The Lady of Fort St. John

IX.

THE TURRET.

WHILE Antonia and Van Corlaer continued their conference on the stone steps leading to the wall, the dwarf was mounting a flight which led to the turret. Klussman walked ahead, carrying her instrument and her ration for the day. There was not a loophole to throw glimmers upon the blackness. The ascent wound about as if carved through the heart of rock, and the tall Swiss stooped to its slope. Such a mountain of unseen terraces made Le Rossignol pant. She lifted herself from step to step, growing dizzy with the turns and holding to the wall.

“Wait for me,” she called up the gloom, and shook her fist at the unseen soldier because he gave her no reply.

Klussman stepped out on the turret floor and set down his load. Stretching himself from the cramp of the stairway, he stood looking over bay and forest and coast. The battlemented wall was quite as high as his shoulder. One small cannon, brought up with enormous labor, was here trained through an embrasure to command the mouth of the river.

Le Rossignol emerged into the unroofed light and the sea air like a potentate, dragging a warm furred robe. She had fastened great hoops of gold in her ears, and they gave her peaked face a barbaric look. It was her policy to go in state to punishment. The little sovereign stalked with long steps and threw out her arm in command.

“Monsieur the Swiss, stoop over and give me thy back until I mount the battlement. ”

Klussman, full of his own bitter and confused thinking, looked blankly down at her heated countenance.

“Give me thy back! ” sang the dwarf, in the melodious scream which anger never made harsh in her.

“Faith, yes, and my entire carcass, ” muttered the Swiss. “I care not what becomes of me now.”

“Madame Marie sent you to escort me to this turret. You have the honor because you are an officer. Now do your duty as lieutenant of this fortress, and make me a comfortable prisoner.”

Klussman set his hands upon his sides and smiled down upon his prisoner.

“What is your will? ”

“Twice have I told you to stoop and give me your back, that I may mount from the cannon to the battlements. Am I to he shut up here without an outlook ? ”

“May I be hanged if I do that! ” exclaimed Klussman. “Make a footstool of myself for a spoiled puppet like thee ? ”

Le Rossignol ran toward him, and kicked his boots with the heel of her moccasin. The Swiss, remonstrating and laughing, moved back before her.

“Have some care, —thou wilt break a deer-hoof on my stout leather. And why mount the battlements? A fall from this turret edge would spread thee out like a raindrop. Though the fewer women there are in the world the better,” added Klussman bitterly.

“Presume not to call me a woman! ”

“Why, what art thou?”

“I am the Nightingale.”

“ By thy red head thou art the woodpecker. Here is my back, clatterbill. Why should I not crawl the ground to be walked over? I have been worse used than that.”

He grinned fiercely as he bent down with his hands upon his knees. Le Rossignol mounted the cannon, and with a couple of light bounds, making him a perch midway, reached an embrasure, and sat there arranging her robes.

“Now you may hand me my clavier, ” she said, “and then you shall have my thanks and my pardon.”

The Swiss handed her the instrument. His contempt was ruder than he knew. Le Rossignol pulled her gullskin cap well down upon her ears, for, though the day was now bright overhead. a raw wind came across the bay. She leaned over and looked down into the fortress to call her swan. The cook was drawing water from the well, and that soft sad note lifted his eyes to the turret. Le Rossignol squinted at him, and the man went into the barracks and told his wife that he feltshoot ing pains in his limbs that instant.

“Come hither, gentle Swiss,” said the dwarf, striking the plectrum into her mandolin strings, “and I will reward thee for thy back and all thy courtly services. ”

Klussman stepped to the wall and looked with her into the fort.

“Take that sweet sight for my thanks, ” said Le Rossignol. pointing to M argueri te below.

The miserable girl had come out of the barracks, and was sitting in the sun beside the oven. She rested her head against it, and met the sky light with half-shut eyes, lovely in silken hair and pallid flesh through all her sullenness and dejection. As Klussman saw her he uttered an oath under his breath, which the dwarf’s hand on the mandolin echoed with a bang. He turned his back on the sight and betook himself to the stairway, the dwarf’s laughter following him. She felt high in the world, and played with a good spirit. The sentinel below heard her, but lie took care to keep a steady and level eye. When the swan rose past him, spreading its wings almost against his face, he prudently trod the wall without turning his head.

“ Hé, Shubenacadie, ” said the human morsel to her familiar, as the wide wings composed themselves beside her. “We had scarce said good-morning when I must be haled before my lady for that box of the Hollandaise. ” The swan was a huge white creature of his kind, with fiery eyes. There was satin texture delightful to the touch in the firm and glistening plumage of his swelling breast. Le Rossignol smoothed it.

