Such were the folk who crowded the streets of the capital of this

strange offshoot of France which had been planted along the line of the

great river, a thousand leagues from the parent country. And it was a

singular settlement, the most singular perhaps that has ever been made.

For a long twelve hundred miles it extended, from Tadousac in the east,

away to the trading stations upon the borders of the great lakes,

limiting itself for the most part to narrow cultivated strips upon the

margins of the river, banked in behind by wild forests and unexplored

mountains, which forever tempted the peasant from his hoe and his plough

to the freer life of the paddle and the musket. Thin scattered

clearings, alternating with little palisaded clumps of log-hewn houses,

marked the line where civilisation was forcing itself in upon the huge

continent, and barely holding its own against the rigour of a northern

climate and the ferocity of merciless enemies. The whole white

population of this mighty district, including soldiers, priests, and

woodmen, with all women and children, was very far short of twenty

thousand souls, and yet so great was their energy, and such the

advantage of the central government under which they lived, that they

had left their trace upon the whole continent. When the prosperous

English settlers were content to live upon their acres, and when no axe

had rung upon the further side of the Alleghanies, the French had pushed

their daring pioneers, some in the black robe of the missionary, and

some in the fringed tunic of the hunter, to the uttermost ends of the

continent. They had mapped out the lakes and had bartered with the

fierce Sioux on the great plains where the wooden wigwam gave place to

the hide tee-pee. Marquette had followed the Illinois down to the

Mississippi, and had traced the course of the great river until, first

of all white men, he looked upon the turbid flood of the rushing

Missouri. La Salle had ventured even further, and had passed the Ohio,

and had made his way to the Mexican Gulf, raising the French arms where

the city of New Orleans was afterwards to stand. Others had pushed on

to the Rocky Mountains, and to the huge wilderness of the north-west,

preaching, bartering, cheating, baptising, swayed by many motives and

holding only in common a courage which never faltered and a fertility of

resource which took them in safety past every danger. Frenchmen were to

the north of the British settlements, Frenchmen were to the west of

them, and Frenchmen were to the south of them, and if all the continent

is not now French, the fault assuredly did not rest with that iron race

of early Canadians.

All this De Catinat explained to Adele during the autumn day, trying to

draw her thoughts away from the troubles of the past, and from the long

dreary voyage which lay before her. She, fresh from the staid life of

the Parisian street and from the tame scenery of the Seine, gazed with

amazement at the river, the woods and the mountains, and clutched her

husband's arm in horror when a canoeful of wild skin-clad Algonquins,

their faces striped with white and red paint, came flying past with

the foam dashing from their paddles. Again the river turned from blue

to pink, again the old citadel was bathed in the evening glow, and again

the two exiles descended to their cabins with cheering words for each

other and heavy thoughts in their own hearts.

De Catinat's bunk was next to a port-hole, and it was his custom to keep

this open, as the caboose was close to him in which the cooking was done

for the crew, and the air was hot and heavy. That night he found it

impossible to sleep, and he lay tossing under his blanket, thinking over

every possible means by which they might be able to get away from this

cursed ship. But even if they got away, where could they go to then?

All Canada was sealed to them. The woods to the south were full of

ferocious Indians. The English settlements would, it was true, grant

them freedom to use their own religion, but what would his wife and he

do, without a friend, strangers among folk who spoke another tongue?

Had Amos Green remained true to them, then, indeed, all would have been

well. But he had deserted them. Of course there was no reason why he

should not. He was no blood relation of theirs. He had already

benefited them many times. His own people and the life that he loved

were waiting for him at home. Why should he linger here for the sake of

folk whom he had known but a few months? It was not to be expected, and

yet De Catinat could not realise it, could not understand it.

But what was that? Above the gentle lapping of the river he had

suddenly heard a sharp clear "Hist!" Perhaps it was some passing

boatman or Indian. Then it came again, that eager, urgent summons.

He sat up and stared about him. It certainly must have come from the

open port-hole. He looked out, but only to see the broad basin, with

the loom of the shipping, and the distant twinkle from the lights on

Point Levi. As his head dropped back upon the pillow something fell

upon his chest with a little tap, and rolling off, rattled along the

boards. He sprang up, caught a lantern from a hook, and flashed it upon

the floor. There was the missile which had struck him--a little golden

brooch. As he lifted it up and looked closer at it, a thrill passed

through him. It had been his own, and he had given it to Amos Green

upon the second day that he had met him, when they were starting

together for Versailles.

This was a signal then, and Amos Green had not deserted them after all.

He dressed himself, all in a tremble with excitement, and went upon

deck. It was pitch dark, and he could see no one, but the sound of

regular footfalls somewhere in the fore part of the ship showed that the

sentinels were still there. The guardsman walked over to the side and

peered down into the darkness. He could see the loom of a boat.

"Who is there?" he whispered.

"Is that you, De Catinat?

"Yes."

"We have come for you."

"God bless you, Amos."

"Is your wife there?"

"No, but I can rouse her."

"Good! But first catch this cord. Now pull up the ladder!"

De Catinat gripped the line which was thrown to him, and on drawing it

up found that it was attached to a rope ladder furnished at the top with

two steel hooks to catch on to the bulwarks. He placed them in

position, and then made his way very softly to the cabin amidships in

the ladies' quarters which had been allotted to his wife. She was the

only woman aboard the ship now, so that he was able to tap at her door

in safety, and to explain in a few words the need for haste and for

secrecy. In ten minutes Adele had dressed, and with her valuables in a

little bundle, had slipped out from her cabin. Together they made their

way upon deck once more, and crept aft under the shadow of the bulwarks.

They were almost there when De Catinat stopped suddenly and ground out

an oath through his clenched teeth. Between them and the rope ladder

there was standing in a dim patch of murky light the grim figure of a

Franciscan friar. He was peering through the darkness, his heavy cowl

shadowing his face, and he advanced slowly as if he had caught a glimpse

of them. A lantern hung from the mizzen shrouds above him.

He unfastened it and held it up to cast its light upon them.

But De Catinat was not a man with whom it was safe to trifle. His life

had been one of quick resolve and prompt action. Was this vindictive

friar at the last moment to stand between him and freedom? It was a

dangerous position to take. The guardsman pulled Adele into the shadow

of the mast, and then, as the monk advanced, he sprang out upon him and

seized him by the gown. As he did so the other's cowl was pushed back,

and instead of the harsh features of the ecclesiastic, De Catinat saw

with amazement in the glimmer of the lantern the shrewd gray eyes and

strong tern face of Ephraim Savage. At the same instant another figure

appeared over the side, and the warm-hearted Frenchman threw himself

into the arms of Amos Green.

"It's all right," said the young hunter, disengaging himself with some

embarrassment from the other's embrace.

"We've got him in the boat with a buckskin glove jammed into his

gullet!"

"Who then?"

"The man whose cloak Captain Ephraim there has put round him. He came

on us when you were away rousing your lady, but we got him to be quiet

between us. Is the lady there?"

"Here she is."

"As quick as you can, then, for some one may come along."

Adele was helped over the side, and seated in the stern of a birch-bark

canoe. The three men unhooked the ladder, and swung themselves down by

a rope, while two Indians, who held the paddles, pushed silently off

from the ship's side, and shot swiftly up the stream. A minute later a

dim loom behind them, and the glimmer of two yellow lights, was all that

they could see of the _St. Christophe_.

"Take a paddle, Amos, and I'll take one," said Captain Savage, stripping

off his monk's gown. "I felt safer in this on the deck of yon ship, but

it don't help in a boat. I believe we might have fastened the hatches

and taken her, brass guns and all, had we been so minded."

"And been hanged as pirates at the yard-arm next morning," said Amos.

"I think we have done better to take the honey and leave the tree.

I hope, madame, that all is well with you."

"Nay, I can hardly understand what has happened, or where we are."

"Nor can I, Amos."

"Did you not expect us to come back for you, then?"

"I did not know what to expect."

"Well, now, but surely you could not think that we would leave you

without a word."

"I confess that I was cut to the heart by it."

"I feared that you were when I looked at you with the tail of my eye,

and saw you staring so blackly over the bulwarks at us. But if we had

been seen talking or planning they would have been upon our trail at

once. As it was they had not a thought of suspicion, save only this

fellow whom we have in the bottom of the boat here."

"And what did you do?"

"We left the brig last night, got ashore on the Beaupre side, arranged

for this canoe, and lay dark all day. Then to-night we got alongside

and I roused you easily, for I knew where you slept. The friar nearly

spoiled all when you were below, but we gagged him and passed him over

the side. Ephraim popped on his gown so that he might go forward to

help you without danger, for we were scared at the delay."

"Ah! it is glorious to be free once more. What do I not owe you, Amos?"

"Well, you looked after me when I was in your country, and I am going to

look after you now."

"And where are we going?"

"Ah! there you have me. It is this way or none, for we can't get down

to the sea. We must make our way over land as best we can, and we must

leave a good stretch between Quebec citadel and us before the day

breaks, for from what I hear they would rather have a Huguenot prisoner

than an Iroquois sagamore. By the eternal, I cannot see why they should

make such a fuss over how a man chooses to save his own soul, though

here is old Ephraim just as fierce upon the other side, so all the folly

is not one way."

"What are you saying about me?" asked the seaman, pricking up his ears

at the mention of his own name.

"Only that you are a good stiff old Protestant."

"Yes, thank God. My motto is freedom to conscience, d'ye see, except

just for Quakers, and Papists, and--and I wouldn't stand Anne

Hutchinsons and women testifying, and suchlike foolishness."

Amos Green laughed. "The Almighty seems to pass it over, so why should

you take it to heart?" said he.

"Ah, you're young and callow yet. You'll live to know better. Why, I

shall hear you saying a good word soon even for such unclean spawn as

this," prodding the prostrate friar with the handle of his paddle.

"I daresay he's a good man, accordin' to his lights."

"And I daresay a shark is a good fish accordin' to its lights. No, lad,

you won't mix up light and dark for me in that sort of fashion. You may

talk until you unship your jaw, d'ye see, but you will never talk a foul

wind into a fair one. Pass over the pouch and the tinder-box, and maybe

our friend here will take a turn at my paddle."

All night they toiled up the great river, straining every nerve to place

themselves beyond the reach of pursuit. By keeping well into the

southern bank, and so avoiding the force of the current, they sped

swiftly along, for both Amos and De Catinat were practised hands with

the paddle, and the two Indians worked as though they were wire and

whipcord instead of flesh and blood. An utter silence reigned over all

the broad stream, broken only by the lap-lap of the water against their

curving bow, the whirring of the night hawk above them, and the sharp

high barking of foxes away in the woods. When at last morning broke,

and the black shaded imperceptibly into gray, they were far out of sight

of the citadel and of all trace of man's handiwork. Virgin woods in

their wonderful many-coloured autumn dress flowed right down to the

river edge on either side, and in the centre was a little island with a

rim of yellow sand and an out-flame of scarlet tupelo and sumach in one

bright tangle of colour in the centre.

