Chapter XV: A Soldier 191 (4)

"Did you put that in my breastplate?" said Klussman, pointing to the hand as it lay palm upwards. Marguerite shuddered and burst out crying. This had been her employment much of the night, but the nervous fit of childish weeping swept away all of Klussman's self-control.

"No; no;" she repeated. "You think I do everything that is horrible." And she sobbed upon her hands.

Klussman stooped down and tossed the hand like an escaped coal behind the log. As he stooped he said,--

"I don't think that. Don't cry. If you cry I will shoot myself."

Marguerite looked up and saw his helplessness in his face. He had sought her before, but only with reproaches. Now his resentment was broken. Twice had the dwarfs mischief thrown Marguerite on his compassion, and thereby diminished his resistance to her. Jonas Bronck's hand, in its red-hot seclusion behind the log, writhed and smoked, discharging its grosser parts up the chimney's shaft. Unseen, it lay a wire-like outline of bone; unseen, it became a hand of fairy ashes, trembling in every filmy atom; finally an ember fell upon it, and where a hand had been some bits of lime lay in a white glow.

Klussman went out and mounted one of the bastions, where the gunners were already preparing for work. The weather had changed in the night, and the sky seemed immeasurably lifted while yet filled with the uncertainties of dawn. Fundy Bay revealed more and more of its clean blue-emerald level, and far eastward the glassy water shaded up to a flushing of pink. Smoke rose from the mess fires in D'Aulnay's camp. The first light puff of burnt powder sprung from his batteries, and the artillery duel again began.

"If we had but enough soldiers to make a sally," said Madame La Tour to her officer, as she also came for an instant to the bastion, "we might take his batteries. Oh, for monsieur to appear on the bay with a stout shipload of men."

"It is time he came," said the Swiss.

"Yes, we shall see him or have news of him soon."

In the tumult of Klussman's mind Jonas Bronck's hand never again came uppermost. He cared nothing and thought nothing about that weird fragment, in the midst of living disaster. It had merely been the occasion of his surrendering to Marguerite. He determined that when La Tour returned and the siege was raised, if he survived he would take his wife and go to some new colony. Live without her he could not. Yet neither could he reëspouse her in Fort St. John, where he had himself openly denounced her.

Spring that day leaped forward to a semblance of June. The sun poured warmth; the very air renewed life. But to Klussman it was the brilliancy of passing delirium. He did not feel when gun-metal touched his hands. The sound of the incoming tide, which could be heard betwixt artillery boomings, and the hint of birds which that sky gave, were mute against his thoughts.

Though D'Aulnay's loss was visibly heavy, it proved also an ill day for the fort. The southeast bastion was raked by a fire which disabled the guns and killed three men. Five others were wounded at various posts. The long spring twilight sunk through an orange horizon rim and filled up the measure which makes night, before firing reluctantly stopped. Marie had ground opened near the powder magazine to make a temporary grave for her three dead. They had no families. She held a taper in her hand and read a service over them. One bastion and so many men being disabled, a sentinel was posted in the turret after the gunners descended. The Swiss took this duty on himself, and felt his way up the pitch-black stairs. He had not seen Marguerite in the hall when he hurriedly took food, but she was safe in the tower. No woman ventured out in the storm of shot. The barracks were charred and battered.

As Klussman reached the turret door he exclaimed against some human touch, but caught his breath and surrendered himself to Marguerite's arms, holding her soft body and smoothing her silk-stranded hair.

"I heard you say you would come up here," murmured Marguerite. "And the door was unlocked."

"Where have you been since morning?"

"Behind a screen in the great hall. The women are cruel."

Klussman hated the women. He kissed his wife with the first kiss since their separation, and all the toils of war failed to unman him like that kiss.

"But there was that child!" he groaned.

"That was not my child," said Marguerite.

"The baby brought here with you!"

"It was not mine."

"Whose was it?"

"It was a drunken soldier's. His wife died. They made me take care of it," said Marguerite resentfully.

