moving a peace-loving man like Denys to action."

least, was regarded until D'Aulnay de Charnisay became his enemy. Even in

"Yet he will scarce do it."

"The king-favored governor of Acadia will some time turn and push him as he now pushes you."

"D'Aulnay hath me at sore straits," confessed La Tour, staring at the flame, "since he has cut off from me the help of the Bostonnais."

"They were easily cut off," said Marie. "Monsieur, those Huguenots of the colonies were never loving friends of ours. Their policy has been to weaken this province by helping the quarrel betwixt D'Aulnay and you. Now that D'Aulnay has strength at court, and has persuaded the king to declare you an outlaw, the Bostonnais think it wise to withdraw their hired soldiers from you. We have not offended the Bostonnais as allies; we have only gone down in the world."

La Tour stirred uneasily.

"I dread that D'Aulnay may profit by this hasty journey I make to northern Acadia, and again attack the fort in my absence."

"He hath once found a woman there who could hold it," said Marie, checking a laugh.

La Tour moved his palm over her cheek. Within his mind the province. of Acadia lay spread from Penobscot River to the island of Sable, and from the southern tip of the peninsula now called Nova Scotia nearly to the mouth of the St. Lawrence. This domain had been parceled in grants: the north to Nicholas Denys; the centre and west to D'Aulnay de Charnisay; and the south, with posts on the western coast, to Charles de la Tour. Being Protestant in faith, La Tour had no influence at the court of Louis XIII. His grant had been confirmed to him from his father. He had held it against treason to France, and his loyal service, at

was diked by home-making Norman peasants or watered by their parting tears, contending forces had begun to trample it. Two feudal barons fought each other on the soil of the New World. "All things failing me La Tour held out his wrists, and looked at them with a sharp smile.

"Let D'Aulnay shake a warrant, monsieur. He must needs have you before he can carry you in chains to France."

She seized La Tour's hands, with a swift impulse of atoning to them for the thought of such indignity, and kissed his wrists. He set his teeth on a trembling lip.

"I should be a worthless, aimless vagrant without you, Marie. You are young, and I give you fatigue and heart-sickening peril instead of jewels and merry company."

"The merriest company for us at present, monsieur, are the men of our honest garrison. If Edelwald, who came so lately, complains not of this New World life, I should endure it merrily enough. And you know I seldom now wear the jewels belonging to our house. Our chief jewel is buried in the ground."

She thought of a short grave wrapped in fogs near Fort St. John; of fair curls and sweet childish limbs, and a mouth shouting to send echoes through the river gorge; of scamperings on the flags of the hall; and of the erect and princely carriage of that diminutive presence the men had called "my little lord."

"But it is better for the boy that he died, Marie," murmured La Tour. "He has no part in these times. He might have survived us to see his inheritance stripped from him."

They were silent, until Marie said, "You have a long march before you to-morrow, monsieur."

into these mangers," said La Tour.

One wall was lined with bunks like those in the outer room. In the lower row travelers' preparations were already made for sleeping.

"I am yet of the mind, monsieur," observed Marie, "that you should have made this journey entirely by sea.'

"It would cost me too much in time to round Cape Sable twice. Nicholas Denys can furnish ship as well as men, if he be so minded. My lieutenant in arms next to Edelwald," said La Tour, smiling over her, "my equal partner in troubles, and my lady of Fort St. John will stand for my honor and prosperity until I return."

At this La Tour laughed aloud. The ring of his voice, and the clang of his breastplate which fell over on the floor as he arose, woke an answering sound. It did not come from the outer room, where scarcely a voice stirred among the sleepy soldiery, but from the top row of bunks. Marie turned white at this child wail soothed by a woman's voice.

"What have we here?" exclaimed La Tour.

"Monsieur, it must be a baby!" "Who has broken into this post with a baby? There may be men concealed overhead."

He grasped his pistols, but no menat-arms appeared with the haggard woman who crept down from her hidingplace near the joists.

"Have you found an ambush, Sieur Charles?"

"We have here a listener, Edelwald," replied La Tour, "and there may be more in the loft above."

Several men sprang up the bunks, and moved some puncheons overhead. A light was raised under the dark roof canopy, but nothing rewarded its search. The much-bedraggled woman was young, with falling strands of silken hair, which she wound up with one hand, while holding the baby. Marie took the poor wailer from her with a divine motion, and carried it to the hearth.

