a lagging one. The musicians grimaced and made what discord they liked, openly, insolently, scorning this weak and withered figure on the silken bed. The cordon of the white and blue guards of the Household still swept about the vast pleasure grounds of this fairy temple; yet the officers left their posts and conversed one with the other. Musicians and guards, spectators and populace, all were waiting, waiting until the end should come. Farther out and beyond, where the peaked roofs of Paris rose, back of that line which this imperious mind had decreed should not be passed by the dwellings of Paris, which must not come too near this temple of luxury, nor disturb the king while he enjoyed himself—back of the perfunctorily loyal guards of the Household, there reached the ragged, shapeless masses of the people of Paris and of France, waiting, smiling, as some animal licking its chops in expectation of some satisfying thing. They were waiting for news of the death of this shrunken man, this creature once so full of arrogant lust, then so full of somber repentance, now so full of the very taste of death.

On the great tapestry that hung above the head of the curtained bed shone the double sun of Louis the Grand, which had meant death and devastation to so much of Europe. It blazed, mimicking the glory that was gone; but toward it there was raised no sword nor scepter more in vow or exaltation. The race was run, the sun was sinking to its setting. Nothing but a man—a weary, worn-out, dying man—was Louis, the Grand Monarque, king for seventy-two years of France, almost king of Europe. This death-bed lay in the center of a land oppressed, ground down, impoverished. The hearts and lives of thousands were in these colonnades. The people had paid for their king. They had fed him fat and kept him full of loves. In return, he had trampled the people into the very dust. He had robbed even their ancient nobles of honors and consideration. Blackened, ruined, a vast graveyard, a monumental starving-ground, France lay about his death-bed, and its people were but waiting with grim impatience for their king to die. What France might do in the future was unknown; yet it was unthinkable that aught could be worse than this glorious reign of Louis, the Grand Monarque, this crumbling clod, this resolving excrescence, this phosphorescent, disintegrating fungus of a diseased life and time.

Seventy-two years a king; thirty years a libertine; twenty years a repentant. Son, grandson, great-grandson, all gone, as though to leave not one of that once haughty breed. For France no hope at all; and for the house of Bourbon, all the hope there might be in the life of a little boy, sullen, tiny, timid. Far over in Paris, busy about his games and his loves, a jesting, long-curled gallant, the Duke of Orleans, nephew of this king, was holding a court of his own. And from this court which might be, back to the court which was, but which might not be long, swung back and forth the fawning creatures of the former court. This was the central picture of France, and Paris, and of the New World on this day of the year 1715.

In the room about the bed of state, uncertain groups of watchers whispered noisily. The five physicians, who had tried first one remedy and then another; the rustic physician whose nostrum had kept life within the king for some unexpected days; the ladies who had waited upon the relatives of the king; some of the relatives themselves; Villeroy, guardian of the young king soon to be; the bastard, and the wife of that bastard, who hoped for the king's shoes; the mistress of his earlier years, for many years his wife—Maintenon, that peerless hypocrite of all the years—all these passed, and hesitated, and looked, waiting, as did the hungry crowds in Paris toward the Seine, until the double sun should set, and the crawling thumbs at last should find their shelter. The Grand Monarque was losing the only time in all his life when he might have learned human wisdom.

"Madame!" whispered the dry lips, faintly.

She who was addressed as madame, this woman Maintenon, pious murderer, unrivaled hypocrite, unspeakably self-contained dissembler, the woman who lost for France an empire greater than all France, stepped now to the bed-side of the dying monarch, inclining her head to hear what he might have to say. Was Maintenon, the outcast, the widow, the wife of the king, at last to be made ruler of the Church in France? Was she to govern in the household of the king even after the king had departed? The woman bent over the dying man, the covetousness of her soul showing in her eyes, struggle as she might to retain her habitual and unparalleled self-control.

The dying man muttered uneasily. His mind was clouded, his eyes saw other things. He turned back to earlier days, when life was bright, when he, Louis, as a young man, had lived and loved as any other.

"Louise," he murmured. "Louise! Forgive! Meet me—Louise—dear one. Meet me yonder—"

An icy pallor swept across the face of the arch hypocrite who bent over him. Into her soul there sank like a knife this consciousness of the undying power of a real love. La Valliere, the love of the youth of Louis, La Valliere, the beautiful, and sweet, and womanly, dead and gone these long years since, but still loved and now triumphant—she it was whom Louis now remembered.

Maintenon turned from the bed-side. She stood, an aged and unhappy woman, old, gray and haggard, not success but failure written upon every lineament. For one instant she stood, her hands clenched, slow anger breaking through the mask which, for a quarter of a century, she had so successfully worn.

"Bah!" she cried. "Bah! 'Tis a pretty rendezvous this king would set for me!" And then she swept from the room, raged for a time apart, and so took leave of life and of ambition.

At length even the last energies of the once stubborn will gave way. The last gasp of the failing breath was drawn. The herald at the window announced to the waiting multitude that Louis the Fourteenth was no more.

"Long live the king!" exclaimed the multitude. They hailed the new monarch with mockery; but laughter, and sincere joy and feasting were the testimonials of their emotions at the death of the king but now departed.

On the next day a cheap, tawdry and unimposing procession wended its way through the back streets of Paris, its leader seeking to escape even the edges of the mob, lest the people should fall upon the somber little pageant and rend it into fragments. This was the funeral cortege of Louis, the Grand Monarque, Louis the lustful, Louis the bigot, Louis the ignorant, Louis the unhappy. They hurried him to his resting-place, these last servitors, and then hastened back to the palaces to join their hearts and voices to the rising wave of joy which swept across all France at the death of this beloved ruler.

