The Lady of Fort St. John | Page 3

to them for
the thought of such indignity, and kissed his wrists. He set his teeth on
a trembling lip.
"I should be a worthless, aimless vagrant without you, Marie. You are
young, and I give you fatigue and heart-sickening peril instead of
jewels and merry company."
"The merriest company for us at present, monsieur, are the men of our
honest garrison. If Edelwald, who came so lately, complains not of this
New World life, I should endure it merrily enough. And you know I
seldom now wear the jewels belonging to our house. Our chief jewel is
buried in the ground."
She thought of a short grave wrapped in fogs near Fort St. John; of fair
curls and sweet childish limbs, and a mouth shouting to send echoes
through the river gorge; of scamperings on the flags of the hall; and of
the erect and princely carriage of that diminutive presence the men had
called "my little lord."
"But it is better for the boy that he died, Marie," murmured La Tour.
"He has no part in these times. He might have survived us to see his
inheritance stripped from him."
They were silent until Marie said, "You have a long march before you
to-morrow, monsieur."
"Yes; we ought to throw ourselves into these mangers," said La Tour.
One wall was lined with bunks like those in the outer room. In the
lower row travelers' preparations were already made for sleeping.
"I am yet of the mind, monsieur," observed Marie, "that you should
have made this journey entirely by sea."
"It would cost me too much in time to round Cape Sable twice.

Nicholas Denys can furnish ship as well as men, if he be so minded.
My lieutenant in arms next to Edelwald," said La Tour, smiling over
her, "my equal partner in troubles, and my lady of Fort St. John will
stand for my honor and prosperity until I return."
Marie smiled back.
"D'Aulnay has a fair wife, and her husband is rich, and favored by the
king, and has got himself made governor of Acadia in your stead. She
sits in her own hall at Port Royal: but poor Madame D'Aulnay! She has
not thee!"
At this La Tour laughed aloud. The ring of his voice, and the clang of
his breastplate which fell over on the floor as he arose, woke an
answering sound. It did not come from the outer room, where scarcely
a voice stirred among the sleepy soldiery, but from the top row of
bunks. Marie turned white at this child wail soothed by a woman's
voice.
"What have we here?" exclaimed La Tour.
"Monsieur, it must be a baby!"
"Who has broken into this post with a baby? There may be men
concealed overhead."
He grasped his pistols, but no men-at-arms appeared with the haggard
woman who crept down from her hiding-place near the joists.
"Are you some spy sent from D'Aulnay?" inquired La Tour.
"Monsieur, how can you so accuse a poor outcast mother!" whispered
Marie.
The door in the partition was flung wide, and the young officer
appeared with men at his back.
"Have you found an ambush, Sieur Charles?"

"We have here a listener, Edelwald," replied La Tour, "and there may
be more in the loft above."
Several men sprang up the bunks and moved some puncheons overhead.
A light was raised under the dark roof canopy, but nothing rewarded its
search. The much-bedraggled woman was young, with falling strands
of silken hair, which she wound up with one hand while holding the
baby. Marie took the poor wailer from her with a divine motion and
carried it to the hearth.
"Who brought you here?" demanded La Tour of the girl.
She cowered before him, but answered nothing. Her presence seemed
to him a sinister menace against even his obscurest holdings in Acadia.
The stockade was easily entered, for La Tour was unable to maintain a
garrison there. All that open country lay sodden with the breath of the
sea. From whatever point she had approached, La Tour could scarcely
believe her feet came tracking the moist red clay alone.
"Will you give no account of yourself?"
"You must answer monsieur," encouraged Marie, turning, from her
cares with the child. It lay unwound from its misery on Marie's knees,
watching the new ministering power with accepting eyes. Feminine and
piteous as the girl was, her dense resistance to command could only
vex a soldier.
"Put her under guard," he said to his officer.
"And Zélie must look to her comfort," added Marie.
"Whoever she may be," declared La Tour, "she hath heard too much to
go free of this place. She must be sent in the ship to Fort St. John, and
guarded there."
"What else could be done, indeed?"