"Who brought you here?" demanded La Tour of the girl.

She cowered before him, but answered nothing. Her presence seemed to him a sinister menace against even his obscurest holdings in Acadia. The stockade was easily entered, for La Tour was unable to maintain a garrison there. All that open country lay sodden with the breath of the sea. From whatever point she had approached, La Tour could scarcely believe her feet came tracking the moist red clay alone.

"Will you give no account of yourself? ”

"You must answer monsieur," encouraged Marie, turning from her cares with the child. It lay unwound from its misery on Marie's knees, watching the new ministering power with accepting eyes. Feminine and piteous as the girl was, her dense resistance to command could only vex a soldier.

"Put her under guard," he said to his officer.

"And Zélie must look to her comfort," added Marie.

"Whoever she may be," declared La heard too much to go free of this place. She must be sent in the ship to Fort St. John, and guarded there."

"What else could be done, indeed?"

At the mouth of the river St. John an island was lashed with drift, and tide terraces alongshore recorded how furiously the sea had driven upon the land. There had been a two days' storm on the Bay of Fundy, subsiding to the clearest of cool spring evenings. An amber light lay on the visible world. The forest on the west was yet too bare of leaf buds to shut away sunset.

A month later, the headlands would be lined distinctly against a blue and quickening sky by freshened air and light and herbage. Two centuries and a half later, long streaks of electric light would ripple on that surface, and great ships stand at ease there, and ferryboats rush back and forth. But in this closing dusk it reflected only the gray and yellow vaporous breath of April, and shaggy edges of a wilderness. The high shores sank their shadows farther and farther from the water's edge.

Fort St. John was built upon a gradual ascent of rocks, which rose to a small promontory on the south side of the river. There were four bastions guarded with cannon, the northeast bastion swelling above its fellows in a round turret topped with battlements. On this tower the flag of France hung down its staff against the evening sky, for there was scarcely any motion of the air. That coast lay silent, like a pictured land, except a hint of falls above in the river. It was ebb tide. The current of the

St. John set out toward the sea instead of rushing back on its own channel, and rocks swallowed at flood now broke the surface.

A plume of smoke sprang from one bastion, followed by the rolling thunder of a cannon shot. From a small ship in the bay a gun replied to this salute. She stood gradually clear of a headland, her sails hanging torn and one mast broken, and sentinel and cannoneer in the bastion saw that she was lowering a boat. They called to people in the fortress, and all voices caught the news: "Madame has come at last!"

Life stirred through the entire inclosure with a jar of closing doors and running feet.

Though not a large fortification, St. John was well and compactly built of cemented stone. A row of hewn log barracks stood against the southern wall, ample for all the troops La Tour had been able to muster in prosperous times. There was a stone vault for ammunition. A well, a mill and great stone oven, and a storehouse for beaver and other skins were between the barracks and the commandant's tower built massively into the northeast bastion. This structure gave La Tour the advantage of a high lookout, though it was much smaller than a castle he had formerly held at La Hève. The interior accommodated itself to such compactness, the lower floor having only one entrance and windows looking into the area of the fort, while the second floor was lighted through deep loopholes.

A drum began to beat, a tall fellow gave the word of command, and the garrison of Fort St. John drew up in line, facing the gate. A sentinel unbarred and set wide both inner and outer leaves, and a cheer burst through the deep-throated gateway, and was thrown back from the opposite shore, from forest and river windings. Madame La Tour, with two women attendants, was seen coming up from the water's edge, while two men pushed off with the boat.

She waved her hand in reply to the shout.

The tall soldier went down to meet her, and paused, bareheaded, to make the salutation of a subaltern to his military superior. She responded with the same grave courtesy. But as he drew nearer she noticed him whitening through the dusk.

66

"All has gone well, Klussman, at Fort St. John, since your lord left?"

"Madame," he said, with a stammer, "the storm made us anxious about you."

"Have you seen D'Aulnay?"
"No, madame."

"You look haggard, Klussman."

"If I look haggard, madame, it must come from seeing two women follow you, when I should see only one."

He threw sharp glances behind her, as he took her hand to lead her up the steep path. Marie's attendant was carrying the baby, and she lifted it for him to look at, the hairs on her upper lip moved by a good-natured smile. Klussman's scowl darkened his mountain-born fairness.

