Marie felt herself called through the deepest depths of sleep, and sat up in the robe of fur which she had wrapped around her for her night bivouac. There was some alarm at her door. The enemy might be on the walls. She tingled with the intense return of life, and was opening the door without conscious motion. Nobody stood outside in the hall except the dwarf, whose aureole of foxy hair surrounded features pinched by anxiety.
"Madame Marie—Madame Marie! The Swiss has gone to give up the fort to D'Aulnay."
"Has gone?"
"He came down from the turret with his wife, who persuaded him. I listened allnight on the stairs. D'Aulnay is ready to mount the wall when he gives the signal. I had to hide me until the woman and the Swiss passed below. They are now going to the wall to give the signal."
Through Marie passed that worst shock of all human experience. To see your trusted ally transmuted into your secret most deadly foe, sickens the heart as death surely cannot sicken it. Like many a pierced wretch who has collapsed suddenly into the dust while the stab yet held the knife, she whispered feebly,—
"He could not do that!"
The stern blackness of her eyes seemed to annihilate all the rest of her face. Was rock itself stable under-foot? Why should one care to prolong life, when life only proved how cruel and worthless are the people for whom we labor?
"Madame Marie, he is now doing it. He was to hold up a ladder on the wall."
"Which wall?"
"This one—where the gate is."
Marie looked through the glass in her door which opened toward the battlements, rubbed aside moisture, and looked again. While one breath could be drawn Klussman was standing in the dawn-light with a ladder raised overhead. She caught up a pair of long pistols which had lain beside her all night.
"Rouse the men below—quick!" she said to Le Rossignol, and ran up the steps to the wall. No sentinels were there. The Swiss had already dropped down the ladder outside and was out of sight, and she heard the running, climbing feet of D'Aulnay's men coming to take the advantage afforded them. Sentinels in the other two bastions turned with surprise at her cry. They had seen Klussman relieving the guard, but his subtle action escaped their watch-worn eyes. They only noticed that he had the strange woman with him.
D'Aulnay's men were at the foot of the wall planting ladders. They were swarming up. Marie met them with the sentinelsjoining her and the soldiers rushing from below. The discharge of firearms, the clash of opposing metals, the thuds of falling bodies, cries, breathless struggling, clubbed weapons sweeping the battlements—filled one vast minute. Ladders were thrown back to the stones, and D'Aulnay's repulsed men were obliged to take once more to their trench, carrying the stunned and wounded. A cannon was trained on their breastworks, and St. John belched thunder and fire down the path of retreat. The Swiss's treason had been useless to the enemy. The people of the fort saw him hurried more like a prisoner than an ally towards D'Aulnay's camp, his wife beside him.
"Oh, Klussman," thought the lady of St. John, as she turned to station guards at every exposed point and to continue that day's fight, "you knew in another way what it is to be betrayed. How could you put this anguish upon me?"
The furious and powder-grimed men, her faithful soldiers, hooted at the Swiss fromtheir bastions, not knowing what a heart he carried with him. He turned once and made them a gesture of defiance, more pathetic than any wail for pardon, but they saw only the treason of the man, and shot at him with a good will. Through smoke and ball-plowed earth, D'Aulnay's soldiers ran into camp, and his batteries answered. Artillery echoes were scattered far through the woods, into the very depths of which that untarnished Easter weather seemed to stoop, coaxing growths from the swelling ground.
Advancing and pausing with equal caution, a man came out of the northern forest toward St. John River. No part of his person was covered with armor. And instead of the rich and formal dress then worn by the Huguenots even in the wilderness, he wore a complete suit of hunter's buckskin which gave his supple muscles a freedom beautiful to see. His young face was freshly shaved, showing the clean fine texture of the skin. For having nearly finished hisjourney from the head of Fundy Bay, he had that morning prepared himself to appear what he was in Fort St. John—a man of good birth and nurture. His portables were rolled tightly in a blanket and strapped to his shoulders. A hunting-knife and two long pistols armed him. His head was covered with a cap of beaver skin, and he wore moccasins. Not an ounce of unnecessary weight hampered him.
The booming of cannon had met him so far off on that day's march that he understood well the state of siege in which St. John would be found; and long before there was any glimpse of D'Aulnay's tents and earthworks, the problem of getting into the fort occupied his mind. For D'Aulnay's guards might be extended in every direction. But the first task in hand was to cross the river. One or two old canoes could be seen on the other side; cast-off property of the Etchemin Indians who had broken camp. Being on the wrong bank these were as useless to him as dreamcanoes. But had a ferryman stood in waiting, it was perilous to cross in open day, within possible sight of the enemy. So the soldier moved carefully down to a shelter of rocks below the falls, opposite that place where Van Corlaer had watched the tide sweep up and drown the rapids. From this post he got a view of La Tour's small ship, yet anchored and safe at its usual moorings. No human life was visible about it.
"The ship would afford me good quarters," said the soldier to himself, "had I naught to do but rest. But I must get into the fort this night; and how is it to be done?"
All the thunders of war, and all the effort and danger to be undertaken, could not put his late companions out of his mind. He lay with hands clasped under his head, and looked back at the trees visibly leafing in the warm Easter air. They were much to this man in all their differences and habits, their whisperings and silences. They had marched with him through countlesslone long reaches, passing him from one to another with friendly recommendation. It hurt him to notice a broken or deformed one among them; but one full and nobly equipped from root to top crown was Nature's most triumphant shout. There is a glory of the sun and a glory of the moon, but to one who loves them there is another glory of the trees.
"In autumn," thought the soldier, "I have seen light desert the skies and take to the trees and finally spread itself beneath them, a material glow, flake on flake. But in the spring, before their secret is spoken, when they throb, and restrain the force driving through them, then have I most comfort with them, for they live as I live."
Shadows grew on the river, and ripples were arrested and turned back to flow up stream. There was but one way for him to cross the river, and that was to swim. And the best time to swim was when the tide brimmed over the current and trembled at its turn, a broad and limpid expanseof water, cold, dangerous, repellent to the chilled plunging body; but safer and more easily paddled through than when the current, angular as a skeleton, sought the bay at its lowest ebb.
Fortunately tide and twilight favored the young soldier together. He stripped himself and bound his weapons and clothes in one tight packet on his head. At first it was easy to tread water: the salt brine upheld him. But in the middle of the river it was wise to sink close to the surface and carry as small a ripple as possible; for D'Aulnay's guards might be posted nearer than he knew. The water, deceptive at its outer edges in iridescent reflection of warm clouds, was cold as glacier drippings in midstream. He swam with desperate calmness, guarding himself by every stroke against cramp. The bundle oppressed him. He would have cast it off, but dared not change by a thought of variation the routine of his struggle. Hardy and experienced woodsman as he was, he staggered out on theother side and lay a space in the sand, too exhausted to move.