"I've passed here before," said De Catinat. "I remember marking that

great maple with the blaze on its trunk, when last I went with the

governor to Montreal. That was in Frontenac's day, when the king was

first and the bishop second."

The Redskins, who had sat like terra-cotta figures, without a trace of

expression upon their set hard faces, pricked up their ears at the sound

of that name.

"My brother has spoken of the great Onontio," said one of them, glancing

round. "We have listened to the whistling of evil birds who tell us

that he will never come back to his children across the seas."

"He is with the great white father," answered De Catinat. "I have

myself seen him in his council, and he will assuredly come across the

great water if his people have need of him."

The Indian shook his shaven head.

"The rutting month is past, my brother," said he, speaking in broken

French, "but ere the month of the bird-laying has come there will be no

white man upon this river save only behind stone walls."

"What, then? We have heard little! Have the Iroquois broken out so

fiercely?"

"My brother, they said they would eat up the Hurons, and where are the

Hurons now? They turned their faces upon the Eries, and where are the

Eries now? They went westward against the Illinois, and who can find an

Illinois village? They raised the hatchet against the Andastes, and

their name is blotted from the earth. And now they have danced a dance

and sung a song which will bring little good to my white brothers."

"Where are they, then?"

The Indian waved his hand along the whole southern and western horizon.

"Where are they not? The woods are rustling with them. They are like a

fire among dry grass, so swift and so terrible!"

"On my life," said De Catinat, "if these devils are indeed unchained,

they will need old Frontenac back if they are not to be swept into the

river."

"Ay," said Amos, "I saw him once, when I was brought before him with the

others for trading on what he called French ground. His mouth set like

a skunk trap and he looked at us as if he would have liked our scalps

for his leggings. But I could see that he was a chief and a brave man."

"He was an enemy of the Church, and the right hand of the foul fiend in

this country," said a voice from the bottom of the canoe.

It was the friar who had succeeded in getting rid of the buckskin glove

and belt with which the two Americans had gagged him. He was lying

huddled up now glaring savagely at the party with his fiery dark eyes.

"His jaw-tackle has come adrift," said the seaman. "Let me brace it up

again."

"Nay, why should we take him farther?" asked Amos. "He is but weight

for us to carry, and I cannot see that we profit by his company. Let us

put him out."

"Ay, sink or swim," cried old Ephraim with enthusiasm.

"Nay, upon the bank."

"And have him maybe in front of us warning the black jackets."

"On that island, then."

"Very good. He can hail the first of his folk who pass."

They shot over to the island and landed the friar, who said nothing, but

cursed them with his eye. They left with him a small supply of biscuit

and of flour to last him until he should be picked up. Then, having

passed a bend in the river, they ran their canoe ashore in a little cove

where the whortleberry and cranberry bushes grew right down to the

water's edge, and the sward was bright with the white euphorbia, the

blue gentian, and the purple balm. There they laid out their small

stock of provisions, and ate a hearty breakfast while discussing what

their plans should be for the future.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE INLAND WATERS.

They were not badly provided for their journey. The captain of the

Gloucester brig in which the Americans had started from Quebec knew

Ephraim Savage well, as who did not upon the New England coast? He had

accepted his bill therefore at three months' date, at as high a rate of

interest as he could screw out of him, and he had let him have in return

three excellent guns, a good supply of ammunition, and enough money to

provide for all his wants. In this way he had hired the canoe and the

Indians, and had fitted her with meat and biscuit to last them for ten

days at the least.

"It's like the breath of life to me to feel the heft of a gun and to

smell the trees round me," said Amos. "Why, it cannot be more than a

hundred leagues from here to Albany or Schenectady, right through the

forest."

"Ay, lad, but how is the gal to walk a hundred leagues through a forest?

No, no, let us keep water under our keel, and lean on the Lord."

"Then there is only one way for it. We must make the Richelieu River,

and keep right along to Lake Champlain and Lake St. Sacrament. There we

should be close by the headwaters of the Hudson."

"It is a dangerous road," said De Catinat, who understood the

conversation of his companions, even when he was unable to join in it.

"We should need to skirt the country of the Mohawks."

"It's the only way, I guess. It's that or nothing."

"And I have a friend upon the Richelieu River who, I am sure, would help

us on our way," said De Catinat with a smile. "Adele, you have heard me

talk of Charles de la Noue, seigneur de Sainte Marie?"

"He whom you used to call the Canadian duke, Amory?"

"Precisely. His seigneury lies on the Richelieu, a little south of Fort

St. Louis, and I am sure that he would speed us upon our way."

"Good!" cried Amos. "If we have a friend there we shall do well.

That clenches it then, and we shall hold fast by the river. Let's get

to our paddles then, for that friar will make mischief for us if he

can."

And so for a long week the little party toiled up the great waterway,

keeping ever to the southern bank, where there were fewer clearings.

On both sides of the stream the woods were thick, but every here and

there they would curve away, and a narrow strip of cultivated land would

skirt the bank, with the yellow stubble to mark where the wheat had

grown. Adele looked with interest at the wooden houses with their

jutting stories and quaint gable-ends, at the solid, stone-built

manor-houses of the seigneurs, and at the mills in every hamlet, which

served the double purpose of grinding flour and of a loop-holed place of

retreat in case of attack. Horrible experience had taught the Canadians

what the English settlers had yet to learn, that in a land of savages it

is a folly to place isolated farmhouses in the centre of their own

fields. The clearings then radiated out from the villages, and every

cottage was built with an eye to the military necessities of the whole,

so that the defence might make a stand at all points, and might finally

centre upon the stone manor-house and the mill. Now at every bluff and

hill near the villages might be seen the gleam of the muskets of the

watchers, for it was known that the scalping parties of the Five Nations

were out, and none could tell where the blow would fall, save that it

must come where they were least prepared to meet it.

Indeed, at every step in this country, whether the traveller were on the

St. Lawrence, or west upon the lakes, or down upon the banks of the

Mississippi, or south in the country of the Cherokees and of the Creeks,

he would still find the inhabitants in the same state of dreadful

expectancy, and from the same cause. The Iroquois, as they were named

by the French, or the Five Nations as they called themselves, hung like

a cloud over the whole great continent. Their confederation was a

natural one, for they were of the same stock and spoke the same

language, and all attempts to separate them had been in vain. Mohawks,

Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas, and Senecas were each proud of their own

totems and their own chiefs, but in war they were Iroquois, and the

enemy of one was the enemy of all. Their numbers were small, for they

were never able to put two thousand warriors in the field, and their

country was limited, for their villages were scattered over the tract

which lies between Lake Champlain and Lake Ontario. But they were

united, they were cunning, they were desperately brave, and they were

fiercely aggressive and energetic. Holding a central position, they

struck out upon each side in turn, never content with simply defeating

an adversary, but absolutely annihilating and destroying him, while

holding all the others in check by their diplomacy. War was their

business, and cruelty their amusement. One by one they had turned their

arms against the various nations, until, for a space of over a thousand

square miles, none existed save by sufferance. They had swept away

Hurons and Huron missions in one fearful massacre. They had destroyed

the tribes of the north-west, until even the distant Sacs and Foxes

trembled at their name. They had scoured the whole country to westward

until their scalping parties had come into touch with their kinsmen the

Sioux, who were lords of the great plains, even as they were of the

great forests. The New England Indians in the east, and the Shawnees

and Delawares farther south, paid tribute to them, and the terror of

their arms had extended over the borders of Maryland and Virginia.

Never, perhaps, in the world's history has so small a body of men

dominated so large a district and for so long a time.

For half a century these tribes had nursed a grudge wards the French

since Champlain and some of his followers had taken part with their

enemies against them. During all these years they had brooded in their

forest villages, flashing out now and again in some border outrage, but

waiting for the most part until their chance should come. And now it

seemed to them that it had come. They had destroyed all the tribes who

might have allied themselves with the white men. They had isolated

them. They had supplied themselves with good guns and plenty of

ammunition from the Dutch and English of New York. The long thin line

of French settlements lay naked before them. They were gathered in the

woods, like hounds in leash, waiting for the orders of their chiefs,

which should precipitate them with torch and with tomahawk upon the belt

of villages.

Such was the situation as the little party of refugees paddled along the

bank of the river, seeking the only path which could lead them to peace

and to freedom. Yet it was, as they well knew, a dangerous road to

follow. All down the Richelieu River were the outposts and blockhouses

of the French, for when the feudal system was grafted upon Canada the

various seigneurs or native _noblesse_ were assigned their estates in

the positions which would be of most benefit to the settlement. Each

seigneur with his tenants under him, trained as they were in the use of

arms, formed a military force exactly as they had done in the middle

ages, the farmer holding his fief upon condition that he mustered when

called upon to do so. Hence the old officers of the regiment of

Carignan, and the more hardy of the settlers, had been placed along the

line of the Richelieu, which runs at right angles to the St. Lawrence

towards the Mohawk country. The blockhouses themselves might hold their

own, but to the little party who had to travel down from one to the

other the situation was full of deadly peril. It was true that the

Iroquois were not at war with the English, but they would discriminate

little when on the warpath, and the Americans, even had they wished to

do so, could not separate their fate from that of their two French

companions.

As they ascended the St. Lawrence they met many canoes coming down.

Sometimes it was an officer or an official on his way to the capital

from Three Rivers or Montreal, sometimes it was a load of skins, with

Indians or _coureurs-de-bois_ conveying them down to be shipped to

Europe, and sometimes it was a small canoe which bore a sunburned

grizzly-haired man, with rusty weather-stained black cassock, who

zigzagged from bank to bank, stopping at every Indian hut upon his way.

If aught were amiss with the Church in Canada the fault lay not with men

like these village priests, who toiled and worked and spent their very

lives in bearing comfort and hope, and a little touch of refinement too,

through all those wilds. More than once these wayfarers wished to have

speech with the fugitives, but they pushed onwards, disregarding their

signs and hails. From below nothing overtook them, for they paddled

from early morning until late at night, drawing up the canoe when they

halted, and building a fire of dry wood, for already the nip of the

coming winter was in the air.

It was not only the people and their dwellings which were stretched out

before the wondering eyes of the French girl as she sat day after day in

the stern of the canoe. Her husband and Amos Green taught her also to

take notice of the sights of the woodlands, and as they skirted the

bank, they pointed out a thousand things which her own senses would

never have discerned. Sometimes it was the furry face of a raccoon

peeping out from some tree-cleft, or an otter swimming under the

overhanging brushwood with the gleam of a white fish in its mouth.

