The Lady of Fort St. John | Page 2

and spring night was bringing darkness upon it.
The stockade inclosed a single building of rough logs clumsily put
together, and chinked with the hard red soil. An unhewn wall divided
the house into two rooms, and in one room were gathered less than a
dozen men-at-arms. Their officer lay in one of the cupboard-like bunks,
with his hands clasped under his head. Some of the men were already
asleep; others sat by the hearth, rubbing their weapons or spreading
some garment to dry. A door in the partition opened, and the wife of
one of the men came from the inner room.
"Good-night, madame," she said.
"Good-night, Zélie," answered a voice within.

"If you have further need of me, you will call me, madame?"
"Assuredly. Get to your rest. To-morrow we may have stormy weather
for our voyage home."
The woman closed the door, and the face of the one who had hearkened
to her turned again to the fireplace. It was a room repeating the men's
barrack in hewed floor, loophole windows, and rough joists.
This frontier outpost on the ridge since called Beausejour was merely a
convenient halting-place for one of the lords of Acadia. It stood on a
detached spot of his large seigniory, which he had received with other
portions of western Acadia in exchange for his grant of Cape Sable.
Though in his early thirties, Charles de la Tour had seen long service in
the New World. Seldom has a man from central France met the
northern cold and sea air with so white a favor. His clean-shaven skin
and the sunny undecided color of his hair were like a child's. Part of his
armor had been unbuckled, and lay on the floor near him. He sat in a
chair of twisted boughs, made of refuse from trees his men had dragged
out of the neighboring forest for the building of the outpost. His wife
sat on a pile of furs beside his knee. Her Huguenot cap lay on the shelf
above the fire. She wore a black gown slashed in the sleeves with white,
and a kerchief of lace pushed from her throat. Her black hair, which
Zélie had braided, hung down in two ropes to the floor.
"How soon, monsieur," she asked, "can you return to Fort St. John?"
"With all speed possible, Marie. Soon, if we can work the miracle of
moving a peace-loving man like Denys to action."
"Nicholas Denys ought to take part with you."
"Yet he will scarce do it."
"The king-favored governor of Acadia will some time turn and push
him as he now pushes you."

"D'Aulnay hath me at sore straits," confessed La Tour, staring at the
flame, "since he has cut off from me the help of the Bostonnais."
"They were easily cut off," said Marie. "Monsieur, those Huguenots of
the colonies were never loving friends of ours. Their policy hath been
to weaken this province by helping the quarrel betwixt D'Aulnay and
you. Now that D'Aulnay has strength at court, and has persuaded the
king to declare you an outlaw, the Bostonnais think it wise to withdraw
their hired soldiers from you. We have not offended the Bostonnais as
allies; we have only gone down in the world."
La Tour stirred uneasily.
"I dread that D'Aulnay may profit by this hasty journey I make to
northern Acadia, and again attack the fort in my absence."
"He hath once found a woman there who could hold it," said Marie,
checking a laugh.
La Tour moved his palm over her cheek. Within his mind the province
of Acadia lay spread from Penobscot River to the Island of Sable, and
from the southern tip of the peninsula now called Nova Scotia nearly to
the mouth of the St. Lawrence. This domain had been parceled in
grants: the north to Nicholas Denys; the centre and west to D'Aulnay de
Charnisay; and the south, with posts on the western coast, to Charles de
la Tour. Being Protestant in faith, La Tour had no influence at the court
of Louis XIII. His grant had been confirmed to him from his father. He
had held it against treason to France; and his loyal service, at least, was
regarded until D'Aulnay de Charnisay became his enemy. Even in that
year of grace 1645, before Acadia was diked by home-making Norman
peasants or watered by their parting tears, contending forces had begun
to trample it. Two feudal barons fought each other on the soil of the
New World.
"All things failing me"--La Tour held out his wrists, and looked at them
with a sharp smile.
"Let D'Aulnay shake a warrant, monsieur. He must needs have you

before he can carry you in chains to France."
She seized La Tour's hands, with a swift impulse of atoning