The tide began to recede, leaving stranded seaweed in green or brown streaks, the color of which could be determined only by the dullness or vividness of its shine through the dusk. As soon as he was able, the soldier sat up, shook out his blanket and rolled himself in it. The first large stars were trembling out. He lay and smelled gunpowder mingling with the saltiness of the bay and the evening incense of the earth.
There was a moose's lip in his wallet, the last spoil of his wilderness march, taken from game shot the night before and cooked at his morning fire. He ate it, still lying in the sand. Lights began to appear in the direction of D'Aulnay's camp, but the fort held itself dark and close. He thought of the grassy meadow rivulet which was always empty at low tide, and that it might afford him some shelter in his nearer approach to the fort. He dressed and put on his weapons, but left everything else exceptthe blanket lying where he had landed. In this venture little could be carried except the man and his life. The frontier graveyard outlined itself dimly against the expanse of landscape. The new-turned clay therein gave him a start. He crept over the border of stones, went close, and leaned down to measure the length of the fresh grave with his outstretched hands. A sigh of relief which was as strong as a sob burst from the soldier.
"It is only that child we found at the stockade," he murmured, and stepped on among the older mounds and leaped the opposite boundary, to descend that dip of land which the tide invaded. Water yet shone there on the grass. Too impatient to wait until the tide ran low, he found the log, and moved carefully forward, through increasing dusk, on hands and knees within closer range of the fort. Remembering that his buckskin might make an inviting spot on the slope, he wrapped his dark blanket around him. The chorus of insect life andof water creatures, which had scarcely been tuned for the season, began to raise experimental notes. And now a splash like the leap of a fish came from the river. The moon would be late; he thought of that with satisfaction. There was a little mist blown aloft over the stars, yet the night did not promise to be cloudy.
The whole environment of Fort St. John was so familiar to the young soldier that he found no unusual stone in his way. That side toward the garden might be the side least exposed to D'Aulnay's forces at night. If he could reach the southwest bastion unseen, he could ask for a ladder. There was every likelihood of his being shot before the sentinels recognized him, yet he might be more fortunate. Balancing these chances, he moved toward that angle of shadow which the fortress lifted against the southern sky. Long rays of light within the walls were thrown up and moved on darkness like the pulsing motions of the aurora.
"Who goes there?" said a voice.
The soldier lay flat against the earth. He had imagined the browsing sound of cattle near him. But a standing figure now condensed itself from the general dusk, some distance up the slope betwixt him and the bastion. The challenger was entirely apart from the fort. As he flattened himself in breathless waiting for a shot which might follow, a clatter began at his very ears, some animal bounded over him with a glancing cut of its hoof, and galloped toward the trench below St. John's gate. He heard another exclamation,—this rapid traveler had probably startled another sentinel. The man who had challenged him laughed softly in the darkness. All the Sable Island ponies must be loose upon the slope. D'Aulnay's men had taken possession of the stable and cattle, and the wild and frightened ponies were scattered. As his ear lay so near the ground the soldier heard other little hoofs startled to action, and a snort or two from suspicious nostrils. He crept away from the sentinel withoutfurther challenge. It was evident that D'Aulnay had encompassed the fort with guards.
The young soldier crept slowly down the rocky hillock, avoided another sentinel, and, after long caution and self-restraint and polishing the earth with his buckskin, crawled into the empty trench. The Sable Island ponies continually helped him. They were so nervous and so agile that the sentinels ceased to watch moving shadows.
The soldier looked up at St. John and its tower, knowing that he must enter in some manner before the moon rose. He dreaded the red brightness of moon-dawn, when guards whom he could discern against the stony ascent might detect his forehead above the breastwork. Behind him stretched an alluvial flat to the river's sands. The tide was running swiftly out, and under starlight its swirls and long muscular sweeps could be followed by a practiced eye.
As the soldier glanced warily in every direction, two lights left D'Aulnay's campand approached him, jerking and flaring in the hands of men who were evidently walking over irregular ground. They might be coming directly to take possession of the trench. But why should they proclaim their intention with torches to the batteries of Fort St. John? He looked around for some refuge from the advancing circle of smoky shine, and moved backwards along the bottom of the trench. The light stretched over and bridged him, leaving him in a stream of deep shadow, protected by the breastwork from sentinels above. He could therefore lift a cautious eye at the back of the trench, and scan the group now moving betwixt him and the river. There were seven persons, only one of whom strode the stones with reckless feet. This man's hands were tied behind his back, and a rope was noosed around his neck and held at the other end by a soldier.
"It is Klussman, our Swiss!" flashed through the soldier in the trench, with a mighty throb of rage and shame, and anxiety for the lady in the fort. If Klussman had been taken prisoner, the guns of St. John would surely speak in his behalf when he was about to be hanged before its very gate. Such a parade of the act must be discovered on the walls. It was plain that Klussman had deserted to D'Aulnay, and was now enjoying D'Aulnay's gratitude.
"The tree that doth best front the gates," said one of the men, pointing with his torch to an elm in the alluvial soil: "my lord said the tree that doth best front the gates."
"That hath no fit limbs," objected another.
"He said the tree that doth best front the gates," insisted the first man. "Besides this one, what shrub hereabouts is tall enough for our use?"
They moved down towards the elm. A stool carried by one man showed its long legs grotesquely behind his back. There were six persons besides the prisoner, all soldiers except one, who wore the coarse, long, cord-girdled gown of a Capuchin. Hishood was drawn over his face, and the torches imperfectly showed that he was of the bare-footed order and wore only sandals. He held up a crucifix and walked close beside Klussman. But the Swiss gazed all around the dark world which he was so soon to leave, and up at the fortress he had attempted to betray, and never once at the murmuring friar.
The soldier in the trench heard a breathing near him, and saw that a number of the ponies, drawn by the light, had left their fitful grazing and were venturing step by step beyond the end of the trench. Some association of this scene with soldiers who used to feed them at night, after a hard day of drawing home the winter logs, may have stirred behind their shaggy foreheads. He took his hunting-knife with sudden and desperate intention, threw off his moccasins, cut his leggins short at the middle of the leg, and silently divided his blanket into strips.