“They have few trinkets in that barbarous Fort Orange in the west, I detest that Hollandaise more since she carries about such a casket. Let us be cozy. Kiss me, Shubenacadie.”

The swan’s attachment and obedience to her were struggling against some swanlike instinct which made him rear a lofty head and twist it riverward.

“Kiss me, I say! Shall I have to beat thee over the head with my clavier to teach thee manners ? ”

Shubenacadie darted his snake neck downward and touched bills with her. She patted his coral nostrils.

“Not yet. Before you take to the water we must have some talk. I am shut up here to stay this whole day. And for what ? Not because of the casket, for they know not what I have done with it, but because you and I sometimes go out without the password. Stick out your toes and let me polish them.”

Shubenacadie resisted this mandate, and his autocrat promptly dragged one foot from under him, causing him to topple on the parapet. He hissed at her. Le Rossignol looked up at the threatening flat head and hissed back.

“You are as bad as that Swiss,” she laughed. “I will put a yoke on you. I will tie you to the settle in the hall. Why have all man creatures such tempers ? Thank Heaven I was not born to hose and doublet! Never did I see a mild man in my life except Edelwald. As for this Swiss, I am done with him. He hath a wife, Shubenacadie. She sits down there by the oven now; a miserable thing turned off by D’Aulnay de Charnisay. Have I told you the Swiss had a soul above a common soldier, and I picked him out to pay court to me? Beat me for it. Pull the red hair he condemned. I would have had him sighing for me that I might pity him. The populace is beneath us, hut we must amuse ourselves. Beat me, I demand. Punish me well for abasing my eyes to that Swiss. ”

Shubenacadie understood the challenge and the tone. He was used to rendering such service when his mistress repented of her sins. Yet he gave his tail feathers a slight flirt, and quavered some guttural to sustain his part in the conversation, and to beg that he might he excused from holding the sword this time. As she continued to prod him, however, he struck her with his beak. Le Rossignol was human in never finding herself able to hear the punishment she courted. She flew at the swan, he spread his wings for ardent warfare, and they both dropped to the stone floor in a whirlwind of mandolin, arms, and feathers. The dwarf kept her hold on him until he cowered and lay with his neck along the pavement.

“Thou art a Turk, a rascal, a horned beast! ” panted Le Rossignol.

Shubenacadie quavered plaintively, and all her wrath was gone. She spread out one of his wings and smoothed the plumes. She nursed his head in her lap and sang to him. Two of his feathers, plucked out in the contest, she put in her bosom. He flirted his tail and gathered himself again to his feet, and she broke her loaf and fed him. and poured water into her palm for his bill.

Le Rossignol esteemed the military dignity given to her imprisonment, and she was a hardy midget who could bear untold exposure when wandering at her own will. She therefore received with disgust her lady’s summons to come down long before the day was spent, the messenger being only Zélie.

“All—h. mademoiselle,” warned the maid, stumping ponderously out of the stone stairway, “are you about to mount that swan again ? ”

“ Who ever saw me mount him ? ”

“I would be sworn there are a dozen men in the fort who have.”

“But you never have.”

“No; I have been absent with my lady.”

“Well, you shall see me now.”

The dwarf flung herself on Shubenacadie’s back, and thrust her feet down under his wings. He began to rise, and expanded, stretching his neck forward, and Zélie uttered a yell of terror. The weird little woman leaped off and turned her laughing beak toward the terrified maid. Her ear-hoops swung as she rolled her mocking head.

“Oh, if it frightens you, I will not ride to-day,” she said.

Shubenacadie sailed across the battlements, and though they could not see him they knew he had taken to the river.

“If I tell my lady this,” shivered Zélie, “she will never let you out of the turret. And she but this moment Sent me to call you down out of the chill east wind.”'

“Tell Madame Marie,” urged the dwarf insolently.

“And do you ride that way over bush and brier, through murk and daylight ? ”

“ I was at Penobscot this week, ” answered Le Rossignol.

Zélie gazed, with a bristling of even the hairs upon her lip.

“It goetli past belief, ” she observed, setting her hands upon her sides. “And the swan,—what else can he do besides carry thee like a dragon? ”

“He sings to me,” boldly asserted Le Rossignol. “And many a good bit of advice have I taken from his bill.”

“It would be well if he turned his mind more to thinking and less to roving, ” hinted Zdlie. “I will go before you downstairs and leave the key in the turret door,” she suggested.

“Take up these things, and go when you please; and mind that I do not hear my clavier striking the wall.”

“Have you not felt the wind in this open donjon ? ”

“The wind and I take no note of each other, ” replied the dwarf, lifting her chilled nose skyward. “But the cold water and bread have worked me most discomfort in this imprisonment. Go down and tell the cook for me that lie is to make a hot howl of the broth I like.”