Or, perhaps, it was the wild cat crouching along a branch with its

wicked yellow eyes fixed upon the squirrels which played at the farther

end, or else with a scuttle and rush the Canadian porcupine would thrust

its way among the yellow blossoms of the resin weed and the tangle of

the whortleberry bushes. She learned, too, to recognise the pert sharp

cry of the tiny chick-a-dee, the call of the blue-bird, and the flash of

its wings amid the foliage, the sweet chirpy note of the black and white

bobolink, and the long-drawn mewing of the cat-bird. On the breast of

the broad blue river, with Nature's sweet concert ever sounding from the

bank, and with every colour that artist could devise spread out before

her eyes on the foliage of the dying woods, the smile came back to her

lips, and her cheeks took a glow of health which France had never been

able to give. De Catinat saw the change in her, but her presence

weighed him down with fear, for he knew that while Nature had made these

woods a heaven, man had changed it into a hell, and that a nameless

horror lurked behind all the beauty of the fading leaves and of the

woodland flowers. Often as he lay at night beside the smouldering fire

upon his couch of spruce, and looked at the little figure muffled in the

blanket and slumbering peacefully by his side, he felt that he had no

right to expose her to such peril, and that in the morning they should

turn the canoe eastward again and take what fate might bring them at

Quebec. But ever with the daybreak there came the thought of the

humiliation, the dreary homeward voyage, the separation which would

await them in galley and dungeon, to turn him from his purpose.

On the seventh day they rested at a point but a few miles from the mouth

of the Richelieu River, where a large blockhouse, Fort Richelieu, had

been built by M. de Saurel. Once past this they had no great distance

to go to reach the seigneury of De Catinat's friend of the _noblesse_

who would help them upon their way. They had spent the night upon a

little island in midstream, and at early dawn they were about to thrust

the canoe out again from the sand-lined cove in which she lay, when

Ephraim Savage growled in his throat and pointed Out across the water.

A large canoe was coming up the river, flying along as quick as a dozen

arms could drive it. In the stern sat a dark figure which bent forward

with every swing of the paddles, as though consumed by eagerness to push

onwards. Even at that distance there was no mistaking it. It was the

fanatical monk whom they had left behind them.

Concealed among the brushwood, they watched their pursuers fly past and

vanish round a curve in the stream. Then they looked at one another in

perplexity.

"We'd have done better either to put him overboard or to take him as

ballast," said Ephraim. "He's hull down in front of us now, and drawing

full."

"Well, we can't take the back track anyhow," remarked Amos.

"And yet how can we go on?" said De Catinat despondently. "This

vindictive devil will give word at the fort and at every other point

along the river. He has been back to Quebec. It is one of the

governor's own canoes, and goes three paces to our two."

"Let me cipher it out." Amos Green sat on a fallen maple with his head

sunk upon his hands. "Well," said he presently, "if it's no good going

on, and no good going back, there's only one way, and that is to go to

one side. That's so, Ephraim, is it not?"

"Ay, ay, lad, if you can't run you must tack, but it seems shoal water

on either bow."

"We can't go to the north, so it follows that we must go to the south."

"Leave the canoe?"

"It's our only chance. We can cut through the woods and come out near

this friendly house on the Richelieu. The friar will lose our trail

then, and we'll have no more trouble with him, if he stays on the St.

Lawrence."

"There's nothing else for it," said Captain Ephraim ruefully. "It's not

my way to go by land if I can get by water, and I have not been a fathom

deep in a wood since King Philip came down on the province, so you must

lay the course and keep her straight, Amos."

"It is not far, and it will not take us long. Let us get over to the

southern bank and we shall make a start. If madame tires, De Catinat,

we shall take turns to carry her."

"Ah, monsieur, you cannot think what a good walker I am. In this

splendid air one might go on forever."

"We will cross then."

In a very few minutes they were at the other side and had landed at the

edge of the forest. There the guns and ammunition were allotted to each

man, and his share of the provisions and of the scanty baggage. Then

having paid the Indians, and having instructed them to say nothing of

their movements, they turned their backs upon the river and plunged into

the silent woods.

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE HAIRLESS MAN.

All day they pushed on through the woodlands, walking in single file,

Amos Green first, then the seaman, then the lady, and De Catinat

bringing up the rear. The young woodsman advanced cautiously, seeing

and hearing much that was lost to his companions, stopping continually

and examining the signs of leaf and moss and twig. Their route lay for

the most part through open glades amid a huge pine forest, with a green

sward beneath their feet, made beautiful by the white euphorbia, the

golden rod, and the purple aster. Sometimes, however, the great trunks

closed in upon them, and they had to grope their way in a dim twilight,

or push a path through the tangled brushwood of green sassafras or

scarlet sumach. And then again the woods would shred suddenly away in

front of them, and they would skirt marshes, overgrown with wild rice

and dotted with little dark clumps of alder bushes, or make their way

past silent woodland lakes, all streaked and barred with the tree

shadows which threw their crimsons and clarets and bronzes upon the

fringe of the deep blue sheet of water. There were streams, too, some

clear and rippling where the trout flashed and the king-fisher gleamed,

others dark and poisonous from the tamarack swamps, where the wanderers

had to wade over their knees and carry Adele in their arms. So all day

they journeyed 'mid the great forests, with never a hint or token of

their fellow-man.

But if man were absent, there was at least no want of life. It buzzed

and chirped and chattered all round them from marsh and stream and

brushwood. Sometimes it was the dun coat of a deer which glanced

between the distant trunks, sometimes the badger which scuttled for its

hole at their approach. Once the long in-toed track of a bear lay

marked in the soft earth before them, and once Amos picked a great horn

from amid the bushes which some moose had shed the month before.

Little red squirrels danced and clattered above their heads, and every

oak was a choir with a hundred tiny voices piping from the shadow of its

foliage. As they passed the lakes the heavy gray stork flapped up in

front of them, and they saw the wild duck whirring off in a long V

against the blue sky, or heard the quavering cry of the loon from amid

the reeds.

That night they slept in the woods, Amos Green lighting a dry wood fire

in a thick copse where at a dozen paces it was invisible. A few drops

of rain had fallen, so with the quick skill of the practised woodsman he

made two little sheds of elm and basswood bark, one to shelter the two

refugees, and the other for Ephraim and himself. He had shot a wild

goose, and this, with the remains of their biscuit, served them both for

supper and for breakfast. Next day at noon they passed a little

clearing, in the centre of which were the charred embers of a fire.

Amos spent half an hour in reading all that sticks and ground could tell

him. Then, as they resumed their way, he explained to his companions

that the fire had been lit three weeks before, that a white man and two

Indians had camped there, that they had been journeying from west to

east, and that one of the Indians had been a squaw. No other traces of

their fellow-mortals did they come across, until late in the afternoon

Amos halted suddenly in the heart of a thick grove, and raised his hand

to his ear.

"Listen!" he cried.

"I hear nothing," said Ephraim.

"Nor I," added De Catinat.

"Ah, but I do!" cried Adele gleefully. "It is a bell--and at the very

time of day when the bells all sound in Paris!"

"You are right, madame. It is what they call the Angelus bell."

"Ah, yes, I hear it now!" cried De Catinat. "It was drowned by the

chirping of the birds. But whence comes a bell in the heart of a

Canadian forest?"

"We are near the settlements on the Richelieu. It must be the bell of

the chapel at the fort."

"Fort St. Louis! Ah, then, we are no great way from my friend's

seigneury."

"Then we may sleep there to-night, if you think that he is indeed to be

trusted."

"Yes. He is a strange man, with ways of his own, but I would trust him

with my life."

"Very good. We shall keep to the south of the fort and make for his

house. But something is putting up the birds over yonder. Ah, I hear

the sound of steps! Crouch down here among the sumach, until we see who

it is who walks so boldly through the woods."

They stooped all four among the brushwood, peeping out between the tree

trunks at a little glade towards which Amos was looking. For a long

time the sound which the quick ears of the woodsman had detected was

inaudible to the others, but at last they too heard the sharp snapping

of twigs as some one forced his passage through the undergrowth.

A moment later a man pushed his way into the open, whose appearance was

so strange and so ill-suited to the spot, that even Amos gazed upon him

with amazement.

He was a very small man, so dark and weather-stained that he might have

passed for an Indian were it not that he walked and was clad as no

Indian had ever been. He wore a broad-brimmed hat, frayed at the edges,

and so discoloured that it was hard to say what its original tint had

been. His dress was of skins, rudely cut and dangling loosely from his

body, and he wore the high boots of a dragoon, as tattered and stained

as the rest of his raiment. On his back he bore a huge bundle of canvas

with two long sticks projecting from it, and under each arm he carried

what appeared to be a large square painting.

"He's no Injun," whispered Amos, "and he's no Woodsman either.

Blessed if I ever saw the match of him!"

"He's neither _voyageur_, nor soldier, nor _coureur-de-bois_," said De

Catinat.

"'Pears to me to have a jurymast rigged upon his back, and fore and main

staysails set under each of his arms," said Captain Ephraim.

"Well, he seems to have no consorts, so we may hail him without fear."

They rose from their ambush, and as they did so the stranger caught

sight of them. Instead of showing the uneasiness which any man might be

expected to feel at suddenly finding himself in the presence of

strangers in such a country, he promptly altered his course and came

towards them. As he crossed the glade, however, the sounds of the

distant bell fell upon his ears, and he instantly whipped off his hat

and sunk his head in prayer. A cry of horror rose, not only from Adele

but from everyone of the party, at the sight which met their eyes.

The top of the man's head was gone. Not a vestige of hair or of white

skin remained, but in place of it was a dreadful crinkled discoloured

surface with a sharp red line running across his brow and round over his

ears.

"By the eternal!" cried Amos, "the man has lost his scalp!"

"My God!" said De Catinat. "Look at his hands!"

He had raised them in prayer. Two or three little stumps projecting

upwards showed where the fingers had been.

"I've seen some queer figure-heads in my life, but never one like that,"

said Captain Ephraim.

It was indeed a most extraordinary face which confronted them as they

advanced. It was that of a man who might have been of any age and of

any nation, for the features were so distorted that nothing could be

learned from them. One eyelid was drooping with a puckering and

flatness which showed that the ball was gone. The other, however, shot

as bright and merry and kindly a glance as ever came from a chosen

favourite of fortune. His face was flecked over with peculiar brown

spots which had a most hideous appearance, and his nose had been burst

and shattered by some terrific blow. And yet, in spite of this dreadful

appearance, there was something so noble in the carriage of the man, in

the pose of his head and in the expression which still hung, like the

scent from a crushed flower, round his distorted features, that even the

blunt Puritan seaman was awed by it.