Preparations were going forward underthe elm. One of the soldiers climbed the tree and crept out upon an arched limb, catching the rope end thrown up to him. Both torches were given to one man, that all the others might set themselves to the task. Klussman stood upon the stool, which they had brought for the purpose from the cook's galley in one of their ships. His blond face, across which all his thoughts used to parade, was cast up by the torches like a stiffened mask, hopeless yet fearless in its expression.
"Come, Father Vincent," said the man who had made the knot, sliding down the tree. "This is a Huguenot fellow, and good words are lost on him. I wonder that my lord let him have a friar to comfort him."
"Retire, Father Vincent," said the men around the stool, with more roughness than they would have shown to a favorite confessor of D'Aulnay's. The Capuchin turned and walked toward the trench.
The soldier in the trench could not hear what they said, but he had time for nofurther thought of Klussman. He had been watching the ponies with the conviction that his own life hung on what he might drive them to do. They alternately snuffed at Klussman's presence and put their noses down to feel for springing grass. Before they could start and wheel from the friar, the soldier had thrown his hunting-knife. It struck the hind leg of the nearest pony and a scampering and snorting hurricane swept down past the elm. Klussman's stool and the torch-bearer were rolled together. Both lights were stamped out by the panic-struck men, who thought a sally had been made from the fort. Father Vincent saw the knife thrown, and turned back, but the man in the trench seized him with steel muscles and dragged him into its hollow. If the good father uttered cry against such violence, there was also noise under the elm, and the wounded pony yet galloped and snorted toward the river. The young soldier fastened his mouth shut with a piece of blanket, stripped off his capote and sandalsand tied him so that he could not move. Having done all most securely and put the capote and sandals upon himself, the soldier whispered at the friar's ear an apology which must have amused them both,—
"Pardon my roughness, good father. Perhaps you will lend me your clothes?"
D'Aulnay's sentinels about the walls, understanding that all this confusion was made by a stampede of ponies, kept the silence which had been enjoined on them. But some stir of inquiry seemed to occur in the bastions. Father Vincent, lying helpless in the trench, and feeling the chill of lately opened earth through his shaven head and partly nude body, wondered if he also had met D'Aulnay's gratitude for his recent inquiry into D'Aulnay's fitness to receive the sacraments.
"But I will tell my lord of Charnisay the truth about his sins," thought Father Vincent, unable to form any words with a pinioned mouth, "though he should go the length of procuring my death."
The soldier with his buckskin covered by Father Vincent's capote stepped out into the starlight and turned his cowled face toward the fort. He intended to tell the sentinels that D'Aulnay had sent him with a message to the commandant of St. John. The guards, discerning his capote, would perhaps obey a beckoning finger, and believe that he had been charged with silence; for not having heard the churchman's voice he dared not try to imitate it, and must whisper. But that unforeseen element which the wisest cannot rule out of their fate halted him before he took a dozen steps up the hill.
"Where is Father Vincent de Paris?" called some impatient person below the trench. Five figures coming from the tree gained distinctness as they advanced, but it was a new-comer who demanded again,—
"Where is Father Vincent de Paris? Did he not leave the camp with you?"
The soldier went down directly where his gray capote might speak for itself to theeye, and the man who carried the stool pointed with it toward the evident friar.
"There stands the friar behind thee. He hath been tumbled into the trench, I think."
"Is your affair done?"
"And well done, except that some cattle ran mad among us but now, and we thought a sally had been made, so we put out our torches."
"With your stupid din," said the messenger from camp, "you will wake up the guns of the fort at the very moment when Sieur D'Aulnay would send his truce bearer in."
"I thank the saints I am not like to be used for his agent," said the man who had been upset with the torches, "if the walls are to be stormed as they were this morning."
"He wants Father Vincent de Paris," said the under officer from camp. "Good father, you took more license in coming hither than my lord intended."
The soldier made some murmured noiseunder his cowl. He walked beside the officer and heard one man say to another behind him,—
"These holy folks have more courage than men-at-arms. My lord was minded to throw this one out of the ship when he sailed from Port Royal."
"The Sieur D'Aulnay hath too much respect to his religion to do that," answered the other.
"You had best move in silence," said the officer, turning his head toward them, and no further words broke the march into camp. D'Aulnay's camp was well above the reach of high tide, yet so near the river that soft and regular splashings seemed encroaching on the tents. The soldier noticed the batteries on their height, and counted as ably as he could for the cowl and night dimness the number of tents holding this little army. Far beyond them the palpitating waters showed changeful surfaces on Fundy Bay.
The capote was long for him. He kepthis hands within the sleeves. Before the guard-line was passed he saw in the middle of the camp an open tent. A long torch stood in front of it with the point stuck in the ground. The floating yellow blaze showed the tent's interior, its simple fittings for rest, the magnificent arms and garments of its occupant, and first of all, D'Aulnay de Charnisay himself, sitting with a rude camp table in front of him. He was half muffled in a furred cloak from the balm of that Easter night. Papers and an ink-horn were on the table, and two officers stood by, receiving orders.
This governor of Acadia had a triangular face with square temples and pointed beard, its crisp fleece also concealing his mouth except the thin edges of his lips. It was a handsome nervous face of black tones; one that kept counsel, and was not without humor. He noticed his subordinate approaching with the friar. The men sent to execute Klussman were dispersed to their tents.
"The Swiss hath suffered his punishment?" he inquired.
"Yes, my lord D'Aulnay. I met the soldiers returning."
"Did he say anything further concerning the state of the fort?"
"I know not, my lord. But I will call the men to be questioned."
"Let it be. He hath probably not lied in what he told me to-day of its weak garrison. But help is expected soon with La Tour. Perhaps he told more to the friar in their last conference."
"Heretics do not confess, my lord."
"True enough; but these churchmen have inquisitive minds which go into men's affairs without confession," said the governor of Acadia with a smile which lengthened slightly the thread-lines of his lips. D'Aulnay de Charnisay had an eye with a keen blue iris, sorting not at all with the pigments of his face. As he cast it on the returned friar his mere review deepened to a scrutiny used to detecting concealments.
"Hath this Capuchin shrunk?" exclaimed D'Aulnay. "He is not as tall as he was."
All present looked with quickened attention at the soldier, who expected them to pull off his cowl and expose a head of thrifty clusters which had never known the tonsure. His beaver cap lay in the trench with the real Father Vincent.