“He will do it,” said Zelie.

“Yes. he wall do it,” returned the dwarf, “and the sooner he does it the better.”

“Will you eat it in the ball? ”

“I will eat it wherever Madame Marie is.”

“ But that you cannot do. There is great business going forw ard, and she is shut with Madame Bronck in our other lady’s room.”

“I like it when you presume to know better than I do what is going forward in this fort! ” cried the dwarf jealously, a flush mounting her slender cheeks.

“ I should best know what has happened since you left the hall, ” contended Ztilie.

“Do you think so, poor heavy-foot? You can only hearken to what is whispered past your ear ; but I can sit here on the battlements and read all the secrets below me.”

“Can you, Mademoiselle Nightingale? For instance, where is Madame Bronck’s box?” The maid drew a deep breath at her own daring.

“It is not about Madame Bronck’s box that they confer. It is about the marriage of the Hollandaise, ” answered Le Rossignol, with a bold guess. “I could have told you that when you entered the turret.”

Zélie experienced a chill through her flesh which was not caused by the damp breath of Fundy Bay.

“How doth she find out things done behind her back, this clever little witch? ” she muttered. “And perhaps you will name the bridegroom, mademoiselle ? ”

“ Who could that be except the big Hollandais who hath come out of the west after her? Could she marry a priest or a common soldier? ”

“That is true, ” admitted Zélie, feeling her superstition allayed.

“There must be as few women as trinkets in that wilderness Fort of Orange from which he came,” added the dwarf.

“Why? ” inquired Zélie, wrinkling her nose and squinting in the sunlight.

But Le Rossignol took no further trouble than to give her a look of contempt, and lifted the furred garment to descend the stairs.

X.

AN ACADIAN POET.

“The woman who dispenses with any dignity which should attend her marriage doth cheapen herself to her husband, ” said Lady Dorinda to Antonia Bronck, leaning back in the easiest chair of the fortress. It was large and stiff, but filled with cushions. Lady Dorinda’s chamber was the most comfortable one in Fort St. John. It was over the front of the great hall, and was intended for a drawing-room, being spacious, well warmed by a fireplace, and lighted by windows looking into the fort. A stately curtained bed, a toilet table with swinging mirror, bearing many of the ornaments and beauty-helpers of an elderly belle, and countless accumulations which spoke her former state in the world made this an English bower in a French fort.

Her dull yellow hair was coifed in the fashion of the early Stuarts. She held a hand-screen betwixt her face and the fire, but the flush which touched her usual sallowness was not caused by heat. A wedding was a diversion of her exile which Lady Dorinda had never hoped for. There had been some mating in the fort below among soldiers and peasant women, to which she did not lower her thoughts. The noise of resulting merrymakings sufficiently sought out and annoyed her ear. But the wedding of the guest to a man of consequence in the Dutch colony was something to which she might unbend herself.

Antonia had been brought against her will to consult with this faded authority by Marie, who sat by to support her through the ordeal. There was never any familiar chat between the lady of the fort and the widow of Claude La Tour. Neither forgot their first meeting behind cannon, and the tragedy of a divided house. Lady Dorinda lived in Acadia because she could not well live elsewhere; and she secretly nursed a hope that in her day the province would fall into English hands, her knight be vindicated, and his son obliged to submit to a power he had defied to the extremity of warring with a father.

If the two women had no love for each other, they at least stinted no ceremony. Marie presented the smallest surface of herself to her mother - in - law. It is true they had been of the same household only a few months; but months and years are the same between us and the people who solve not for us this riddle of ourselves. Antonia thought little of Lady Dorinda’s opinions, but her saying about the dignity of marriage rites had the force of unexpected truth. Arendt Van Corlaer had used up his patience in courtship. He was now bent on wedding Antonia and setting out to Montreal without the loss of another day. His route was planned up St. John River and across country to the St. Lawrence.

“I would, therefore, give all possible state to this occasion, ” added Lady Dorinda. “ Did you not tell me this Sir Van Corlaer is an officer ? ”

“He is the real patroon of Fort Orange, my lady. ”

“He should then have military honors paid him on his marriage. ” said Lady Dorinda, to whom “ patroon ” suggested the barbarous but splendid vision of a western pasha. “Salutes should be fired and drums sounded. In thus recommending I hope I have not overstepped my authority, Madame La Tour?”

“Certainly not, your ladyship, ” Marie murmured.

“The marriage ceremony hath length and solemnity, but I would have it longer and more solemn. In giving herself away, a woman should greatly impress a man with the charge he hath undertaken. There be not many bridegrooms like Sir Claude de la Tour, who fasted an entire day before his marriage with me. The ceremonial of that marriage hath scarce been forgotten at court to this hour.”