"Good-evening, my children," said the stranger, picking up his pictures

again and advancing towards them. "I presume that you are from the

fort, though I may be permitted to observe that the woods are not very

safe for ladies at present."

"We are going to the manor-house of Charles de la Noue at Sainte Marie,"

said De Catinat, "and we hope soon to be in a place of safety. But I

grieve, sir, to see how terribly you have been mishandled."

"Ah, you have observed my little injuries, then! They know no better,

poor souls. They are but mischievous children--merry-hearted but

mischievous. Tut, tut, it is laughable indeed that a man's vile body

should ever clog his spirit, and yet here am I full of the will to push

forward, and yet I must even seat myself on this log and rest myself,

for the rogues have blown the calves of my legs off."

"My God! Blown them off! The devils!"

"Ah, but they are not to be blamed. No, no, it would be uncharitable to

blame them. They are ignorant poor folk, and the prince of darkness is

behind them to urge them on. They sank little charges of powder into my

legs and then they exploded them, which makes me a slower walker than

ever, though I was never very brisk. 'The Snail' was what I was called

at school in Tours, yes, and afterwards at the seminary I was always

'the Snail.'"

"Who are you then, sir, and who is it who has used you so shamefully?"

asked De Catinat.

"Oh, I am a very humble person. I am Ignatius Morat, of the Society of

Jesus, and as to the people who have used me a little roughly, why, if

you are sent upon the Iroquois mission, of course you know what to

expect. I have nothing at all to complain of. Why, they have used me

very much better than they did Father Jogues, Father Breboeuf, and a

good many others whom I could mention. There were times, it is true,

when I was quite hopeful of martyrdom, especially when they thought my

tonsure was too small, which was their merry way of putting it. But I

suppose I was not worthy of it; indeed I know that I was not, so it only

ended in just a little roughness."

"Where are you going then?" asked Amos, who had listened in amazement to

the man's words.

"I am going to Quebec. You see I am such a useless person that, until I

have seen the bishop, I can really do no good at all."

"You mean that you will resign your mission into the bishop's hands?"

said De Catinat.

"Oh, no. That would be quite the sort of thing which I should do if I

were left to myself, for it is incredible how cowardly I am. You would

not think it possible that a priest of God could be so frightened as I

am sometimes. The mere sight of a fire makes me shrink all into myself

ever since I went through the ordeal of the lighted pine splinters,

which have left all these ugly stains upon my face. But then, of

course, there is the Order to be thought of, and members of the Order do

not leave their posts for trifling causes. But it is against the rules

of Holy Church that a maimed man should perform the rites, and so, until

I have seen the bishop and had his dispensation, I shall be even more

useless than ever."

"And what will you do then?"

"Oh, then, of course, I will go back to my flock."

"To the Iroquois!"

"That is where I am stationed."

"Amos," said De Catinat, "I have spent my life among brave men, but I

think that this is the bravest man that I have ever met!"

"On my word," said Amos, "I have seen some good men, too, but never one

that I thought was better than this. You are weary, father. Have some

of our cold goose, and there is still a drop of cognac in my flask."

"Tut, tut, my son, if I take anything but the very simplest living it

makes me so lazy that I become a snail indeed."

"But you have no gun and no food. How do you live?"

"Oh, the good God has placed plenty of food in these forests for a

traveller who dare not eat very much. I have had wild plums, and wild

grapes, and nuts and cranberries, and a nice little dish of

_tripe-de-mere_ from the rocks."

The woodsman made a wry face at the mention of this delicacy.

"I had as soon eat a pot of glue," said he. "But what is this which you

carry on your back?"

"It is my church. Ah, I have everything here, tent, altar, surplice,

everything. I cannot venture to celebrate service myself without the

dispensation, but surely this venerable man is himself in orders and

will solemnise the most blessed function."

Amos, with a sly twinkle of the eyes, translated the proposal to

Ephraim, who stood with his huge red hands clenched, mumbling about the

saltless pottage of papacy. De Catinat replied briefly, however, that

they were all of the laity, and that if they were to reach their

destination before nightfall, it was necessary that they should push on.

"You are right, my son," said the little Jesuit. "These poor people

have already left their villages, and in a few days the woods will be

full of them, though I do not think that any have crossed the Richelieu

yet. There is one thing, however, which I would have you do for me."

"And what is that?"

"It is but to remember that I have left with Father Lamberville at

Onondaga the dictionary which I have made of the Iroquois and French

languages. There also is my account of the copper mines of the Great

Lakes which I visited two years ago, and also an orrery which I have

made to show the northern heavens with the stars of each month as they

are seen from this meridian. If aught were to go amiss with Father

Lamberville or with me, and we do not live very long on the Iroquois

mission, it would be well that some one else should profit from my

work."

"I will tell my friend to-night. But what are these great pictures,

father, and why do you bear them through the wood?" He turned them over

as he spoke, and the whole party gathered round them, staring in

amazement.

They were very rough daubs, crudely coloured and gaudy. In the first, a

red man was reposing serenely upon what appeared to be a range of

mountains, with a musical instrument in his hand, a crown upon his head,

and a smile upon his face. In the second, a similar man was screaming

at the pitch of his lungs, while half-a-dozen black creatures were

battering him with poles and prodding him with lances.

"It is a damned soul and a saved soul," said Father Ignatius Morat,

looking at his pictures with some satisfaction. "These are clouds upon

which the blessed spirit reclines, basking in all the joys of paradise.

It is well done this picture, but it has had no good effect, because

there are no beaver in it, and they have not painted in a tobacco-pipe.

You see they have little reason, these poor folk, and so we have to

teach them as best we can through their eyes and their foolish senses.

This other is better. It has converted several squaws and more than one

Indian. I shall not bring back the saved soul when I come in the

spring, but I shall bring five damned souls, which will be one for each

nation. We must fight Satan with such weapons as we can get, you see.

And now, my children, if you must go, let me first call down a blessing

upon you!"

And then occurred a strange thing, for the beauty of this man's soul

shone through all the wretched clouds of sect, and, as he raised his

hand to bless them, down went those Protestant knees to earth, and even

old Ephraim found himself with a softened heart and a bent head

listening to the half-understood words of this crippled, half-blinded,

little stranger.

"Farewell, then," said he, when they had risen. "May the sunshine of

Saint Eulalie be upon you, and may Saint Anne of Beaupre shield you at

the moment of your danger."

And so they left him, a grotesque and yet heroic figure, staggering

along through the woods with his tent, his pictures, and his mutilation.

If the Church of Rome should ever be wrecked it may come from her

weakness in high places, where all Churches are at their weakest, or it

may be because with what is very narrow she tries to explain that which

is very broad, but assuredly it will never be through the fault of her

rank and file, for never upon earth have men and women spent

themselves more lavishly and more splendidly than in her service.

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE LORD OF SAINTE MARIE.

Leaving Fort St. Louis, whence the bells had sounded, upon their right,

they pushed onwards as swiftly as they could, for the sun was so low in

the heavens that the bushes in the clearings threw shadows like trees.

Then suddenly, as they peered in front of them between the trunks, the

green of the sward turned to the blue of the water, and they saw a broad

river running swiftly before them. In France it would have seemed a

mighty stream, but, coming fresh from the vastness of the St. Lawrence,

their eyes were used to great sheets of water. But Amos and De Catinat

had both been upon the bosom of the Richelieu before, and their hearts

bounded as they looked upon it, for they knew that this was the straight

path which led them, the one to home, and the other to peace and

freedom. A few days' journeying down there, a few more along the lovely

island-studded lakes of Champlain and Saint Sacrament, under the shadow

of the tree-clad Adirondacks, and they would be at the headquarters of

the Hudson, and their toils and their dangers be but a thing of gossip

for the winter evenings.

Across the river was the terrible Iroquois country, and at two points

they could see the smoke of fires curling up into the evening air.

They had the Jesuit's word for it that none of the war-parties had

crossed yet, so they followed the track which led down the eastern bank.

As they pushed onwards, however, a stern military challenge suddenly

brought them to a stand, and they saw the gleam of two musket barrels

which covered them from a thicket overlooking the path.

"We are friends," cried De Catinat.

"Whence come you, then?" asked an invisible sentinel.

"From Quebec."

"And whither are you going?"

"To visit Monsieur Charles de la Noue, seigneur of Sainte Marie."

"Very good. It is quite safe, Du Lhut. They have a lady with them,

too. I greet you, madame, in the name of my father."

Two men had emerged from the bushes, one of whom might have passed as a

full-blooded Indian, had it not been for these courteous words which he

uttered in excellent French. He was a tall slight young man, very dark,

with piercing black eyes, and a grim square relentless mouth which could

only have come with Indian descent. His coarse flowing hair was

gathered up into a scalp-lock, and the eagle feather which he wore in it

was his only headgear. A rude suit of fringed hide with caribou-skin

mocassins might have been the fellow to the one which Amos Green was

wearing, but the gleam of a gold chain from his belt, the sparkle of a

costly ring upon his finger, and the delicate richly-inlaid musket which

he carried, all gave a touch of grace to his equipment. A broad band of

yellow ochre across his forehead and a tomahawk at his belt added to the

strange inconsistency of his appearance.

The other was undoubtedly a pure Frenchman, elderly, dark and wiry, with

a bristling black beard and a fierce eager face. He, too, was clad in

hunter's dress, but he wore a gaudy striped sash round his waist, into

which a brace of long pistols had been thrust. His buckskin tunic had

been ornamented over the front with dyed porcupine quills and Indian

bead-work, while his leggings were scarlet with a fringe of raccoon

tails hanging down from them. Leaning upon his long brown gun he stood

watching the party, while his companion advanced towards them.

"You will excuse our precautions," said he. "We never know what device

these rascals may adopt to entrap us. I fear, madame, that you have had

a long and very tiring journey."

Poor Adele, who had been famed for neatness even among housekeepers of

the Rue St. Martin, hardly dared to look down at her own stained and

tattered dress. Fatigue and danger she had endured with a smiling face,

but her patience almost gave way at the thought of facing strangers in

this attire.

"My mother will be very glad to welcome you, and to see to every want,"

said he quickly, as though he had read her thoughts. "But you, sir, I

have surely seen you before."

"And I you," cried the guardsman. "My name is Amory de Catinat, once of

the regiment of Picardy. Surely you are Achille de la Noue de Sainte

Marie, whom I remember when you came with your father to the government

_levees_ at Quebec."