He folded his arms on his breast with a gesture of patience which had its effect. D'Aulnay's followers knew the warfare between their seignior and Father Vincent de Paris, the only churchman in Acadia who insisted on bringing him to account; and who had found means to supplant a favorite priest on this expedition, for the purpose of watching him. D'Aulnay bore it with assumed good-humor. He had his religious scruples as well as his revenges and ambitions. But there were ways in which an intruding churchman could be martyred by irony and covert abuse, and by discomfort chargeable to the circumstances of war. Father Vincent de Paris, on his part, bore such martyrdom silently, but stinted no word of needed rebuke. A woman's mourning in the dusky tent next to D'Aulnay's now rose to such wildness of piteous cries as to divert even him from the shrinkage of Father Vincent's height. No other voice could be heard, comforting her. She was alone with sorrow in the midst of an army of fray-hardened men. A look of embarrassment passed over De Charnisay's face, and he said to the officer nearest him,—
"Remove that woman to another part of the camp."
"The Swiss's wife, my lord?"
"The Swiss's widow, to speak exactly." He turned again with a frowning smile to the silent Capuchin. "By the proofs she gives, my kindness hath not been so great to that woman that the church need upbraid me."
Marguerite came out of the tent at a peremptory word given by the officer at its opening. She did not look toward D'Aulnay de Charnisay, the power who had made her his foolish agent to the destruction of the man who loved her. Muffling her heartbroken cries she followed the subaltern away into darkness—she who had meant at all costs to be mistress of Penobscot. When distance somewhat relieved their ears, D'Aulnay took up a paper lying before him on the table and spoke in some haste to the friar.
"You will go with escort to the walls of the fort, Father Vincent, and demand to speak with Madame La Tour. She hath, it appears, little aversion to being seen on the walls. Give into her hand this paper."
The soldier under the cowl, dreading that his unbroken silence might be noted against him, made some muttering remonstrance, at which D'Aulnay laughed while tying the packet.
"When churchmen go to war, Father Vincent, they must expect to share its risks, at least in offices of mediation. Look you: they tell me the Jesuits and missionaries of Quebec and Montreal are ever before the soldier in the march upon this New World. But Capuchins are a lazy, selfish order.They would lie at their ease in a monastery, exerting themselves only to spy upon their neighbors."
He held out the packet. The soldier in the capote had to step forward to receive it, and D'Aulnay's eye fell upon the sandal advanced near the torch.
"Come, this is not our Capuchin," he exclaimed grimly. "This man hath a foot whiter than my own!"
The feeling that he was detected gave the soldier desperate boldness and scorn of all further caution. He stood erect and lifted his face. Though the folds of the cowl fell around it, the governor caught his contemptuous eye.
"Wash thy heart as I have washed my feet, and it also will be white, D'Aulnay de Charnisay!"
"There spoke the Capuchin," said D'Aulnay with a nod. His close face allowed itself some pleasure in baiting a friar, and if he had suspected Father Vincent of changed identity, his own men were not sure of his suspicion the next instant.
"Our friar hath washed his feet," he observed insolently, pointing out the evident fact. "Such penance and ablution he hath never before put upon himself since he came to Acadia! I will set it down in my dispatches to the king, for his majesty will take pleasure in such news:—'Father Vincent de Paris, on this blessed Pâques day of the year 1645, hath washed his feet.'"
The men laughed in a half ashamed way which apologized to the holy man while it deferred to the master, and D'Aulnay dismissed his envoy with seriousness. The two officers who had taken his orders lighted another torch at the blaze in front of the tent, and led away the willing friar. D'Aulnay watched them down the avenue of lodges, and when their figures entered blurred space, watched the moving star which indicated their progress. The officer who had brought Father Vincent to this conference, also stood musing after them with unlaid suspicion.
"Close my tent," said D'Aulnay, rising, "and set the table within."
"My lord," spoke out the subordinate, "I did not tell you the men were thrown into confusion around the Swiss."
"Well, monsieur?" responded D'Aulnay curtly, with an attentive eye.
"There was a stampede of the cattle loosened from the stable. Father Vincent fell into the empty trench. They doubtless lost sight of him until he came out again."
"Therefore, monsieur?"
"It seemed to me as your lordship said, that this man scarce had the bearing of a friar, until, indeed, he spoke out in denunciation, and then his voice sounded a deeper tone than I ever heard in it before."
"Why did you not tell me this directly?"
"My lord, I had not thought it until he showed such readiness to move toward yon fort."
"Did you examine the trench?"
"No, my lord. I hurried the friar hither at your command."
"It was the part of a prudent soldier,"sneered his master, "to leave a dark trench possibly full of La Tour's recruits, and trot a friar into camp."
"But the sentinels are there, monsieur, and they gave no alarm."
"The sentinels are like you. They will think of giving an alarm to-morrow sunrise, when the fort is strengthened by a new garrison. Take a company of men, surround that trench, double the guards, send me back that friar, and do all with such haste as I have never seen thee show in my service yet."
"Yes, my lord."
While the officer ran among the tents, D'Aulnay walked back and forth outside, nervously impatient to have his men gone. He whispered with a laugh in his beard, "Charles de Menou, D'Aulnay de Charnisay, are you to be twice beaten by a woman? If La Tour hath come back with help and entered the fort, the siege may as well be raised to-morrow."
The cowled soldier taxed his escort inthe speed he made across that dark country separating camp and fortress.
"Go softly, good father," remonstrated one of the officers, stumbling among stones. "The Sieur D'Aulnay meant not that we should break our necks at this business."
But he led them with no abatement and a stern and offended mien; wondering secretly if the real Father Vincent would by this time be able to make some noise in the trench. Unaccountable night sounds startled the ear. He turned to the fortress ascent while the trench yet lay distant.
"There is an easier way, father," urged one of the men, obliged, however, to follow him and bend to the task of climbing. The discomfort of treading stony soil in sandals, and the sensibility of his uncovered shins to even that soft night air, made him smile under the cowl. A sentinel challenged them and was answered by his companions. Passing on, they reached the wall near the gate. Here the hill sloped less abruptly than at the towered corner. The rocky foundationof Fort St. John made a moat impossible. Guards on the wall now challenged them, and the muzzles of three guns looked down, distinct eyes in the lifted torchlight, but at the sign of truce these were withdrawn.
"The Sieur D'Aulnay de Charnisay sends this friar with dispatches to the lady of the fort," said one of the officers. "Call your lady to receive them into her own hand. These are our orders."
"And put down a ladder," said the other officer, "that he may ascend with them."
"We put down no ladders," answered the man leaning over the wall. "We will call our lady, but you must yourselves find an arm long enough to lift your dispatches to her."