Lady Dorinda folded her hands and closed her eyes to sigh. Her voice had rolled the last words in her throat. At such moments she looked very superior. Her double chins and dull light eyes held great reserves of self-respect. A small box of aromatic seeds lay in her lap, and as her hands encountered it she was reminded to put a seed in her mouth and find pensive comfort in chewing it.

“Edelwald should be here to give the proper grace to this event, ” added Lady Dorinda.

“I thought of him,” said Marie. “Edelwald has so much the nature of a troubadour.”

“The studies which adorn a man were well thought of when I was at court,” said Lady Dorinda. “Edelwald is really thrown away upon this wilderness. ”

Antonia was too intent on Van Corlaer and his fell determination to turn her mind upon Edelwald. She had, indeed, seen very little of La Tour’s second in command, for he had been away with La Tour on expeditions much of the time she had spent in Acadia. Edelwald was the only man of the fortress who was called by his baptismal name, yet it was spoken with respect and deference, like a title. He was of the family of De Born. In an age when religion made political ties stronger than the ties of nature, the La Tours and the De Borns had fought side by side through Huguenot wars. When a later generation of La Tours were struggling for foothold in the New World, it was not strange that a son of the De Borns, full of songcraft and spirit inherited from some troubadour soldier of the twelfth century, should turn his face to the same land. From his mother Edelwald took Norman and Saxon strains of blood. He had left France the previous year and made his voyage in the same ship with Madame La Tour and her mother-in-law, and he was now La Tour’s trusted officer.

Edelwald could take up any stringed instrument, strike melody out of it, and sing songs he had himself made. But such pastimes were brief in Acadia. There was other business on the frontier, — sailing, hunting, fighting, persuading or defying men, exploring unyielded depths of wilderness. The joyous science had long fallen out of practice. But while the grim and bloody records of our early colonies were being made, here was an unrecorded poet in Acadia. La Tour held this gift of Edelwald’s in light esteem. He was a man so full of action and of schemes for establishing power that he touched only the martial side of the young man’s nature, though in that contact was strong comradeship. Every inmate of the fortress liked Edelwald. He mediated between commandant and men. and jealousies and bickerings disappeared before him.

“It would be better,” murmured Antonia, breaking the stately silence by Lady Dorinda’s fire, “if Mynheer Van Corlaer journeyed on to Montreal and returned here before any marriage takes place.”

“Think of the labor you will thereby put upon him! ” exclaimed Marie. “I speak for Monsieur Corlaer, and not for myself,” she added ; “ for by that delay I should happily keep you until summer. Besides, the priest we have here with us himself admits that the town of Montreal is little to look upon. Ville-Marie though it be named by the papists, what is it but a cluster of huts in the wilderness ? ”

“ I was six months preparing to be wedded to Mynheer Bronck,” remembered Antonia.

“ And will Monsieur Corlaer return here from Montreal ? ”

“ No, madame. He will carry me with him.”

“ I like him better for it,” said Marie, smiling, “ though it pleases me ill enough.”

This was Antonia’s last weak revolt against the determination of her stalwart suitor. She gained a three days’ delay from him by submitting to the other conditions of his journey. It amused Marie to note the varying phases of Antonia’s surrender. She was already resigned to the loss of Jonas Bronck’s hand, and in no slavish terror of the consequences.

“ And it is true I am provided with all I need,” she mused on, in the line of removing objections from Van Corlaer’s way.

“ I have often promised to show yon the gown I wore at my marriage,” said Lady Dorinda, roused from her rumination on the aromatic seed, and leaving her chair to pay this gracious compliment to the Dutch widow. “ It hath faded, and been discolored by the sea air, but you will not find a prettier fashion of lace in anything made since.”

She had no maid, for the women of the garrison had all been found too rude for her service. When she first came to Acadia with Claude La Tour, an English gentlewoman gladly waited on her. But now only Zélie gave her constrained and half-hearted attention, rating her as " my other lady,” and plainly deploring her presence. Lady Dorinda had one large box bound with iron, hidden in a nook beyond her bed. She took the key from its usual secret place and busied herself opening the box. Marie and Antonia heard her speak a word of surprise, but the curtained bed hid her from them. The raised lid of her box let out sweet scents of England, but that breath of old times, though she always dreaded its sweep across her resignation, had not made her cry out.

She found a strange small coffer on the top of her own treasures. Its key stood in its lock, and Lady Dorinda at once turned that key, as a duty to herself. Antonia’s loss of some precious casket had been proclaimed to her, but she recollected that in her second thought, when she had already laid aside the napkin and discovered Jonas Bronck’s hand. Lady Dorinda snapped the lid down and closed her own chest. She rose from her place and stretched both arms toward the couch at the foot of her bed. Having reached it, she sank down, her head meeting a cushion with nice calculation.