"Yes, it is I," the young man answered, holding out his hand and smiling

in a somewhat constrained fashion. "I do not wonder that you should

hesitate, for when you saw me last I was in a very different dress to

this."

De Catinat did indeed remember him as one of the band of the young

_noblesse_ who used to come up to the capital once a year, where they

inquired about the latest modes, chatted over the year-old gossip of

Versailles, and for a few weeks at least lived a life which was in

keeping with the traditions of their order. Very different was he now,

with scalp-lock and war-paint, under the shadow of the great oaks, his

musket in his hand and his tomahawk at his belt.

"We have one life for the forest and one for the cities," said he,

"though indeed my good father will not have it so, and carries

Versailles with him wherever he goes. You know him of old, monsieur,

and I need not explain my words. But it is time for our relief, and so

we may guide you home."

Two men in the rude dress of Canadian _censitaires_ or farmers, but

carrying their muskets in a fashion which told De Catinat's trained

senses that they were disciplined soldiers, had suddenly appeared upon

the scene. Young De la Noue gave them a few curt injunctions, and then

accompanied the refugees along the path.

"You may not know my friend here," said he, pointing to the other

sentinel, "but I am quite sure that his name is not unfamiliar to you.

This is Greysolon du Lhut."

Both Amos and De Catinat looked with the deepest curiosity and interest

at the famous leader of _coureurs-de-bois_, a man whose whole life had

been spent in pushing westward, ever westward, saying little, writing

nothing, but always the first wherever there was danger to meet or

difficulty to overcome. It was not religion and it was not hope of gain

which led him away into those western wildernesses, but pure love of

nature and of adventure, with so little ambition that he had never cared

to describe his own travels, and none knew where he had been or where he

had stopped. For years he would vanish from the settlements away into

the vast plains of the Dacotah, or into the huge wilderness of the

north-west, and then at last some day would walk back into Sault La

Marie, or any other outpost of civilisation, a little leaner, a little

browner, and as taciturn as ever. Indians from the furthest corners of

the continent knew him as they knew their own sachem. He could raise

tribes and bring a thousand painted cannibals to the help of the French

who spoke a tongue which none knew, and came from the shores of rivers

which no one else had visited. The most daring French explorers, when,

after a thousand dangers, they had reached some country which they

believed to be new, were as likely as not to find Du Lhut sitting by his

camp fire there, some new squaw by his side, and his pipe between his

teeth. Or again, when in doubt and danger, with no friends within a

thousand miles, the traveller might suddenly meet this silent man, with

one or two tattered wanderers of his own kidney, who would help him from

his peril, and then vanish as unexpectedly as he came. Such was the man

who now walked by their sides along the bank of the Richelieu, and both

Amos and De Catinat knew that his presence there had a sinister meaning,

and that the place which Greysolon du Lhut had chosen was the place

where the danger threatened.

"What do you think of those fires over yonder, Du Lhut?" asked young De

la Noue.

The adventurer was stuffing his pipe with rank Indian tobacco, which he

pared from a plug with a scalping knife. He glanced over at the two

little plumes of smoke which stood straight up against the red evening

sky.

"I don't like them," said he.

"They are Iroquois then?"

"Yes."

"Well, at least it proves that they are on the other side of the river."

"It proves that they are on this side."

"What!"

Du Lhut lit his pipe from a tinder paper. "The Iroquois are on this

side," said he. "They crossed to the south of us."

"And you never told us. How do you know that they crossed, and why

did you not tell us?"

"I did not know until I saw the fires over yonder."

"And how did they tell you?"

"Tut, an Indian papoose could have told," said Du Lhut impatiently.

"Iroquois on the trail do nothing without an object. They have an

object then in showing that smoke. If their war-parties were over

yonder there would be no object. Therefore their braves must have

crossed the river. And they could not get over to the north without

being seen from the fort. They have got over on the south then."

Amos nodded with intense appreciation. "That's it!" said he, "that's

Injun ways. I'll lay that he is right."

"Then they may be in the woods round us. We may be in danger," cried De

la Noue.

Du Lhut nodded and sucked at his pipe.

De Catinat cast a glance round him at the grand tree trunks, the fading

foliage, the smooth sward underneath with the long evening shadows

barred across it. How difficult it was to realise that behind all this

beauty there lurked a danger so deadly and horrible that a man alone

might well shrink from it, far less one who had the woman whom he loved

walking within hand's touch of him. It was with a long heart-felt sigh

of relief that he saw a wall of stockade in the midst of a large

clearing in front of him, with the stone manor house rising above it.

In a line from the stockade were a dozen cottages with cedar-shingled

roofs turned up in the Norman fashion, in which dwelt the habitants

under the protection of the seigneur's chateau--a strange little graft

of the feudal system in the heart of an American forest. Above the main

gate as they approached was a huge shield of wood with a coat of arms

painted upon it, a silver ground with a chevron ermine between three

coronets gules. At either corner a small brass cannon peeped through an

embrasure. As they passed the gate the guard inside closed it and

placed the huge wooden bars into position. A little crowd of men,

women, and children were gathered round the door of the chateau, and a

man appeared to be seated on a high-backed chair upon the threshold.

"You know my father," said the young man with a shrug of his shoulders.

"He will have it that he has never left his Norman castle, and that he

is still the Seigneur de la Noue, the greatest man within a day's ride

of Rouen, and of the richest blood of Normandy. He is now taking his

dues and his yearly oaths from his tenants, and he would not think it

becoming, if the governor himself were to visit him, to pause in the

middle of so august a ceremony. But if it would interest you, you may

step this way and wait until he has finished. You, madame, I will take

at once to my mother, if you will be so kind as to follow me."

The sight was, to the Americans at least, a novel one. A triple row of

men, women, and children were standing round in a semicircle, the men

rough and sunburned, the women homely and clean, with white caps upon

their heads, the children open-mouthed and round-eyed, awed into an

unusual quiet by the reverent bearing of their elders. In the centre,

on his high-backed carved chair, there sat an elderly man very stiff and

erect, with an exceedingly solemn face. He was a fine figure of a man,

tall and broad, with large strong features, clean-shaven and

deeply-lined, a huge beak of a nose, and strong shaggy eyebrows which

arched right up to the great wig, which he wore full and long as it had

been worn in France in his youth. On his wig was placed a white hat

cocked jauntily at one side with a red feather streaming round it, and

he wore a coat of cinnamon-coloured cloth with silver at the neck and

pockets, which was still very handsome, though it bore signs of having

been frayed and mended more than once. This, with black velvet

knee-breeches and high well-polished boots, made a costume such as De

Catinat had never before seen in the wilds of Canada.

As they watched, a rude husbandman walked forwards from the crowd, and

kneeling down upon a square of carpet placed his hands between those of

the seigneur.

"Monsieur de Sainte Marie, Monsieur de Sainte Marie, Monsieur de Sainte

Marie," said he three times, "I bring you the faith and homage which I

am bound to bring you on account of my fief Herbert, which I hold as a

man of faith of your seigneury."

"Be true, my son. Be valiant and true!" said the old nobleman solemnly,

and then with a sudden change of tone: "What in the name of the devil

has your daughter got there?"

A girl had advanced from the crowd with a large strip of bark in front

of her on which was heaped a pile of dead fish.

"It is your eleventh fish which I am bound by my oath to render to you,"

said the _censitaire_. "There are seventy-three in the heap, and I have

caught eight hundred in the month."

"_Peste!_" cried the nobleman. "Do you think, Andre Dubois, that I will

disorder my health by eating three-and-seventy fish in this fashion?

Do you think that I and my body-servants and my personal retainers and

the other members of my household have nothing to do but to eat your

fish? In future, you will pay your tribute not more than five at a

time. Where is the major-domo? Theuriet, remove the fish to our

central store-house, and be careful that the smell does not penetrate to

the blue tapestry chamber or to my lady's suite."

A man in very shabby black livery, all stained and faded, advanced with

a large tin platter and carried off the pile of white fish. Then, as

each of the tenants stepped forward to pay their old-world homage, they

all left some share of their industry for their lord's maintenance.

With some it was a bundle of wheat, with some a barrel of potatoes,

while others had brought skins of deer or of beaver. All these were

carried off by the major-domo, until each had paid his tribute, and the

singular ceremony was brought to a conclusion. As the seigneur rose,

his son, who had returned, took De Catinat by the sleeve and led him

through the throng.

"Father," said he, "this is Monsieur de Catinat, whom you may remember

some years ago at Quebec."

The seigneur bowed with much condescension, and shook the guardsman by

the hand.

"You are extremely welcome to my estates, both you and your

body-servants--"

"They are my friends, monsieur. This is Monsieur Amos Green and Captain

Ephraim Savage. My wife is travelling with me, but your courteous son

has kindly taken her to your lady."

"I am honoured--honoured indeed!" cried the old man, with a bow and a

flourish. "I remember you very well, sir, for it is not so common to

meet men of quality in this country. I remember your father also, for

he served with me at Rocroy, though he was in the Foot, and I in the Red

Dragoons of Grissot. Your arms are a martlet in fess upon a field

azure, and now that I think of it, the second daughter of your

great-grand-father married the son of one of the La Noues of Andelys,

which is one of our cadet branches. Kinsman, you are welcome!"

He threw his arms suddenly round De Catinat and slapped him three times

on the back.

The young guardsman was only too delighted to find himself admitted to

such an intimacy.

"I will not intrude long upon your hospitality," said he. "We are

journeying down to Lake Champlain, and we hope in a day or two to be

ready to go on."

"A suite of rooms shall be laid at your disposal as long as you do me

the honour to remain here. _Peste!_ It is not every day that I can open

my gates to a man with good blood in his veins! Ah, sir, that is what I

feel most in my exile, for who is there with whom I can talk as equal to

equal? There is the governor, the intendant, perhaps, one or two

priests, three or four officers, but how many of the _noblesse_?

Scarcely one. They buy their titles over here as they buy their pelts,

and it is better to have a canoe-load of beaver skins than a pedigree

from Roland. But I forget my duties. You are weary and hungry, you and

your friends. Come up with me to the tapestried _salon_, and we shall

see if my stewards can find anything for your refreshment. You play

piquet, if I remember right? Ah, my skill is leaving me, and I should

be glad to try a hand with you."