During this parley, the rush of men coming from the camp began to be heard. The guards on the wall listened, and two of them promptly trained the cannon in that direction.
"You have come to surprise us again," taunted the third guard, leaning over the wall; "but the Swiss is not here now!"
The soldier saw his escape was cut off, and desperately casting back his monk's hood, he shouted upwards,—
"La Tour! La Tour! Put down the ladder—it is Edelwald!"
At that name, down came a ladder as if shot from a catapult. Edelwald sprung up the rounds and both of D'Aulnay's officers seized him. He had drawn one of his long pistols and he clubbed it on their heads so that they staggered back. The sentinels and advancing men fired on him, but by some muscular flash he was flat upon the top of the wall, and the cannon sprung with a roar at his enemies. They were directly in its track, and they took to the trench. Edelwald, dragging the ladder up after him, laughed at the state in which they must find Father Vincent. The entire garrison rushed to the walls, and D'Aulnay's camp stirred with the rolling of drums. Then there was a pause, and each partywaited further aggression from the other. The fort's gun had spoken but once. Perhaps some intelligence passed from trench to camp. Presently the unsuccessful company ventured from their breastwork and moved away, and both sides again had rest for the night.
Madame La Tour stood in the fort, watching the action of her garrison outlined against the sky. She could no longer ascend the wall by her private stairs. Cannon shot had torn down her chimney and piled its rock in a barricade against the door. Sentinels were changed, and the relieved soldiers descended from the wall and returned to that great room of the tower which had been turned into a common camp. It seemed under strange enchantment. There was a hole beside the portrait of Claude La Tour, and through its tunnel starlight could be seen and the night air breathed in. The carved buffet was shattered. The usual log, however, burned in cheer, and families had reunited in distinct nests. A pavilionof tapestry was set up for Lady Dorinda and all her treasures, near the stairs: the southern window of her chamber had been made a target.
Le Rossignol sat on a table, with the four expectant children still dancing in front of her. Was it not Pâques evening? The alarm being over she again began her merriest tunes. Irregular life in a besieged fortress had its fascination for the children. No bedtime laws could be enforced where the entire household stirred. But to Shubenacadie such turmoil was scandalous. He also lived in the hall during the day, and as late at night as his mistress chose, but he lived a retired life, squatted in a corner, hissing at all who passed near him. Perhaps he pined for water whereon to spread his wings and sail. Sometimes he quavered a plaintive remark on society as he found it, and sometimes he stretched up his neck to its longest length, a sinuous white serpent, and gazed wrathfully at the paneled ceiling. The firelight revealed him at this moment abundle of glistening satin, wrapped in sleep and his wings from the alarms of war.
Marie stood at the hearth to receive Edelwald. He came striding from among her soldiers, his head showing like a Roman's above the cowl. It was dark-eyed, shapely of feature, and with a mouth and inward curve above the chin so beautiful that their chiseled strength was always a surprise. As he faced the lady of the fortress he stood no taller than she did, but his contour was muscular.
After dropping on his knee to kiss her hand, he stood up to bear the search of her eyes. They swept down his friar's dress and found it not so strange that it should supplant her immediate inquiry,—
"Your news? My lord is well?"
"Yes, my lady."
"Is he without?"
"My lady, he is at the outpost at the head of Fundy Bay."
Her face whitened terribly. She knew what this meant. La Tour could get nohelp. Nicholas Denys denied him men. There was no hope of rescue for Fort St. John. He was waiting in the outpost for his ship to bring him home—the home besieged by D'Aulnay. The blood returned to her face with a rush, her mouth quivered, and she sobbed two or three times without tears. La Tour could have taken her in his arms. But Edelwald folded his empty arms across his breast.
"My lady, I would rather be shot than bring you this message."
"Klussman betrayed us, Edelwald! and I know I hurt men, hurt them with my own hands, striking and shooting on the wall!"
She threw herself against the settle and shook with weeping. It was the revolt of womanhood. The soldier hung his head. It relieved him to declare savagely,—
"Klussman hath his pay. D'Aulnay's followers have just hanged him below the fort."
"Hanged him! Hanged poor Klussman? Edelwald, I cannot have Klussman—hanged!"
Le Rossignol had stopped her mandolin, and the children clustered near Edelwald waiting for his notice. One of them now ran with the news to her.
"Klussman is hanged," she repeated, changing her position on the table and laying the mandolin down. "Faith, we are never satisfied with our good. I am in a rage now because they hanged not the woman in his stead."
Marie wiped off her tears. The black rings of sleeplessness around her eyes emphasized her loss of color, but she was beautiful.
"How foolish doth weariness make a woman! I expected no help from Denys—yet rested my last hope on it. You must eat, Edelwald. By your dress and the alarm raised you have come into the fort through danger and effort."
"My lady, if, you will permit me first to go to my room, I will find something which sorts better with a soldier than this churchman's gown. My buckskin, I was obliged to mutilate to make me a proper friar."
"Go, assuredly. But I know not what rubbish the cannon of D'Aulnay have battered down in your room. The monk's frock will scarce feel lonesome in that part of our tower now: we have had two Jesuits to lodge there since you left."
"Did they carry away Madame Bronck? I do not see her among your women."
"She is fortunate, Edelwald. A man loved her, and traveled hither from the Orange settlement. They were wed five days ago, and set out with the Jesuits to Montreal."
Marie did not lift her heavy eyelids while she spoke, and anguish passed unseen across Edelwald's face. Whoever was loved and fortunate, he stood outside of such experience. He was young, but there was to be no wooing for him in the world, however long war might spare him. The women of the fort waited with their children for his notice. His stirring to turn toward them rustled a paper under his capote.
"My lady," he said pausing, "D'Aulnayhad me in his camp and gave me dispatches to you."
"You were there in this friar's dress?"
Marie looked sincerely the pride she took in his simple courage.
"Yes, my lady, though much against my will. I was obliged to knock down a reverend shaveling and strip him. But the gown hath served fairly for the trouble."
"Hath D'Aulnay many men?"
"He is well equipped."
Edelwald took the packet from his belt and gave it to her. Marie broke the thread and sat down on the settle, spreading D'Aulnay's paper to the firelight. She read it in silence, and handed it to Edelwald. He leaned toward the fire and read it also.
D'Aulnay de Charnisay demanded the surrender of Fort St. John with all its stores, ammunition, moneys and plate, and its present small garrison. When Edelwald looked up, Marie extended her hand for the dispatch and threw it into the fire.
"Let that be his answer," said Edelwald.
"If we surrender," spoke the lady of the fort, "we will make our own terms."