“I would rather, indeed, be bringing more men to the fort instead of more women," said his lady, as they mounted the slope. "But this one might have perished in the stockade where we found her; and your lord not only misliked her, as you seem to do, but he held her in suspicion. In a manner, therefore, she is our prisoner, though never went prisoner so helplessly with her captors." "Yes, any one might take such a creature," said Klussman.

"Madame, I have some news, but nothing serious."

"If it be nothing serious, I will have a change of garments and my supper before I hear it. We have had a hard voyage."

"Did my lord send any new orders?" "None, save to keep this poor girl about the fort that is easily obeyed, as we can scarce do otherwise with her."

"I meant to ask in the first breath how he fared in the outset of his expedition."

"With a lowering sky overhead, and wet red clay underfoot. But I thanked Heaven, while we were tossing with a broken mast, that he was at least on firm land and moving to his expectations."

They entered the gateway, Madame La Tour's cheeks tingling richly from the effort of climbing. the effort of climbing. She saluted her garrison, and her garrison saluted her, each with a courteous pride in the other, born of the joint victory they had won over D'Aulnay de Charnisay when he attacked the fort. Not a man broke rank until she entered her hall. There was a tidiness about the inclosure peculiar to places inhabited by women. added grace to military appointments. "You miss the swan, madame," noted Klussman. "Le Rossignol is out again."

It

"And this is all you know of her?
"Yes, madame. She went, and has

not yet come back."

"But she always comes back safely. Though I fear," said Madame La Tour on the threshold, "the poor maid will some time fall into harm."

He opened the door, and stood aside, saying under his breath, "I would call a creature like that a witch instead of a maid."

"I will send for you, Klussman, when I have refreshed myself."

"Yes, madame."

The other women filed past him, and entered behind his lady.

The Swiss soldier folded his arms, staring hard at that crouching vagrant brought from Beausejour. She had a covering over her face, and she held it close, crowding on the heels in front of her, as if she dared not meet his eye.

II.

LE ROSSIGNOL.

A girlish woman was waiting for Marie within the hall, and the two exchanged kisses on the cheek with sedate and tender courtesy.

"Welcome home, madame."

"Home is more welcome to me because I find you in it, Antonia. Has anything unusual happened in the fortress while I have been setting monsieur on his way ?"

"This morning, about dawn, I heard a great tramping of soldiers in the hall. One of the women told me prisoners had been brought in."

"Yes. The Swiss said he had news. And how has the Lady Dorinda fared?"

"Well, indeed. She has described to me three times the gorgeous pageant of her marriage."

They had reached the fireplace, and Marie laughed as she warmed her hands before a pile of melting logs.

"Give our sea-tossed bundle and its mother a warm seat, Zélie," she said to her woman.

The unknown girl was placed near the hearth corner, and constrained to take upon her knees an object which she held indifferently. Antonia's eyes rested on her, detecting her half-concealed face, with silent disapproval.

"It hath a stiffened look, like a papoose," observed Antonia. "Is it well in health?"

"No; poor baby. Attend to the child," said Marie sternly to the mother; and she added, "Zélie must go directly with me to my chests before she waits on me, and bring down garments for it to this hearth.”

"Let me this time be your maid," said Antonia.

66 You may come with me and be my resolution, Antonia; for I have to set about the unlocking of boxes which hold some sacred clothes."

"I never saw you lack courage, madame, since I have known you."

"Therein have I deceived you, then," said Marie, throwing her cloak on Zélie's arm, "for I am a most cowardly creature in my affections, Madame Bronck."

They moved toward the stairs. Antonia was as perfect as a slim and blueeyed stalk of flax. She wore the laced bodice and small cap of New Holland. Her exactly spoken French denoted all the neat appointments of her life. This Dutch gentlewoman had seen much of the world; having traveled from Fort Orange to New Amsterdam, from New Amsterdam to Boston, and from Boston with Madame La Tour to Fort St. John in Acadia. The three figures ascended in a line the narrow stairway, which made a diagonal band from lower to upper corner of the remote hall end. Zélie walked last, carrying her lady's cloak. At the top a little light fell on them through a loophole.

"Was Mynheer La Tour in good heart for his march?" inquired Antonia, turning from the waifs brought back to the expedition itself.

"Stout-hearted enough; but the man to whom he goes is scarce to be counted We Protestant French are all held alien by Catholics of our blood. Edel

on.

tion."