“ I am about to faint,” said Lady Dorinda, and having parted with her breath in one puff, she sincerely lost consciousness and lay in extreme calm, her claycolored eyelids shut on a clay - colored face. Marie was used to these quiet lapses of her mother-in-law, for Lady Dorinda had not been a good sailor on their voyage ; but Antonia was alarmed. They bathed her face with a few inches of towel dipped in scented water, and rubbed her hands, and fanned her. She caught life in again with a gasp, and opened her eyes to their young faces.

“ Your ladyship attempted too much in opening that box.” said Marie. “ It is not good to go back through old sorrows.”

Madame La Tour may be right,” sighed Claude’s widow.

“ I could not now look at that gown, Lady Dorinda,” protested Antonia.

When her ladyship was able to sit again by the fire she asked both of them to leave her; and being alone, she quieted her anxiety about her treasures in the chest by a forced search. Nothing had been disturbed. The coals burned down red while Lady Dorinda tried to understand this happening. She dismissed all thought of the casket’s belonging to Antonia Bronck,—a mild and stiff-mannered young provincial who had nothing to do with ghastly tokens of war. That hand was a political hint, mysteriously sent to Lady Dorinda and embodying some important message.

D’Aulnay de Charnisay may have sent it as a pledge that he intended to do justice to the elder La Tour while chastising the younger. There was a strange girl in the fort, accused of coming from D’Aulnay. Lady Dorinda could feel no enmity toward D’Aulnay. Her mind swarmed with foolish thoughts, harmless because ineffectual. She felt her importance grow, and was sure that the seed of a deep political intrigue lay hidden in her chest.

XI.

MARGUERITE.

The days which elapsed before Antonia Bronck’s marriage were lived joyfully by a people who lost care in any festival. Van Corlaer brought the sleekfaced young dominie from camp and exhibited him in all. his potency as the means of a Protestant marriage service. He could not speak a word of French, but only Dutch was required of him. All religious rites were celebrated in the hall, there being no chapel in Fort St. John, and this marriage was to be witnessed by the garrison.

During this cheerful time a burning unrest, which she concealed from her people, drove Marie about her domain. She fled up the turret stairs and stood on the cannon to look over the bay. Her husband had been away but eight days. " Yet he often makes swift journeys,’’ she thought. The load of his misfortunes settled more heavily upon her as she drew nearer to the end of woman companionship.

In former times, before such bitterness had grown in the feud between D D’Aulnay and La Tour, siie had made frequent voyages from Cape Sable up Fundy Bay to Port Royal. The winters were then merry among noble Acadians, and the lady of Fort St. Louis at Cape Sable was hostess of a rich seigniory. Now she had the sickness of suspense, and the wasting of life in waiting. Frequently during the day she met Father Jogues, who also wandered about, disturbed by the evident necessity of his return to Montreal.

“ Monsieur,” said Marie once, “ can you on your conscience bless a heretic ?”

“ Madame, heaven itself blesses a good and excellent woman.”

“ Well, monsieur, if you could lift up your hand, even with the sign which my house holds idolatrous, and say a few words of prayer, I should then feel consecrated to whatever is before me.”

Perhaps Father Jogues was tempted to have recourse to his vial of holy water and make the baptismal signs. Many a soul he truly believed he had saved from burning by such secret administration. And if savages could be thus reclaimed, should he hold back from the only opportunity ever given by this beautiful soul? His face shone. But with that gracious instinct to refrain from intermeddling which was beyond his times, he only lifted his stumps of fingers and spoke the words which she craved. A maimed priest is deprived of his sacred offices, but the Pope had made a special dispensation for Father Jogues.

“ Thanks, monsieur,” said Marie. “ Though it be sin to declare it, I will say your religion hath mother-comfort in it. Perhaps you have felt., in the woods among Iroquois, that sometime need of mother-comfort which a civilized woman may feel who has long outgrown her childhood.”

The mandolin was heard in the barracks once during those days, for Le Rossignol had come out of the house determined to look for Marguerite. She found the Swiss girl heside the powder magazine, for Marguerite had brought out a stool, and seemed trying to cure her sick spirit in the sun. The dwarf stood still and looked at her with insolent eyes. Soldiers’ wives hid themselves within their doors, cautiously watching, or thrusting out their heads to shake at one another or to squall at any child venturing too near the encounter. They did not like the strange girl, and besides, she was in their way. But they liked the Nightingale less, and pitied any one singled out for her attack.

“ Good - day to madame the former Madame Klussman,” said the dwarf.