"My lady, you will not surrender."
As she looked at Edelwald, the comfort of having him there softened the resolute lines of her face into childlike curves. Being about the same age she felt always a youthful comradeship with him. Her eyes again filled.
"Edelwald, we have lost ten men."
"D'Aulnay has doubtless lost ten or twenty times as many."
"What are men to him? Cattle, which he can buy. But to us, they are priceless. To say nothing of your rank, Edelwald, you alone are worth more than all the armies D'Aulnay can muster."
He sheltered his face with one hand as if the fire scorched him.
"My lady, Sieur Charles would have us hold this place. Consider: it is his last fortress except that stockade."
"You mistake him, Edelwald. He would save the garrison and let the fort go. Ifhe or you had not come to-night I must have died of my troubles."
She conquered some sobbing, and asked, "How does he bear this despair, Edelwald? for he knew it must come to this without help."
"He was heartsick with anxiety to return, my lady."
She leaned against the back of the settle.
"Do not say things to induce me to sacrifice his men for his fort."
"Do you think, my lady, that D'Aulnay would spare the garrison if he gets possession of this fort?"
"On no other condition will he get the fort. He shall let all my brave men go out with the honors of war."
"But if he accepts such terms—will he keep them?"
"Is not any man obliged to keep a written treaty?"
"Kings are scarce obliged to do that."
"I see what you would do," said Marie, "and I tell you it is useless. You wouldfrighten me with D'Aulnay into allowing you, our only officer, and these men, our only soldiers, to ransom this fort with your lives. It comes to that. We might hold out a few more days and end by being at his mercy."
"Let the men themselves be spoken to," entreated Edelwald.
"They will all, like you, beg to give themselves to the holding of Charles La Tour's property. I have balanced these matters night and day. We must surrender, Edelwald. We must surrender to-morrow."
"My lady, I am one more man. And I will now take charge of the defense."
"And what could I say to my lord if you were killed?—you, the friend of his house, the soldier who lately came with such hopes to Acadia. Our fortunes do you harm enough, Edelwald. I could never face my lord again without you and his men."
"Sieur Charles loves me well enough to trust me with his most dangerous affairs,my lady. The keeping of this fortress shall be one of them."
"O Edelwald, go away from me now!" she cried out piteously. He dropped his head and turned on the instant. The women met him and the children hung to him; and that little being who was neither woman nor child so resented the noise which they made about him as he approached her table that she took her mandolin and swept them out of her way.
"How fares Shubenacadie?" he inquired over the claw she presented to him.
"Shubenacadie's feathers are curdled. He hath greatly soured. Confess me and give me thy benediction, Father Edelwald for I have sinned."
"Not since I took these orders, I hope," said Edelwald. "As a Capuchin I am only an hour old."
"Within the hour, then, I have beaten my swan, bred a quarrel amongst these spawn of the common soldier, and wished a woman hanged."
"A naughty list," said Edelwald.
"Yes, but lying is worse than any of these. Lying doth make the soul sick."
"How do you know that?"
"I have tried it," said Le Rossignol. "Many a time have I tried it. Scarce half an hour ago I told her forlorn old highness that the fort was surely taken this time, and I think she hath buried herself in her chest."
"Edelwald," said a voice from the tapestried pavilion. Lady Dorinda's head and hand appeared, with the curtains drawn behind them.
As the soldier bent to his service upon the hand of the old maid of honor, she exclaimed whimsically,—
"What, Edelwald! Are our fortunes at such ebb that you are taking to a Romish cloister?"
"No cloister for me. Your ladyship sees only a cover which I think of rendering to its owner again. He may not have a second capote in the world, being friar extraordinary to D'Aulnay de Charnisay, who is notable for seizing other men's goods."
"Edelwald, you bring ill news?"
"There was none other to bring."
"Is Charles La Tour then in such straits that we are to have no relief in this fortress?"
"We can look for nothing, Lady Dorinda."
"Thou seest now, Edelwald, how France requites his service. If he had listened to his father he might to-day be second to none in Acadia, with men and wealth in abundance."
"Yet, your ladyship, we love our France!"
"Oh, you do put me out of patience! But the discomforts and perils of this siege have scarce left me any. We are walled together here like sheep."
"It is trying, your ladyship, but if we succeed in keeping the butcher out we may do better presently."
Marie sent her woman for writing tools,and was busy with them when Edelwald returned in his ordinary rich dark dress. She made him a place beside her on the settle, and submitted the paper to his eye. The women and children listened. They knew their situation was desperate. Whispering together they decided with their lady that she would do best to save her soldiers and sacrifice the fort.
Edelwald read the terms she intended to demand, and then looked aside at the beautiful and tender woman who had borne the hardships of war. She should do anything she wished. It was worth while to surrender if surrendering decreased her care. All Acadia was nothing when weighed against her peace of mind. He felt his rage mounting against Charles La Tour for leaving her exposed in this frontier post, the instrument of her lord's ambition and political feud. In Edelwald's silent and unguessed warfare with his secret, he had this one small half hour's truce. Marie sat under his eyes in firelight, depending on the comfort ofhis presence. Rapture opened its sensitive flower and life culminated for him. Unconscious of it, she wrote down his suggestions, bending her head seriously to the task.
Edelwald himself finally made a draft of the paper for D'Aulnay. The weary men had thrown themselves down to sleep, and heard no colloquy. But presently the cook was aroused from among them and bid to set out such a feast as he had never before made in Fort St. John.
"Use of our best supplies," directed Marie. "To-morrow we may give up all we have remaining to the enemy. We will eat a great supper together this Pâques night."
The cook took an assistant and labored well. Kettles and pans multiplied on coals raked out for their service. Marie had the men bring such doors as remained from the barracks and lay them from table to table, making one long board for her household; and this the women dressed in the best linen of the house. They set on plate whichhad been in La Tour's family for generations. Every accumulation of prosperity was brought out for this final use. The tunnel in the wall was stopped with blankets, and wax candles were lighted everywhere. Odors of festivity filled the children with eagerness. It was like the new year when there was always merry-making in the hall, yet it was also like a religious ceremony. The men rose from their pallets and set aside screens, and the news was spread when sentinels were changed.
Marie called Zélie up to her ruined apartment, and standing amidst stone and plaster, was dressed in her most magnificent gown and jewels. She appeared on the stairs in the royal blackness of velvet whitened by laces and sparkling with points of tinted fire. Edelwald led her to the head of the long board, and she directed her people to range themselves down its length in the order of their families.