"Why didn't you tell me that?" exclaimed Klussman. "You made me lie to my lady!"

Marguerite had no answer. He understood her reticence, and the degradation which could not be excused.

"Who made you take care of it?"

"He did."

"D'Aulnay?" Klussman uttered through his teeth.

"Yes; I don't like him."

"_I_ like him!" said the savage Swiss.

"He is cruel," complained Marguerite, "and selfish."

The Swiss pressed his cheek to her soft cheek.

"I never was selfish and cruel to thee," he said, weakly.

"No, you never were."

"Then why," burst out the husband afresh, "did you leave me to follow that beast of prey?"

Marguerite brought a sob from her breast which was like a sword through Klussman. He smoothed and smoothed her hair.

"But what did I ever do to thee, Marguerite?"

"I always liked you best," she said. "But he was a great lord. The women in barracks are so hateful, and a common soldier is naught."

"You would be the lady of a seignior," hissed Klussman.

"Thou knowest I was fit for that," retorted Marguerite with spirit.

"I know thou wert. It is marrying me that has been thy ruin." He groaned with his head hanging.

"We are not ruined yet," she said, "if you care for me."

"That was a stranger child?" he repeated.

"All the train knew it to be a motherless child. He had no right to thrust it on me."

"I demand no testimony of D'Aulnay's followers," said Klussman roughly.

He let her go from his arms, and stepped to the battlements. His gaze moved over the square of the fortress, and eastward to that blur of whiteness which hinted the enemy's tents, the hint being verified by a light or two.

"I have a word to tell you," said Marguerite, leaning beside her husband.

"I have this to tell thee," said the Swiss. "We must leave Acadia." His arm again fondled her, and he comforted his sore spirit with an instant's thought of home and peace somewhere.

"Yes. We can go to Penobscot," she said.

"Penobscot?" he repeated with suspicion.

"The king will give you a grant of Penobscot."

"The king will give it to--me?"

"Yes. And it is a great seigniory."

"How do you know the king will do that?"

"He told me to tell you; he promised it."

"The king? You never saw the king."

"No."

"D'Aulnay?"

"Yes."

"I would I had him by the throat!" burst out Klussman. Marguerite leaned her cheek on the stone and sighed. The bay seemed full of salty spice. It was a night in which the human soul must beat against casements to break free and roam the blessed dark. All of spring was in the air. Directly overhead stood the north star, with slow constellations wheeling in review before him.

"So D'Aulnay sent you to spy on my lord, as my lord believed?"

"You shall not call me a spy. I came to my husband. I hate him," she added in a resentful burst. "He made me walk the marshes, miles and miles alone, carrying that child."

"Why the child?"

"Because the people from St. John would be sure to pity it."

"And what word did he send you to tell me?" demanded Klussman. "Give me that word."

Marguerite waited with her face downcast.

"It was kind of him to think of me," said the Swiss; "and to send you with the message!"

She felt mocked, and drooped against the wall. And in the midst of his scorn he took her face in his hands with a softness he could not master.

"Give me the word," he repeated. Marguerite drew his neck down and whispered, but before she finished whispering Klussman flung her against the cannon with an oath.

"I thought it would be, betray my lord's fortress to D'Aulnay de Charnisay! Go down stairs, Marguerite Klussman. When I have less matter in hand, I will flog thee! Hast thou no wit at all? To come from a man who broke faith with thee, and offer his faith to me! Bribe me with Penobscot to betray St. John to him!"

Marguerite sat on the floor. She whispered, gasping,--

"Tell not the whole fortress."

Klussman ceased to talk, but his heels rung on the stone as he paced the turret. He felt himself grow old as silence became massive betwixt his wife and him. The moon rose, piercing the cannon embrasure, and showed Marguerite weeping against the wall. The mass of silence drove him resistless before her will. That soft and childlike shape did not propose treason to him. He understood that she thought only of herself and him. It was her method of bringing profit out of the times. He heard his relief stumble at the foot of the turret stairs, and went down the winding darkness to stop and send the soldier back to bed.