Marguerite gathered herself in defense to arise and leave her stool. But Lo Rossignol gathered her mandolin in equal readiness to give pursuit. And not one woman in the barracks would willingly have been her quarry.

“ I was in Penobscot last week,’’ announced Le Rossignol, and heads popped out of all the doors to lift eyebrows and open mouths at each other. The swanriding witch ! She confessed to that impossible journey !

“ I was in Penobscot last week,” repeated Le Rossignol, holding-up her mandolin and tinkling an accompaniment to her words, “ and there I saw the house of D’Aulnay de Charnisay, and a very good house it is ; but my lord should burn it. It is indeed of rough logs, and the windows are so high that one must have wings to look through them ; but quite good enough for a woman of your rank, seeing that D’Aulnay hath a palace for his wife in Port Royal.”

“ I know naught about the house,” spoke Marguerite, a yellow sheen of anger appearing in her eyes.

“ Do you know naught about the Island of Demons, then ? ”

The Swiss girl muttered a negative, and looked sidewise at her antagonist.

“ I will tell you that story,” said Le Rossignol.

She played a weird prelude. Marguerite sat still to be baited, like a hare which has no covert. The instrument being heavy for the dwarf, she propped it by resting one foot on the abutting foundation of the powder house, and all through her recital made the mandolin’s effects act upon her listener.

“The Sieur de Roberval sailed to this New World, having with him among a shipload of righteous people one Marguerite.” She slammed her emphasis on the mandolin.

“ There have ever been too many such women, and so the Sieur de Roberval found, though this one was his niece. Like all her kind, madame, she had a lover to her scandal. The Sieur de Roberval whipped her. and prayed over her. and shut her up in irons in the hold ; yet live a godly life she would not. So what could he do but set her ashore on the Island of Demons ? ”

“ I do not want to hear it,” was Marguerite’s muttered protest.

But Le Rossignol advanced closer to her face.

“ And what does the lover do but jump overboard and swim after her ? And well was he repaid.” Bang! went the mandolin. “ So they went up the rocky island together, and there they built a hut. What a horrible land was that!

“ All day long fiends twisted themselves in mist. The weaves made a sadder moaning there than anywhere else on earth. Monsters crept outof the sea and grinned with dull eyes and clammy lips. No fruit, no flower, scarcely a blade of grass dared thrust itself toward the sky on that scaly island. Daylight was half dusk there forever. But the nights, the nights, madame, were full of howls of contending beasts ; the nights were storms of demons let loose to beat on that island !

“ All the two people had to eat were the stores set ashore by the Sieur de Roberval. Now a child was born in their hut, and the very next night a bear knocked at the door and demanded the child. Marguerite full freely gave it to him,”

The girl shrank back, and Le Rossignol was delighted until she herself noticed that Klussman had come in from some duty outside the gates. His eye detected her employment, and he sauntered not far off, with his shoulder turned to the powder house.

“ Next night, madame,” continued Le Rossignol, and her tone and the accent of the mandolin made an insult of that unsuitable title, “ a horned lion and two dragons knocked at the door and asked for the lover, and Marguerite full freely gave him to them. Kind soul, she would do anything to save herself ! ”

“ Go away ! ” burst out the girl.

“ And from that time until a ship took her off, the demons of Demon Island tried in vain to get Marguerite. They howled around her house every night, and gaped down her chimney, and whispered through the cracks, and sat on the roof. But thou knowest, madame, that a woman of her kind, so soft and silent and downward-looking, is more than a match for any demon ; sure to live full easily and to die a fat saint.”

“ Have done with this,” said Klussman behind the dwarf, who turned her grotesque beak and explained : —

“ I am but telling the story of the Island of Demons to Madame Klussman.”

As soon as she had spoken the name the Swiss caught her in his hand, mandolin and all, and walked across the esplanade holding her at arm’s length as he might have carried an eel. Le Rossignol ineffectually squirmed and kicked, raging at the spectacle she made for laughing women and soldiers. She tried to heat the Swiss with her mandolin, but he twisted her in another direction, a cat’s weight of fury. Giving her no chance to turn upon him, he opened the entrance and shut her inside the hall, and stalked back to make his explanation to his wife. Klussman had avoided any glimpse of Marguerite until this instant of taking up her defense.

“ I pulled that witch-midget off thee,” he said, speaking for the fortress to hear, “ because I will not have her raising tumults in the fort. Her place is in the hall to amuse her ladies.”

Marguerite’s chin rested on her breast.

“ Go in the house,” said Klussman roughly. Why do you show yourself out here to be mocked at ? ”

The poor girl raised her swimming eyes and looked at him in the fashion he remembered when she was ill ; when he had nursed her with agonies of fear that she might die. The old relations between them were thus suggested in one blinding flash. Klussman turned away so sick that the walls danced around him. He went outside the fort again, and wandered around the stony height, turning at every few steps to gaze and strain his eyes at that new clay in the graveyard.