The manor-house was high and strong, built of gray stone in a framework

of wood. The large iron-clamped door through which they entered was

pierced for musketry fire, and led into a succession of cellars and

store-houses in which the beets, carrots, potatoes, cabbages, cured

meat, dried eels, and other winter supplies were placed. A winding

stone staircase led them through a huge kitchen, flagged and lofty, from

which branched the rooms of the servants or retainers as the old

nobleman preferred to call them. Above this again was the principal

suite, centering in the dining-hall with its huge fireplace and rude

home-made furniture. Rich rugs formed of bear or deer-skin were

littered thickly over the brown-stained floor, and antlered heads

bristled out from among the rows of muskets which were arranged along

the wall. A broad rough-hewn maple table ran down the centre of this

apartment, and on this there was soon set a venison pie, a side of

calvered salmon, and a huge cranberry tart, to which the hungry

travellers did full justice. The seigneur explained that he had already

supped, but having allowed himself to be persuaded into joining them, he

ended by eating more than Ephraim Savage, drinking more than Du Lhut,

and finally by singing a very amorous little French _chanson_ with a

tra-le-ra chorus, the words of which, fortunately for the peace of the

company, were entirely unintelligible to the Bostonian.

"Madame is taking her refection in my lady's boudoir," he remarked, when

the dishes had been removed. "You may bring up a bottle of Frontiniac

from bin thirteen, Theuriet. Oh, you will see, gentlemen, that even in

the wilds we have a little, a very little, which is perhaps not

altogether bad. And so you come from Versailles, De Catinat? It was

built since my day, but how I remember the old life of the court at St.

Germain, before Louis turned serious! Ah, what innocent happy days they

were when Madame de Nevailles had to bar the windows of the maids of

honour to keep out the king, and we all turned out eight deep on to the

grass plot for our morning duel! By Saint Denis, I have not quite

forgotten the trick of the wrist yet, and, old as I am, I should be none

the worse for a little breather." He strutted in his stately fashion

over to where a rapier and dagger hung upon the wall, and began to make

passes at the door, darting in and out, warding off imaginary blows with

his poniard, and stamping his feet with little cries of "Punto! reverso!

stoccata! dritta! mandritta!" and all the jargon of the fencing schools.

Finally he rejoined them, breathing heavily and with his wig awry.

"That was our old exercise," said he. "Doubtless you young bloods have

improved upon it, and yet it was good enough for the Spaniards at Rocroy

and at one or two other places which I could mention. But they still

see life at the court, I understand. There are still love passages and

blood lettings. How has Lauzun prospered in his wooing of Mademoiselle

de Montpensier? Was it proved that Madame de Clermont had bought a

phial from Le Vie, the poison woman, two days before the soup disagreed

so violently with monsieur? What did the Due de Biron do when his

nephew ran away with the duchess? Is it true that he raised his

allowance to fifty thousand livres for having done it?" Such were the

two-year-old questions which had not been answered yet upon the banks of

the Richelieu River. Long into the hours of the night, when his

comrades were already snoring under their blankets, De Catinat, blinking

and yawning, was still engaged in trying to satisfy the curiosity of the

old courtier, and to bring him up to date in all the most minute gossip

of Versailles.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE SLAYING OF BROWN MOOSE.

Two days were spent by the travellers at the seigneury of Sainte Marie,

and they would very willingly have spent longer, for the quarters were

comfortable and the welcome warm, but already the reds of autumn were

turning to brown, and they knew how suddenly the ice and snow come in

those northern lands, and how impossible it would be to finish their

journey if winter were once fairly upon them. The old nobleman had sent

his scouts by land and by water, but there were no signs of the Iroquois

upon the eastern banks, so that it was clear that De Lhut had been

mistaken. Over on the other side, however, the high gray plumes of

smoke still streamed up above the trees as a sign that their enemies

were not very far off. All day from the manor-house windows and from

the stockade they could see those danger signals which reminded them

that a horrible death lurked ever at their elbow.

The refugees were rested now and refreshed, and of one mind about

pushing on.

"If the snow comes, it will be a thousand times more dangerous," said

Amos, "for we shall leave a track then that a papoose could follow."

"And why should we fear?" urged old Ephraim.

"Truly this is a desert of salt, even though it lead to the vale of

Hinnom, but we shall be borne up against these sons of Jeroboam.

Steer a straight course, lad, and jam your helm, for the pilot will see

you safe."

"And I am not frightened, Amory, and I am quite rested now," said Adele.

"We shall be so much more happy when we are in the English Provinces,

for even now, how do we know that that dreadful monk may not come with

orders to drag us back to Quebec and Paris?"

It was indeed very possible that the vindictive Franciscan, when

satisfied that they had not ascended to Montreal, or remained at Three

Rivers, might seek them on the banks of the Richelieu. When De Catinat

thought of how he passed them in his great canoe that morning, his eager

face protruded, and his dark body swinging in time to the paddles, he

felt that the danger which his wife suggested was not only possible but

imminent. The seigneur was his friend, but the seigneur could not

disobey the governor's orders. A great hand, stretching all the way

from Versailles, seemed to hang over them, even here in the heart of the

virgin forest, ready to snatch them up and carry them back into

degradation and misery. Better all the perils of the woods than that!

But the seigneur and his son, who knew nothing of their pressing reasons

for haste, were strenuous in urging De Catinat the other way, and in

this they were supported by the silent Du Lhut, whose few muttered words

were always more weighty than the longest speech, for he never spoke

save about that of which he was a master.

"You have seen my little place," said the old nobleman, with a wave of

his beruffled ring-covered hand. "It is not what I should wish it, but

such as it is, it is most heartily yours for the winter, if you and your

comrades would honour me by remaining. As to madame, I doubt not that

my own dame and she will find plenty to amuse and occupy them, which

reminds me, De Catinat, that you have not yet been presented. Theuriet,

go to your mistress and inform her that I request her to be so good as

to come to us in the hall of the dais."

De Catinat was too seasoned to be easily startled, but he was somewhat

taken aback when the lady, to whom the old nobleman always referred in

terms of exaggerated respect, proved to be as like a full-blooded Indian

squaw as the hall of the dais was to a French barn. She was dressed, it

was true, in a bodice of scarlet taffeta with a black skirt,

silver-buckled shoes, and a scented pomander ball dangling by a silver

chain from her girdle, but her face was of the colour of the bark of the

Scotch fir, while her strong nose and harsh mouth, with the two plaits

of coarse black hair which dangled down her back, left no possible doubt

as to her origin.

"Allow me to present you, Monsieur de Catinat," said the Seigneur de

Sainte Marie solemnly, "to my wife, Onega de la Noue de Sainte Marie,

chatelaine by right of marriage to this seigneury, and also to the

Chateau d'Andelys in Normandy, and to the estate of Varennes in

Provence, while retaining in her own right the hereditary chieftainship

on the distaff side of the nation of the Onondagas. My angel, I have

been endeavouring to persuade our friends to remain with us at Sainte

Marie instead of journeying on to Lake Champlain."

"At least leave your White Lily at Sainte Marie," said the dusky

princess, speaking in excellent French, and clasping with her ruddy

fingers the ivory hand of Adele. "We will hold her safe for you until

the ice softens, and the leaves and the partridge berries come once

more. I know my people, monsieur, and I tell you that the woods are

full of murder, and that it is not for nothing that the leaves are the

colour of blood, for death lurks behind every tree."

De Catinat was more moved by the impressive manner of his hostess than

by any of the other warnings which he had received. Surely she, if

anyone, must be able to read the signs of the times.

"I know not what to do!" he cried in despair. "I must go on, and yet

how can I expose her to these perils? I would fain stay the winter, but

you must take my word for it, sir, that it is not possible."

"Du Lhut, you know how things should be ordered," said the seigneur.

"What should you advise my friend to do, since he is so set upon getting

to the English Provinces before the winter comes?"

The dark silent pioneer stroked his beard with his hand as he pondered

over the question.

"There is but one way," said he at last, "though even in it there is

danger. The woods are safer than the river, for the reeds are full of

_cached_ canoes. Five leagues from here is the blockhouse of Poitou,

and fifteen miles beyond, that of Auvergne. We will go to-morrow to

Poitou through the woods and see if all be safe. I will go with you,

and I give you my word that if the Iroquois are there, Greysolon du Lhut

will know it. The lady we shall leave here, and if we find that all is

safe we shall come back for her. Then in the same fashion we shall

advance to Auvergne, and there you must wait until you hear where their

war-parties are. It is in my mind that it will not be very long before

we know."

"What! You would part us!" cried Adele aghast.

"It is best, my sister," said Onega, passing her arm caressingly round

her. "You cannot know the danger, but we know it, and we will not let

our White Lily run into it. You will stay here to gladden us, while the

great chief Du Lhut, and the French soldier, your husband, and the old

warrior who seems so wary, and the other chief with limbs like the wild

deer, go forward through the woods and see that all is well before you

venture."

And so it was at last agreed, and Adele, still protesting, was consigned

to the care of the lady of Sainte Marie, while De Catinat swore that

without a pause he would return from Poitou to fetch her. The old

nobleman and his son would fain have joined them in their adventure, but

they had their own charge to watch and the lives of many in their

keeping, while a small party were safer in the woods than a larger one

would be. The seigneur provided them with a letter for De Lannes, the

governor of the Poitou blockhouse, and so in the early dawn the four of

them crept like shadows from the stockade-gate, amid the muttered good

wishes of the guard within, and were lost in an instant in the blackness

of the vast forest.

From La Noue to Poitou was but twelve miles down the river, but by the

woodland route where creeks were to be crossed, reed-girt lakes to be

avoided, and paths to be picked among swamps where the wild rice grew

higher than their heads, and the alder bushes lay in dense clumps before

them, the distance was more than doubled. They walked in single file,

Du Lhut leading, with the swift silent tread of some wild creature, his

body bent forward, his gun ready in the bend of his arm, and his keen

dark eyes shooting little glances to right and left, observing

everything from the tiniest mark upon the ground or tree trunk to the

motion of every beast and bird of the brushwood. De Catinat walked

behind, then Ephraim Savage, and then Amos, all with their weapons ready

and with every sense upon the alert. By midday they were more than

half-way, and halted in a thicket for a scanty meal of bread and cheese,

for De Lhut would not permit them to light a fire.

"They have not come as far as this," he whispered, "and yet I am sure

that they have crossed the river. Ah, Governor de la Barre did not know

what he did when he stirred these men up, and this good dragoon whom the

king has sent us now knows even less."

"I have seen them in peace," remarked Amos. "I have traded to Onondaga

and to the country of the Senecas. I know them as fine hunters and

brave men."

"They are fine hunters, but the game that they hunt best are their

fellow-men. I have myself led their scalping parties, and I have fought

against them, and I tell you that when a general comes out from France

who hardly knows enough to get the sun behind him in a fight, he will

find that there is little credit to be gained from them. They talk of

burning their villages! It would be as wise to kick over the wasps'

nest, and think that you have done with the wasps. You are from New

England, monsieur?"

"My comrade is from New England; I am from New York."