"I am not sleepy," said Klussman. "I slept last night. Go and rest till daybreak." And the man willingly went. Marguerite had not moved a fold of her gown when her husband again came into the lighted tower. The Swiss lifted her up and made her stand beside him while he stanched her tears.

"You hurt me when you threw me against the cannon," she said.

"I was rough. But I am too foolish fond to hold anger. It has worn me out to be hard on thee. I am not the man I was."

Marguerite clung around him. He dumbly felt his misfortune in being thralled by a nature of greater moral crudity than his own. But she was his portion in the world.

"You flung me against the cannon because I wanted you made a seignior."

"It was because D'Aulnay wanted me made a traitor."

"What is there to do, indeed?" murmured Marguerite. "He said if you would take the sentinels off the wall on the entrance side of the fort, at daybreak any morning, he will be ready to scale that wall."

"But how will he know I have taken the sentinels off?"

"You must hold up a ladder in your hands."

"The tower is between that side of the fort and D'Aulnay's camp. No one would see me standing with a ladder in my hands."

"When you set the ladder against the outside wall, it is all you have to do, except to take me with you as you climb down. It is their affair to see the signal."

"So D'Aulnay plans an ambush between us and the river? And suppose I did all that and the enemy failed to see the signal? I should go down there to be hung, or my lady would have me thrown into the keep here, and perhaps shot. I ought to be shot."

"They will see the signal," insisted Marguerite. "I know all that is to be done. He made me say it over until I tired of it. You must mount the wall where the gate is: that side of the fort toward the river, the camp being on another side."

Klussman again smoothed her hair and argued with her as with a child.

"I cannot betray my lady. You see how madame trusts me."

She grieved against his hard breastplate with insistence which pierced even that.

"I am indeed not fit to be thought on beside the lady!"

"I would do anything for thee but betray my lady."

"And when you have held her fort for her will she advance you by so much as a handful of land?"

"I was made lieutenant since the last siege."

"But now you may be a seignior with a holding of your own," repeated Marguerite. So they talked the night away. She showed him on one hand a future of honor and plenty which he ought not to withhold from her; and on the other, a wandering forth to endless hardships. D'Aulnay had worked them harm; but this was in her mind an argument that he should now work them good. Being a selfish lord, powerful and cruel, he could demand this service as the condition of making her husband master of Penobscot; and the service itself she regarded as a small one compared to her lone tramping of the marshes to La Tour's stockade. D'Aulnay was certain to take Fort St. John some time. He had the king and all France behind him; the La Tours had nobody. Marguerite was a woman who could see no harm in advancing her husband by the downfall of his mere employers. Her husband must be advanced. She saw herself lady of Penobscot.

The Easter dawn began to grow over the world. Klussman remembered what day it was, and lifted her up to look over the battlements at light breaking from the east.

Marguerite turned her head from point to point of the dewy world once more rising out of chaos. She showed her husband a new trench and a line of breastworks between the fort and the river. These had been made in the night, and might have been detected by him if he had guarded his post. The jutting of rocks probably hid them from sentinels below.

"D'Aulnay is coming nearer," said the Swiss, looking with haggard indifferent eyes at these preparations, and an occasional head venturing above the fresh ridge. Marguerite threw her arms around her husband's neck, and hung on him with kisses.

"Come on, then," he said, speaking with the desperate conviction of a man who has lost himself. "I have to do it. You will see me hang for this, but I'll do it for you."

XV.

A SOLDIER.

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 all night 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 sentinels joining 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 from their 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 his journey 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 dream canoes. 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 countless lone 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 expanse of 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 the other 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 except the 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 and of 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 without further 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 camp and 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. His hood 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 under the 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 no further 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 sandals and 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?"

XVI.

THE CAMP.

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 the eye, 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 noise under 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 kept his 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 in the 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 foundation of 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!"

XVII.

AN ACADIAN PASSOVER.

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 party waited 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 pavilion of 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 a bundle 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 no help. 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.