"My men," said Madame La Tour to each party in turn as they were relieved onthe walls to sit down at the table below her, "we are holding a passover supper this Pâques night because it may be our last night in Fort St. John. You all understand how Sieur de la Tour hath fared. We are reduced to the last straits. Yet not to the last straits, my men, if we can keep you. With such followers your lord can make some stand elsewhere. D'Aulnay has proposed a surrender. I refused his terms, and have set down others, which will sacrifice the fort but save the garrison. Edelwald, our only officer, is against surrender, because he, like yourselves, would give the greater for the less, which I cannot allow."
"My lady," spoke Glaud Burge, a sturdy grizzled man, rising to speak for the first squad, "we have been talking of this matter together, and we think Edelwald is right. The fort is hard beset, and it is true there are fewer of us than at first, but we may hold out somehow and keep the walls around us. We have no stomach to strike flag to D'Aulnay de Charnisay."
"My lady," spoke Jean le Prince, the youngest man in the fortress, who was appointed to speak for the second squad when their turn came to sit down at the table, "we also think Edelwald is right in counseling you not to give up Fort St. John. We say nothing of D'Aulnay's hanging Klussman, for Klussman deserved it. But we would rather be shot down man by man than go out by the grace of D'Aulnay."
She answered both squads,—
"Do not argue against surrender, my men. We can look for no help. The fort must go in a few more days anyhow, and by capitulating we can make terms. My lord can build other forts, but where will he find other followers like you? You will march out not by the grace of D'Aulnay but with the honors of war. Now speak of it no more, and let us make this a festival."
So they made it a festival. With guards coming and going constantly, every man took the pleasure of the hall while the walls were kept.
Such a night was never before celebrated in Fort St. John. A heavier race might have touched the sadness underlying such gayety; or have fathomed moonlight to that terrible burden of the elm-tree down the slope. But this French garrison lent themselves heartily to the hour, enjoying without past or future. Stories were told of the New World and of France, tales of persecuted Huguenots, legends which their fathers had handed down to them, and traditions picked up among the Indians. Edelwald took the dwarf's mandolin and stood up among them singing the songs they loved, the high and courageous songs, loving songs, and songs of faith. Lady Dorinda, having shut her curtain for the night, declined to take any part in this household festivity, though she contributed some unheard sighs and groans of annoyance during its progress. A phlegmatic woman, fond of her ease, could hardly keep her tranquillity, besieged by cannon in the daytime, and by chattering and laughter, the cracking ofnuts and the thump of soldiers' feet half the night.
But Shubenacadie came out of his corner and lifted his wings for battle. Le Rossignol first soothed him and then betrayed him into shoes of birch bark which she carried in her pocket for the purpose of making Shubenacadie dance. Shubenacadie began to dance in a wild untutored trot most laughable to see. He varied his paddling on the flags by sallies with bill and wings against the dear mistress who made him a spectacle; and finally at Marie's word he was relieved, and waddled back to his corner to eat and doze and mutter swan talk against such orgies in Fort St. John. The children had long fallen asleep with rapturous fatigue, when Marie stood up and made her people follow her in a prayer. The waxlights were then put out, screens divided the camp, and quiet followed.
Of all nights in Le Rossignol's life this one seemed least likely to be chosen as her occasion for a flight. The walls were strictlyguarded, and at midnight the moon spread its ghostly day over all visible earth. Besides, if the fortress was to be surrendered, there was immediate prospect of a voyage for all the household.
The dwarf's world was near the ground, to which the thinking of the tall men and women around her scarcely stooped. But she seized on and weighed and tried their thoughts, arriving at shrewd issues. Nobody had asked her advice about the capitulation. Without asking anybody's advice she decided that the Hollandais Van Corlaer and the Jesuit priest Father Jogues would be wholesome checks upon D'Aulnay de Charnisay when her lady opened the fort to him. The weather must have prevented Van Corlaer from getting beyond the sound of cannon, and neither he nor the priest could indifferently leave the lady of St. John to her fate, and Madame Antonia would refuse to do it. Le Rossignol believed the party that had set out early in the week must be encamped not far away.
Edelwald mounted a bastion with the sentinels. That weird light of the moon which seems the faded and forgotten ghost of day, rested everywhere. The shadow of the tower fell inward, and also partly covered the front wall. This enchanted land of night cooled Edelwald. He threw his arms upward with a passionate gesture to which the soldiers had become accustomed in their experience of the young chevalier.
"What is that?" exclaimed the man nearest him, for there was disturbance in the opposite bastion. Edelwald moved at once across the interval of wall and found the sentinels in that bastion divided between laughter and superstitious awe.
"She's out again," said one.
"Who is out?" demanded Edelwald.
"The little swan-riding witch."
"You have not let the dwarf scale this wall? If she could do that unobserved, my men, we are lax."
"She is one who will neither be let nor hindered. We are scarce sure we even saw her. There was but the swoop of wings."
"Why, Renot, my lad," insisted Edelwald, "we could see her white swan now in this noon of moonlight, if she were abroad. Besides, D'Aulnay has sentinels stationed around this height. They will check her."
"They will check the wind across Fundy Bay first," said the other man.
"You cannot think Le Rossignol has risen in the air on her swan's back? That is too absurd," said Edelwald. "No one ever saw her play such pranks. And you could have winged the heavy bird as he rose."
"I know she is out of Fort St. John at this minute," insisted Renot Babinet. "And how are you to wing a bird which gets out of sight before you know what has happened?"
"I say it is no wonder we have trouble in this seigniory," growled the other man. "Our lady never could see a mongrel baby or a witch dwarf or a stray black gown anywhere, but she must have it into the fort and make it free of the best here."
"And God forever bless her," said Edelwald, baring his head.
"Amen," they both responded with force.
The silent cry was mighty behind Edelwald's lips;—the cry which he intrusted not even to his human breath—
"My love—my love! My royal lady! God, thou who alone knowest my secret, make me a giant to hold it down!"
At daybreak a signal on the wall where it could be seen from D'Aulnay's camp brought an officer and his men to receive Madame La Tour's dispatches. Glaud Burge handed them, down at the end of a ramrod.
"But see yonder," he said to François Bastarack his companion, as they stood and watched the messengers tramp away. He pointed to Klussman below the fort—poor Klussman whom the pearly vapors of morning could not conceal. "I could have done that myself in first heat, but I like not treating with a man who did it coolly."