"Ah, yes. I could see from your step and your eye that the woods were

as a home to you. The New England man goes on the waters and he slays

the cod with more pleasure than the caribou. Perhaps that is why his

face is so sad. I have been on the great water, and I remember that my

face was sad also. There is little wind, and so I think that we may

light our pipes without danger. With a good breeze I have known a

burning pipe fetch up a scalping party from two miles' distance, but the

trees stop scent, and the Iroquois noses are less keen than the Sioux

and the Dacotah. God help you, monsieur, if you should ever have an

Indian war. It is bad for us, but it would be a thousand times worse

for you."

"And why?"

"Because we have fought the Indians from the first, and we have them

always in our mind when we build. You see how along this river every

house and every hamlet supports its neighbour? But you, by Saint Anne

of Beaupre, it made my scalp tingle when I came on your frontiers and

saw the lonely farm-houses and little clearings out in the woods with no

help for twenty leagues around. An Indian war is a purgatory for

Canada, but it would be a hell for the English Provinces!"

"We are good friends with the Indians," said Amos. "We do not wish to

conquer."

"Your people have a way of conquering although they say that they do not

wish to do it," remarked Du Lhut. "Now, with us, we bang our drums, and

wave our flags, and make a stir, but no very big thing has come of it

yet. We have never had but two great men in Canada. One was Monsieur

de la Salle, who was shot last year by his own men down the great river,

and the other, old Frontenac, will have to come back again if New France

is not to be turned into a desert by the Five Nations. It would

surprise me little if by this time two years the white and gold flag

flew only over the rock of Quebec. But I see that you look at me

impatiently, Monsieur de Catinat, and I know that you count the hours

until we are back at Sainte Marie again. Forward, then, and may the

second part of our journey be as peaceful as the first."

For an hour or more they picked their way through the woods, following

in the steps of the old French pioneer. It was a lovely day with hardly

a cloud in the heavens, and the sun streaming down through the thick

foliage covered the shaded sward with a delicate network of gold.

Sometimes where the woods opened they came out into the pure sunlight,

but only to pass into thick glades beyond, where a single ray, here and

there, was all that could break its way through the vast leafy covering.

It would have been beautiful, these sudden transitions from light to

shade, but with the feeling of impending danger, and of a horror ever

lurking in these shadows, the mind was tinged with awe rather than

admiration. Silently, lightly, the four men picked their steps among

the great tree trunks.

Suddenly Du Lhut dropped upon his knees and stooped his ear to the

ground. He rose, shook his head, and walked on with a grave face,

casting quick little glances into the shadows in every direction.

"Did you hear something?" whispered Amos.

Du Lhut put his finger to his lips, and then in an instant was down

again upon his face with his ear fixed to the ground. He sprang up with

the look of a man who has heard what he expected to hear.

"Walk on," said he quietly, "and behave exactly as you have done all

day."

"What is it, then?"

"Indians."

"In front of us?"

"No, behind us."

"What are they doing?"

"They are following us."

"How many of them?"

"Two, I think."

The friends glanced back involuntarily over their shoulders into the

dense blackness of the forest. At one point a single broad shaft of

light slid down between two pines and cast a golden blotch upon their

track. Save for this one vivid spot all was sombre and silent.

"Do not look round," whispered Du Lhut sharply. "Walk on as before."

"Are they enemies?"

"They are Iroquois."

"And pursuing us?"

"No, we are now pursuing them."

"Shall we turn, then?"

"No, they would vanish like shadows,"

"How far off are they?"

"About two hundred paces, I think."

"They cannot see us, then?"

"I think not, but I cannot be sure. They are following our trail, I

think."

"What shall we do, then?"

"Let us make a circle and get behind them."

Turning sharp to the left he led them in a long curve through the woods,

hurrying swiftly and yet silently under the darkest shadows of the

trees. Then he turned again, and presently halted.

"This is our own track," said he.

"Ay, and two Redskins have passed over it," cried Amos, bending down,

and pointing to marks which were entirely invisible to Ephraim Savage or

De Catinat.

"A full-grown warrior and a lad on his first warpath," said Du Lhut.

"They were moving fast, you see, for you can hardly see the heel marks

of their moccasins. They walked one behind the other. Now let us

follow them as they followed us, and see if we have better luck."

He sped swiftly along the trail with his musket cocked in his hand, the

others following hard upon his heels, but there was no sound, and no

sign of life from the shadowy woods in front of them. Suddenly Du Lhut

stopped and grounded his weapon.

"They are still behind us," he said.

"Still behind us?"

"Yes. This is the point where we branched off. They have hesitated a

moment, as you can see by their footmarks, and then they have followed

on."

"If we go round again and quicken our pace we may overtake them."

"No, they are on their guard now. They must know that it could only be

on their account that we went back on our tracks. Lie here behind the

fallen log and we shall see if we can catch a glimpse of them."

A great rotten trunk, all green with mould and blotched with pink and

purple fungi, lay to one side of where they stood. Behind this the

Frenchman crouched, and his three companions followed his example,

peering through the brushwood screen in front of them. Still the one

broad sheet of sunshine poured down between the two pines, but all else

was as dim and as silent as a vast cathedral with pillars of wood and

roof of leaf. Not a branch that creaked, nor a twig that snapped, nor

any sound at all save the sharp barking of a fox somewhere in the heart

of the forest. A thrill of excitement ran through the nerves of De

Catinat. It was like one of those games of hide-and-seek which the

court used to play, when Louis was in a sportive mood, among the oaks

and yew hedges of Versailles. But the forfeit there was a carved fan,

or a box of bonbons, and here it was death.

Ten minutes passed and there was no sign of any living thing behind

them.

"They are over in yonder thicket," whispered Du Lhut, nodding his head

towards a dense clump of brushwood, two hundred paces away.

"Have you seen them?"

"No."

"How do you know, then?"

"I saw a squirrel come from his hole in the great white beech-tree

yonder. He scuttled back again as if something had scared him.

From his hole he can see down into that brushwood."

"Do you think that they know that we are here?"

"They cannot see us. But they are suspicious. They fear a trap."

"Shall we rush for the brushwood?"

"They would pick two of us off, and be gone like shadows through the

woods. No, we had best go on our way."

"But they will follow us."

"I hardly think that they will. We are four and they are only two, and

they know now that we are on our guard and that we can pick up a trail

as quickly as they can themselves. Get behind these trunks where they

cannot see us. So! Now stoop until you are past the belt of alder

bushes. We must push on fast now, for where there are two Iroquois

there are likely to be two hundred not very far off."

"Thank God that I did not bring Adele!" cried De Catinat.

"Yes, monsieur, it is well for a man to make a comrade of his wife, but

not on the borders of the Iroquois country, nor of any other Indian

country either."

"You do not take your own wife with you when you travel, then?" asked

the soldier.

"Yes, but I do not let her travel from village to village. She remains

in the wigwam."

"Then you leave her behind?"

"On the contrary, she is always there to welcome me. By Saint Anne, I

should be heavy-hearted if I came to any village between this and the

Bluffs of the Illinois, and did not find my wife waiting to greet me."

"Then she must travel before you."

Du Lhut laughed heartily, without, however, emitting a sound.

"A fresh village, a fresh wife," said he. "But I never have more than

one in each, for it is a shame for a Frenchman to set an evil example

when the good fathers are spending their lives so freely in preaching

virtue to them. Ah, here is the Ajidaumo Creek, where the Indians set

the sturgeon nets. It is still seven miles to Poitou."

"We shall be there before nightfall, then?"

"I think that we had best wait for nightfall before we make our way in.

Since the Iroquois scouts are out as far as this, it is likely that they

lie thick round Poitou, and we may find the last step the worst unless

we have a care, the more so if these two get in front of us to warn the

others." He paused a moment with slanting head and sidelong ear.

"By Saint Anne," he muttered, "we have not shaken them off. They are

still upon our trail!"

"You hear them?"

"Yes, they are no great way from us. They will find that they have

followed us once too often this time. Now, I will show you a little bit

of woodcraft which may be new to you. Slip off your moccasins,

monsieur."

De Catinat pulled off his shoes as directed, and Du Lhut did the same.

"Put them on as if they were gloves," said the pioneer, and an instant

later Ephraim Savage and Amos had their comrades' shoes upon their

hands.

"You can sling your muskets over your back. So! Now down on all fours,

bending yourselves double, with your hands pressing hard upon the earth.

That is excellent. Two men can leave the trail of four! Now come with

me, monsieur."

He flitted from tree to tree on a line which was parallel to, but a few

yards distant from, that of their comrades. Then suddenly he crouched

behind a bush and pulled De Catinat down beside him.

"They must pass us in a few minutes," he whispered. "Do not fire if you

can help it." Something gleamed in Du Lhut's hand, and his comrade,

glancing down, saw that he had drawn a keen little tomahawk from his

belt. Again the mad wild thrill ran through the soldier's blood, as he

peered through the tangled branches and waited for whatever might come

out of the dim silent aisles of tree-boles.

And suddenly he saw something move. It flitted like a shadow from one

trunk to the other so swiftly that De Catinat could not have told

whether it were beast or human. And then again he saw it, and yet

again, sometimes one shadow, sometimes two shadows, silent, furtive,

like the _loup-garou_ with which his nurse had scared him in his

childhood. Then for a few moments all was still once more, and then in

an instant there crept out from among the bushes the most

terrible-looking creature that ever walked the earth, an Iroquois chief

upon the war-trail.

He was a tall powerful man, and his bristle of scalp-locks and eagle

feathers made him look a giant in the dim light, for a good eight feet

lay between his beaded moccasin and the topmost plume of his headgear.

One side of his face was painted in soot, ochre, and vermilion to

resemble a dog, and the other half as a fowl, so that the front view was

indescribably grotesque and strange. A belt of wampum was braced round

his loin-cloth, and a dozen scalp-locks fluttered out as he moved from

the fringe of his leggings. His head was sunk forward, his eyes gleamed

with a sinister light, and his nostrils dilated and contracted like

those of an excited animal. His gun was thrown forward, and he crept

along with bended knees, peering, listening, pausing, hurrying on, a

breathing image of caution. Two paces behind him walked a lad of

fourteen, clad and armed in the same fashion, but without the painted

face and without the horrid dried trophies upon the leggings. It was

his first campaign, and already his eyes shone and his nostrils twitched

with the same lust for murder which burned within his elder. So they

advanced, silent, terrible, creeping out of the shadows of the wood, as

their race had come out of the shadows of history, with bodies of iron

and tiger souls.