“ When she lies beside that,” muttered the soldier, “ then I can be soft to her,” though he knew he was already soft to her, and that her look had pierced through him.

XII.

D’AULNAY.

The swelling spring was chilled by cold rain, driving in from the bay and sweeping through the half-buckled woods. The tide went up St. John River with an impulse which flooded undiked lowlands, yet there was no storm dangerous to shipping. Some sails hung out there in the whirl of vapors with evident intention of making port.

Mario took a glass up to the turret and stood on the cannon to watch them. Rain fine as driven stings beat her face, and accumulated upon her muffling to run down and drip on the wet floor. She could make out nothing of the vessels. There were three of them, each by its sails a ship. They could not b\he the ships of Nicholas Denys carrying La Tour’s recruits. She was not foolish enough, however great her husband’s prosperity with Denys, to expect of him such a miraculous voyage around Cape Sable.

Sails were a rare sight on that side of the bay. The venturesome seamen ol the Massachusetts colony chose other courses. Fundy Bay was aside from the great sea paths. Port Royal sent out no ships except D’Aulnay’s, and on La Tour’s side of Acadia his was the only vessel.

Certain of nothing except that these unknown comers intended to enter St. John River, Madame La Tour went downstairs, and met Klussman on the wall. He turned from his outlook and said directly, —

“ Madame, I believe it is D’Aulnay.”

“ You may be right,” she answered. “ Is any one outside the gates ? ”

“ Two men went early to the garden, but the rain drove them back. Fortunately, the day being bad, no one is hunting beyond the falls.”

“ And is our vessel well moored ? ”

“ Her repairing was finished some days ago, you remember, madame, and she sits safe and comfortable. But D’Aulnay may burn her. When he was here before, my lord was away with the ship.”

“ Bar the gates and make everything secure at once,” said Marie. “ And salute these vessels presently. If it be D’Aulnay, we sent him back to his seigniory with fair speed once before, and we are no worse equipped now.”

She returned down the stone steps where Van Corlaer’s courtship had succeeded, and threw off her wet cloak to dry herself before the fire in her room. She kneeled by the hearth ; the log had burned nearly away. Her mass of hair was twisted back in the plain fashion of the Greeks, — that old sweet fashion created with the nature of woman, to which the world periodically returns when it has exhausted new devices. The smallest curves, which were tendrils rather than curls of hair, were blown out of her fleece over forehead and ears. A dark woman’s beauty is independent of wind and light. When she is buffeted by weather the rich inner color comes through her skin, and the brightest dayshine can do nothing against the dusk of her eyes.

It D’ Aulnay was about to attack the fort, Marie was glad that Monsieur Corlaer had taken his bride, the missionaries, and his people, and set out in the opposite direction. Barely had they escaped a siege, for they were on their way less than twenty-four hours. She had regretted their first day in a chill rain. But chill rain in boundless woods is better than sunlight in an invested fortress. Father Jogues’s happy face, with its forward droop and musing eyelids, came before Marie’s vision.

“ I need another of his benedictions,” she said in an undertone, when a knock on her door and a struggle with its latch disturbed her.

“ Enter, Le Rossignol,” said Madame La Tour.

And Le Rossignol entered, and approached the hearth, standing at full length scarcely as high as her lady kneeling. The room was a dim one, for all apartments looking out of the fort had windows little larger than portholes, set high in the walls. Two or three screens hid its uses as bed-chamber and dressing-room, and a few pieces of tapestry were hung, making occasional panels of grotesque figures. A couch stood near the fireplace. The dwarf’s prominent features were gravely fixed, and her bushy hair formed a huge auburn halo around them. She wet her lips with that sudden motion by which a toad may be seen to catch flies.

“ Madame Marie, every one is running around below and saying that D’Aulnay de Charnisay is coming again to attack the fort.”

“ Your pretty voice has always been a pleasure to me, Nightingale.”

“ But is it so, madarae ? ”

“ There are three ships standing in.”

Le Rossignol’s russet - colored gown moved nearer to the fire. She stretched her claws to warm, and then lifted one of them near her lady’s nose.

“ Madame Marie, if D’Aulnay de Charnisay be coming, put no faith in that Swiss ! ”

“ In Klussman ? ”

“ Yes, madame.”

“ Klussman is the best soldier now in the fort,” said Madame La Tour, laughing. “ If I put no faith in him, whom shall I trust ? ”

“ Madame Marie, you remember that woman you brought back with you ? ”

“ I have not seen her or spoken with her,” replied Marie self-reproachfully, “since she vexed me so sorely about her child. She is a poor creature. But they feed and house her well in the barracks.”