Parleying and demurring over the terms of surrender continued until noon. All that time ax, saw and hammer worked inD'Aulnay's camp as if he had suddenly taken to ship-building. But the pastimes of a victorious force are regarded with dull attention by the vanquished. Finally the papers were handed up bearing D'Aulnay's signature. They guaranteed to Madame La Tour the safety of her garrison, who were to march out with their arms and personal belongings, the household goods of her people; and La Tour's ship with provisions enough to stock it for a voyage. The money, merchandise, stores, jewels and ordnance fell to D'Aulnay with the fort.
D'Aulnay marched directly on his conquest. His drums approached, and the garrison ran to throw into a heap such things as they and their families were to take away. Spotless weather and a dimpled bay adorned this lost seigniory. It was better than any dukedom in France to these first exiled Acadians. Pierre Doucett's widow and another bereaved woman knelt to cry once more over the trench by the powder-house. Her baby, hid in a case like a bolster, hung across her shoulder. Lady Dorinda's belongings, numbered among the goods of the household, were also placed near the gate. She sat within the hall, wrapped for her journey, composed and silent. For when the evil day actually overtook Lady Dorinda, she was too thorough a Briton to cringe. She met her second repulse from Acadia as she had met her first, when Claude La Tour found her his only consolation. In this violent uprooting of family life so long grown to one place, Le Rossignol was scarcely missed. Each one thought of the person dearest to himself and of that person's comfort. Marie noted her absence, but the dwarf never came to harm. She was certain to rejoin the household somewhere, and who could blame her for avoiding the capitulation if she found it possible? The little Nightingale could not endure pain. Edelwald drew the garrison up in line and the gates were opened.
D'Aulnay entered the fort with his small army. He was splendidly dressed, and suchpieces of armor as he wore dazzled the eye. As he returned the salute of Edelwald and the garrison, he paused and whitened with chagrin. Klussman had told him something of the weakness of the place, but he had not expected to find such a pitiful remnant of men. Twenty-three soldiers and an officer! These were the precious creatures who had cost him so much, and whom their lady was so anxious to save! He smiled at the disproportionate preparations made by his hammers and saws, and glanced back to see if the timbers were being carried in. They were, at the rear of his force, but behind them intruded Father Vincent de Paris wrapped in a blanket which one of the soldiers had provided for him. The scantiness of this good friar's apparel should have restrained him in camp. But he was such an apostle as stalks naked to duty if need be, and he felt it his present duty to keep the check of religion upon the implacable nature of D'Aulnay de Charnisay.
D'Aulnay ordered the gates shut. Hewould have shut out Father Vincent, but it could not be managed without great discourtesy, and there are limits to that with a churchman. The household and garrison ready to depart saw this strange action with dismay, and Marie stepped directly down from her hall to confront her enemy. D'Aulnay had seen her at Port Royal when he first came to Acadia. He remembered her motion in the dance, and approved of it. She was a beautiful woman, though her Huguenot gown and close cap now gave her a widowed look—becoming to a woman of exploits. But she was also the woman to whom he owed one defeat and much humiliation.
He swept his plume at her feet.
"Permit me, Madame La Tour, to make my compliments to an amazon. My own taste are women who stay in the house at their prayers, but the Sieur de la Tour and I differ in many things."
"Doubtless, my lord De Charnisay," responded Marie with the dignity which cannot taunt, though she still believed the outcast child to be his. "But why have you closed on us the gates which we opened to you?"
"Madame, I have been deceived in the terms of capitulation."
"My lord, the terms of capitulation were set down plainly and I hold them signed by your hand."
"But a signature is nothing when gross advantage hath been taken of one of the parties to a treaty."
The mistake she had made in trusting to the military honor of D'Aulnay de Charnisay swept through Marie. But she controlled her voice to inquire,—
"What gross advantage can there be, my lord D'Aulnay—unless you are about to take a gross advantage of us? We leave you here ten thousand pounds of the money of England, our plate and jewels and furs, and our stores except a little food for a journey. We go out poor; yet if our treaty is kept we shall complain of no gross advantage."
"Look at those men," said D'Aulnay, shaking his glove at her soldiers.
"Those weary and faithful men," said Marie: "I see them."
"You will see them hanged as traitors, madame. I have no time to parley," exclaimed D'Aulnay. "The terms of capitulation are not satisfactory to me. I do not feel bound by them. You may take your women and withdraw when you please, but these men I shall hang."
While he spoke he lifted and shook his hand as if giving a signal, and the garrison was that instant seized, by his soldiers. Her women screamed. There was such a struggle in the fort as there had been upon the wall, except that she herself stood blank in mind, and pulseless. The actual and the unreal shimmered together. But there stood her garrison, from Edelwald to Jean le Prince, bound like criminals, regarding their captors with that baffled and half ashamed look of the surprised and overpowered. Above the mass of D'Aulnay's busy soldierytimber uprights were reared, and hammers and spikes set to work on the likeness of a scaffold. The preparations of the morning made the completion of this task swift and easy. D'Aulnay de Charnisay intended to hang her garrison when he set his name to the paper securing their lives. The ringing of hammers sounded far off to Marie.
"I don't understand these things," she articulated. "I don't understand anything in the world!"
D'Aulnay gave himself up to watching the process, in spite of Father Vincent de Paris, whose steady remonstrances he answered only by shrugs. In that age of religious slaughter the Capuchin could scarcely object to decreasing heretics, but he did object as a man and a priest to such barbarous treachery toward men with whom a compact had been made. The refined nurture of France was not recent in D'Aulnay's experience, but he came of a great and honorable house, and the friar's appeal was made to inherited instincts.
"Good churchman," spoke out Jean le Prince, the lad, shaking his hair back from his face, "your capote and sandals lie there by the door of the tower, where Edelwald took thought to place them for you. But you who have the soldier's heart should wear the soldier's dress, and hide D'Aulnay de Charnisay under the cowl."
"You men-at-arms," Glaud Burge exhorted the guards drawn up, on each side of him and his fellow-prisoners, "will you hang us up like dogs? If we must die we claim the death of soldiers. You have your pieces in your hands; shoot us. Do us such grace as we would do you in like extremity."
The guards looked aside at each other and then at their master, shamed through their peasant blood by the outrage they were obliged to put upon a courageous garrison. But Edelwald said nothing. His eyes were upon Marie. He would not increase her anguish of self-reproach by the change of a muscle in his face. The garrison was trapped and at the mercy of a mercilessenemy. His most passionate desire was to have her taken away that she might not witness the execution. Why was Sieur Charles La Tour sitting in the stockade at the head of Fundy Bay while she must endure the sight of this scaffold?