They were just abreast of the bush when something caught the eye of the

younger warrior, some displaced twig or fluttering leaf, and he paused

with suspicion in every feature. Another instant and he had warned his

companion, but Du Lhut sprang out and buried his little hatchet in the

skull of the older warrior. De Catinat heard a dull crash, as when an

axe splinters its way into a rotten tree, and the man fell like a log,

laughing horribly, and kicking and striking with his powerful limbs.

The younger warrior sprang like a deer over his fallen comrade and

dashed on into the wood, but an instant later there was a gunshot among

the trees in front, followed by a faint wailing cry.

"That is his death-whoop," said Du Lhut composedly. "It was a pity to

fire, and yet it was better than letting him go."

As he spoke the two others came back, Ephraim ramming a fresh charge

into his musket.

"Who was laughing?" asked Amos.

"It was he," said Du Lhut, nodding towards the dying warrior, who lay

with his head in a horrible puddle, and his grotesque features contorted

into a fixed smile. "It's a custom they have when they get their

death-blow. I've known a Seneca chief laugh for six hours on end at the

torture-stake. Ah, he's gone!"

As he spoke the Indian gave a last spasm with his hands and feet, and

lay rigid, grinning up at the slit of blue sky above him.

"He's a great chief," said Du Lhut. "He is Brown Moose of the Mohawks,

and the other is his second son. We have drawn first blood, but I do

not think that it will be the last, for the Iroquois do not allow their

war-chiefs to die unavenged. He was a mighty fighter, as you may see by

looking at his neck."

He wore a peculiar necklace which seemed to De Catinat to consist of

blackened bean pods set upon a string. As he stooped over it he saw to

his horror that they were not bean pods, but withered human fingers.

"They are all right fore-fingers," said Du Lhut, "so everyone represents

a life. There are forty-two in all. Eighteen are of men whom he has

slain in battle, and the other twenty-four have been taken and

tortured."

"How do you know that?"

"Because only eighteen have their nails on. If the prisoner of an

Iroquois be alive, he begins always by biting his nails off. You see

that they are missing from four-and-twenty."

De Catinat shuddered. What demons were these amongst whom an evil fate

had drifted him? And was it possible that his Adele should fall into

the hands of such fiends? No, no, surely the good God, for whose sake

they had suffered so much, would not permit such an infamy! And yet as

evil a fate had come upon other women as tender as Adele--upon other men

as loving as he. What hamlet was there in Canada which had not such

stories in their record? A vague horror seized him as he stood there.

We know more of the future than we are willing to admit, away down in

those dim recesses of the soul where there is no reason, but only

instincts and impressions. Now some impending terror cast its cloud

over him. The trees around, with their great protruding limbs, were

like shadowy demons thrusting out their gaunt arms to seize him.

The sweat burst from his forehead, and he leaned heavily upon his

musket.

"By Saint Eulalie," said Du Lhut, "for an old soldier you turn very

pale, monsieur, at a little bloodshed."

"I am not well. I should be glad of a sup from your cognac bottle."

"Here it is, comrade, and welcome! Well, I may as well have this fine

scalp that we may have something to show for our walk." He held the

Indian's head between his knees, and in an instant, with a sweep of his

knife, had torn off the hideous dripping trophy.

"Let us go!" cried De Catinat, turning away in disgust.

"Yes, we shall go! But I shall also have this wampum belt marked with

the totem of the Bear. So! And the gun too. Look at the 'London'

printed upon the lock. Ah, Monsieur Green, Monsieur Green, it is not

hard to see where the enemies of France get their arms."

So at last they turned away, Du Lhut bearing his spoils, leaving the red

grinning figure stretched under the silent trees. As they passed on

they caught a glimpse of the lad lying doubled up among the bushes where

he had fallen. The pioneer walked very swiftly until he came to a

little stream which prattled down to the big river. Here he slipped off

his boots and leggings, and waded down it with his companions for half a

mile or so.

"They will follow our tracks when they find him," said he, "but this

will throw them off, for it is only on running water that an Iroquois

can find no trace. And now we shall lie in this clump until nightfall,

for we are little over a mile from Port Poitou, and it is dangerous to

go forward, for the ground becomes more open."

And so they remained concealed among the alders whilst the shadows

turned from short to long, and the white drifting clouds above them were

tinged with the pink of the setting sun. Du Lhut coiled himself into a

ball with his pipe between his teeth and dropped into a light sleep,

pricking up his ears and starting at the slightest sound from the woods

around them. The two Americans whispered together for a long time,

Ephraim telling some long story about the cruise of the brig _Industry_,

bound to Jamestown for sugar and molasses, but at last the soothing hum

of a gentle breeze through the branches lulled them off also, and they

slept. De Catinat alone remained awake, his nerves still in a tingle

from that strange sudden shadow which had fallen upon his soul. What

could it mean? Not surely that Adele was in danger? He had heard of

such warnings, but had he not left her in safety behind cannons and

stockades? By the next evening at latest he would see her again. As he

lay looking up through the tangle of copper leaves at the sky beyond,

his mind drifted like the clouds above him, and he was back once more in

the jutting window in the Rue St. Martin, sitting on the broad _bancal_,

with its Spanish leather covering, with the gilt wool-bale creaking

outside, and his arm round shrinking, timid Adele, she who had compared

herself to a little mouse in an old house, and who yet had courage to

stay by his side through all this wild journey. And then again he was

back at Versailles. Once more he saw the brown eyes of the king, the

fair bold face of De Montespan, the serene features of De Maintenon--

once more he rode on his midnight mission, was driven by the demon

coachman, and sprang with Amos upon the scaffold to rescue the most

beautiful woman in France. So clear it was and so vivid that it was

with a start that he came suddenly to himself, and found that the night

was creeping on in an American forest, and that Du Lhut had roused

himself and was ready for a start.

"Have you been awake?" asked the pioneer.

"Yes."

"Have you heard anything?"

"Nothing but the hooting of the owl."

"It seemed to me that in my sleep I heard a gunshot in the distance."

"In your sleep?"

"Yes, I hear as well asleep as awake and remember what I hear. But now

you must follow me close, and we shall be in the fort soon."

"You have wonderful ears, indeed," said De Catinat, as they picked their

way through the tangled wood. "How could you hear that these men were

following us to-day? I could make out no sound when they were within

hand-touch of us."

"I did not hear them at first."

"You saw them?"

"No, nor that either."

"Then how could you know that they were there?"

"I heard a frightened jay flutter among the trees after we were past it.

Then ten minutes later I heard the same thing. I knew then that there

was some one on our trail, and I listened."

"_Peste!_ you are a woodsman indeed!"

"I believe that these woods are swarming with Iroquois, although we have

had the good fortune to miss them. So great a chief as Brown Moose

would not start on the path with a small following nor for a small

object. They must mean mischief upon the Richelieu. You are not sorry

now that you did not bring madame?"

"I thank God for it!"

"The woods will not be safe, I fear, until the partridge berries are out

once more. You must stay at Sainte Marie until then, unless the

seigneur can spare men to guard you."

"I had rather stay there forever than expose my wife to such devils."

"Ay, devils they are, if ever devils walked upon earth. You winced,

monsieur, when I took Brown Moose's scalp, but when you have seen as

much of the Indians as I have done your heart will be as hardened as

mine. And now we are on the very borders of the clearing, and the

blockhouse lies yonder among the clump of maples. They do not keep very

good watch, for I have been expecting during these last ten minutes to

hear the _qui vive_. You did not come as near to Sainte Marie

unchallenged, and yet De Lannes is as old a soldier as La Noue. We can

scarce see now, but yonder, near the river, is where he exercises his

men."

"He does so now," said Amos. "I see a dozen of them drawn up in a line

at their drill."

"No sentinels, and all the men at drill!" cried Du Lhut in contempt.

"It is as you say, however, for I can see them myself with their ranks

open, and each as stiff and straight as a pine stump. One would think

to see them stand so still that there was not an Indian nearer than

Orange. We shall go across to them, and by Saint Anne, I shall tell

their commander what I think of his arrangements."

Du Lhut advanced from the bushes as he spoke, and the four men crossed

the open ground in the direction of the line of men who waited silently

for them in the dim twilight. They were within fifty paces, and yet

none of them had raised hand or voice to challenge their approach.

There was something uncanny in the silence, and a change came over Du

Lhut's face as he peered in front of him. He craned his head round and

looked up the river.

"My God!" he screamed. "Look at the fort!" They had cleared the clump

of trees, and the outline of the blockhouse should have shown up in

front of them. There was no sign of it. It was gone!

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE MEN OF BLOOD.

So unexpected was the blow that even De Lhut, hardened from his

childhood to every shock and danger, stood shaken and dismayed.

Then, with an oath, he ran at the top of his speed towards the line of

figures, his companions following at his heels.

As they drew nearer they could see through the dusk that it was not

indeed a line. A silent and motionless officer stood out some twenty

paces in front of his silent and motionless men. Further, they could

see that he wore a very high and singular head-dress. They were still

rushing forward, breathless with apprehension, when to their horror this

head-dress began to lengthen and broaden, and a great bird flapped

heavily up and dropped down again on the nearest tree-trunk. Then they

knew that their worst fears were true, and that it was the garrison of

Poitou which stood before them.

They were lashed to low posts with willow withies, some twenty of them,

naked all, and twisted and screwed into every strange shape which an

agonised body could assume. In front where the buzzard had perched was

the gray-headed commandant, with two cinders thrust into his sockets and

his flesh hanging from him like a beggar's rags. Behind was the line of

men, each with his legs charred off to the knees, and his body so

haggled and scorched and burst that the willow bands alone seemed to

hold it together. For a moment the four comrades stared in silent

horror at the dreadful group. Then each acted as his nature bade him.

De Catinat staggered up against a tree-trunk and leaned his head upon

his arm, deadly sick. Du Lhut fell down upon his knees and said

something to heaven, with his two clenched hands shaking up at the

darkening sky. Ephraim Savage examined the priming of his gun with a

tightened lip and a gleaming eye, while Amos Green, without a word,

began to cast round in circles in search of a trail.

But Du Lhut was on his feet again in a moment, and running up and down

like a sleuth-hound, noting a hundred things which even Amos would have

overlooked. He circled round the bodies again and again. Then he ran a

little way towards the edge of the woods, and then came back to the

charred ruins of the blockhouse, from some of which a thin reek of smoke

was still rising.

"There is no sign of the women and children," said he.

"My God! There were women and children?"

"They are keeping the children to burn at their leisure in their

villages. The women they may torture or may adopt as the humour takes

them. But what does the old man want?"

"I want you to ask him, Amos," said the seaman, "why we are yawing and

tacking here when we should be cracking on all sail to stand after

them?"

Du Lhut smiled and shook his head. "Your friend is a brave man," said

he, "if he thinks that with four men we can follow a hundred and fifty."