“ Madame Marie, Klussman hath been talking with that woman every day this week.”

The dwarf’s lady looked keenly at her.

“ Oh, no. There could be no talk between those two.”

“ But there hath been. T have watched him. Madame Marie, he took me up when I went into the fort before Madame Bronck’s marriage, — when I was but playing my clavier before that sulky knave to amuse her, — he took me up in his big common-soldier fingers, gripping me around the waist, and flung me into the hall.”

“ Did he so ? ” laughed Marie. “ I can well see that my Nightingale can put no more faith in the Swiss. But hearken to me, thou bird-child. There ! hear our salute ! ”

The cannon leaped almost over their heads, and the walls shook with its boom and rebound. Marie kept her finger up and waited for a reply. Minute succeeded minute. The drip of accumulated raindrops from the door could be heard, but nothing else. Those sullen vessels paid no attention to the inquiry of Fort St. John.

“ Our enemy has come.”

She relaxed from her tense listening, and with a deep breath looked at Le Rossignol.

“ Do not undermine the faith of one in another in this fortress. We must all hold together now. The Swiss may have a tenderness for his wretched wife which thou canst not understand. But he is not therefore faithless to his lord.”

Taking the glass and throwing on her wet cloak, Marie again ran up to the wall. But Le Rossignol sat down crosslegged by the fire, wise and brooding.

“ If I could see that Swiss hung,” she observed, " it would scratch in my soul a long-felt itch.”

When calamity threatens, we turn back to our peaceful days with astonishment that they ever seemed monotonous. Marie watched the ships, and thought of the woman days with Antonia before Van Corlaer came : of embroidery, and teaching the Etehemins, and bringing sweet plunder from the woods for the child’s grave ; of paddling on the twilight river when the tide was up, brimming and bubble-tinted : of her lord’s coming home to the autumn-night hearth; of the little wheels and spinning, and Edelwald’s songs, — of all the common joys of that past life. The clumsy glass, lately brought from France to master distances in the New World, wearied her hands before it assured her eyes.

D’Aulnay de Charnisay was actually coining to attack Fort St. John a second time. He warily anchored his vessels out of the fort’s range ; and hour after hour boats moved back and forth landing men and artillery on the cape at the mouth of the river, a position which gave as little scope as possible to St. John’s guns. All that afternoon tents and earthworks were rising, and detail by detail appeared the deliberate and carefid preparations of an enemy who was sitting down to a siege.

At dusk camp-fires began to flame on the distant low cape, and voices moved along air made sensitively vibrant by falling damp. There was the suggested hum of a disciplined small army -set tling itself for the night and for early action.

Madame La Tour came out to the esplanade of the fort, and the Swiss met her, carrying a torch which ineffectual raindrops irritated to constant hissing. He stood, tall and careworn, holding it up that his lady might see her soldiers. Everything in the fort was ready for the siege. The sentinels were about to be doubled, and sheltered by their positions.

“ I have had you called together, my men,”she spoke, “ to say a word to you before this affair begins.”

The torch flared its limited circle of shine, smoke wavering in a half-seen plume at its tip, and showed their erect figures in line, none very distinct, hut all keenly suggestive of life. Some were black-bearded and tawny, and others had tints of the sun in flesh and hair. One was grizzled about the temples, and one was a smooth-cheeked youth. The roster of their familiar names seemed to her as precious as a rosary. The men watched her, feeling her beauty as keenly as if it were a pain, and answering every lambent motion of her spirit.

All the buildings were hinted through falling mist, and glowing hearths in the barracks showed like forge lights ; for the wives of the half dozen married soldiers had come out, one having a child in her arms, They stood behind their lady, troubled, but reliant on her. She had with them t he prestige of success ; she had led the soldiers once before, and to a successful defense of the fort.

” My men, said Marie, “ when the Sieur de la Tour set out to northern Acadia he dreaded such a move as this on D’ Aulnay ’s part. But I assured him he need not fear for us.”

Ihe soldiers murmured their joy, and looked at one another smiling.

“ The Sieur de la Tour will soon return, with help or without it; and D’ Aulnay has no means of learning how small our garrison is. Bind yourselves afresh to me as you bound yourselves before the other attack.”

“ My lady, we do ! ”

Out leaped every right hand, Klussman’s with the torch, which lost and caught its flame again with the sudden sweep.

“ That is all: and I thank you,” said Marie. “ We will do our best.”

She turned back to the tower under the torch ’s escort, her soldiers giving her a full cheer which might further have deceived D’Aulnay in the strength of the garrison.

Mary Hartwell Catherwood.