Now it happened that, as the funeral procession of the king was hurrying through the side streets near the confines of the old city of Paris, there encountered it, entering from the great highway which led from the east up to the city gates, the carriage of a gentleman who might, apparently with justice, have laid some claim to consequence. It had its guards and coachmen, and was attended by two riders in livery, who kept it company along the narrow streets. This equipage met the head of the hurrying funeral cortege, and found occasion for a moment to pause. Thus there passed, the one going to his grave, the other to his goal, the two men with whom the France of that day was most intimately concerned.

There came from the window of the coach the voice of one inquiring the reason of the halt, and there might have been seen through the upper portion of the vehicle's door the face of the owner of the carriage. He seemed a man of imposing presence, with face open and handsome, and an eye bright, bold and full of intelligence. His garb was rich and elegant, his air well contained and dignified.

"Guillaume," he called out, "what is it that detains us?"

"It is nothing, Monsieur L'as," was the reply, "They tell me it is but the funeral of the king."

"Eh bien!" replied Law, turning to one who sat beside him in the coach. "Nothing! 'Tis nothing but the funeral of the king!"



CHAPTER II

EVER SAID SHE NAY

The coach proceeded steadily on its way, passing in toward that quarter where the high-piled, peaked roofs and jagged spires betokened ancient Paris. On every hand arose confused sounds from the streets, now filled with a populace merry as though some pleasant carnival were just beginning. Shopkeeper called across to his neighbor, tradesman gossiped with gallant. Even the stolid faces of the plodding peasants, fresh past the gate-tax and bound for the markets to seek what little there remained after giving to the king, bore an unwonted look, as though hope might yet succeed to their surprise.

"Ohe! Marie," called one stout dame to another, who stood smiling in her doorway near by. "See the fine coach coming. That is the sort you and I shall have one of these days, now that the king is dead. God bless the new king, and may he die young! A plague to all kings, Marie. And now come and sit with my man and me, for we've a bottle left, and while it lasts we drink freedom from all kings!"

"You speak words of gold, Suzanne," was the reply. "Surely I will drink with you, and wish a pleasant and speedy death to kings."

"But now, Marie," said the other, argumentatively, "as to my good duke regent, that is otherwise. It goes about that he will change all things. One is to amuse one's self now and then, and not to work forever for the taxes and the conscription. Long live the regent, then, say I!"

"Yes, and let us hope that regents never turn to kings. There are to be new days here in France. We people, aye, my faith! We people, so they say, are to be considered. True, we shall have carriages one day, Marie, like that of my Lord who passes."

John Law and his companions heard broken bits of such speech as this as they passed on.

"Ah, they talk," replied he at last, turning toward his companions, "and this is talk which means something. Within the year we shall see Paris upside down. These people are ready for any new thing. But"—and his face lost some of its gravity—"the streets are none too safe to-day, my Lady. Therefore you must forgive me if I do not set you down, but keep you prisoner until you reach your own gates. 'Tis not your fault that your carriage broke down on the road from Marly; and as for my brother Will and myself, we can not forego a good fortune which enables us at last to destroy a certain long-standing debt of a carriage ride given us, once upon a time, by the Lady Catharine Knollys."

"At least, then, we shall be well acquit on both sides," replied the soft voice of the woman. "I may, perhaps, be an unwilling prisoner for so short a time."

"Madam, I would God it might be forever!"

It was the same John Law of old who made this impetuous reply, and indeed he seemed scarce changed by the passing of these few years of time. It was the audacious youth of the English highway who now looked at her with grave face, yet with eyes that shone.

Some years had indeed passed since Law, turning his back upon the appeal of the wide New World, had again set foot upon the shores of England, from which his departure had been so singular. Driven by the goads of remorse, it had been his first thought to seek out the Lady Catharine Knollys; and so intent had he been on this quest, that he learned almost without emotion of the king's pardon which had been entered, discharging him of further penalty of the law of England. Meeting Lady Catharine, he learned, as have others since and before him, that a human soul may have laws inflexible; that the iron bars of a woman's resolve may bar one out, even as prison doors may bar him in. He found the Lady Catharine unshakeable in her resolve not to see him or speak with him. Whereat he raged, expostulated by post, waited, waylaid, and so at length gained an interview, which taught him many things.

He found the Lady Catharine Knollys changed from a light-hearted girl to a maiden tall, grave, reserved and sad, offering no reproaches, listening to no protestations. Told of Sir Arthur Pembroke's horrible death, she wept with tears which his survivor envied. Told at length of the little child, she sat wide-eyed and silent. Approached with words of remorse, with expostulations, promises, she shrank back in absolute horror, trembling, so that in very pity the wretched young man left her and found his way out into a world suddenly grown old and gray.

After this dismissal, Law for many months saw nothing, heard nothing of this woman whom he had wronged, even as he received no sign from the woman who had forsaken him over seas. He remained away as long as might be, until his violent nature, geyser-like, gathered inner storm and fury by repression, and broke away in wild eruption.

Once more he sought the presence of the woman whose face haunted his soul, and once more he met ice and adamant stronger than his own fires. Beaten, he fled from London and from England, seeking still, after the ancient and ineffective fashion of man, to forget, though he himself had confessed the lesson that man can not escape himself, but takes his own hell with him wherever he goes.